Progress!! Bwahahahahaaa!





This is about 1/4 of the path, I think, and it took me about 2h to excavate...so naptimes over this weekend and next ought to be enough to have it done and ready to fill. Although tomorrow it's supposed to rain - dammit. Hopefully it will keep to a drizzle in the early afternoon.

Also, while browsing usedottawa.com, I came across an ad for a pile of Fine Gardening magazines. When I responded, it turns out they also had a stack of Canadian Gardening issues for sale. 90 new garden magazines - RAWK. If I restrain myself to one magazine a day, this will almost keep me in garden daydreaming material through the whole winter. I don't know if I have such ninja-like willpower in me.

Arrrrgh, curse you, american garden magazines!! Paging through Fine Gardening's delicious Autumn Garden publication, I spied the most gorgeous hardy mums:

Emperor of China - 3 to 4 feet tall


Pacific chrysanthemum - cute groundcover


J. C. Weigelan and Mei-kyo are also lovely. WE WANTS SOME, PRECIOUSSSS. But I can't find them anywhere! Checked all my catalogues, checked the online catalogues of a couple of local garden centres, phoned another one. I'm not 100% sure these are even actually hardy here...the pacific ones would be OK, since the flowers are sort of secondary to the cool foliage anyway, but Emperor of China apparently doesn't bloom until late October, and then dies with the first heavy frost...which would be pushing it here, I think. Sniff!

Canadian Gardening magazine, why must you get me in so much trouble!!

Idly flipping through some back issues I have kicking around the house, I ran across an intriguing front-yard garden design in the Fall 09 issue. The design was for a bungalow that featured a stone finish and bay window similar to what we have in the front of our house. They proposed a pretty trellis screen against the wall under the window and a paved "courtyard" area with stone bench surrounded by shrubby things of varying textures and colours.

I'm not sure there would be a lot of point to a sitting area in the front yard - much nicer, quieter, and more private in the back - but it would certainly make more sense to pave over that insanely dry area right in front of the house than to try to grow stuff in it. In any case, I do quite like the idea of an all-shrub planting in this area, since that would occupy lots of space and look schnazzy while being helpfully low-maintenance.

Possible candidate for replacing the perpetually-stressed-out-looking tree: Sutherland Gold cutleaf elder.



Would be a nice contrast with the monster yew. Maybe too yellow, though? There's a nice dark purple version too; that might do a nice job of repeating the purple-leaf sandcherry note.



These both get to be a little more than 6' tall, which sounds about right; the rest of the space at the back could go to some hydrangeas of insanity, and possibly a ninebark on the other side (again with the purple). Then in front of all that I can put all the random stuff I wouldn't have room for otherwise - barberry, a rose or two, possibly some less ratty variety of juniper (more blue stars or some of that spreading stuff, maybe). As an added bonus, this would get rid of an additional few feet of "lawn"; I could also yank the currently invisible daylilies and the beetle bait - ahem - orange lilies.

So yesterday when we were on our way to the grocery store, Corey gallantly pointed out some hand-lettered signs indicating a plant sale off in a nearby suburb. It turned out to be a fundraising event for an African women's charity. I snapped up an impressively large red-flowering peony for $10 (sahWEET), some phlox, and some brown-eyed susans, as well as a substantial pile of ten-year-old gardening magazines.

Inspired by a couple of said magazines I have added the following to my shopping list:

* Seafoam rose. Apparently a super-floriferous "ground cover" rose that gets to be a couple feet high and sprawls several feet wide; canes will actually root where they touch the ground. How cool! I'm thinking this might be nice in the wall bed, which is sadly empty at the moment and I'm at a loss as to what to fill it with, although in the pie-in-the-sky department I'd still like to put one of those fountains there. The ever-helpful Galetta Nurseries apparently has these in stock, so maybe I'll make a road trip during my week off.
* Oooh, looking at the Galetta website, "The Fairy" is actually pretty gorgeous too. This would have the advantage of adding some colour to that bed, which is set against the white-flowering spirea and hydrangeas. Hmmmm! Although I already have a pink rose in the sun bed...
* Zephirine Drouhin rose. I've heard this name a few times and it sounds pretty spectacular - climbing, fragrant, shade-tolerant. But Galetta doesn't have them, nor does Vesey's. Hmmm. Some phone calls are in order, I guess.

So in my puttering around over the course of the weekend, I managed to fix the irrigation system in the back, install an irrigation system out front, do a bit of weeding, and plant 3/4 of my recent purchases. Now that the irrigation system is back in business I am optimistic that I may actually get blooms out of at least one of the rhododendrons. I was baffled as to its failure to open any of its promising-looking buds, but apparently this April was the second driest on record or something, and the intarwebs tell me that drought can delay flowering or abort it entirely, but watering can help if you catch it in time. And now that I've given everything back there a thorough soaking, there is a bit of pink starting to show on the buds. FTW!

Also the "shade" bed is rather sunnier than I thought, except at the very back. It's at least as sunny as the other side of the yard. So that gives me a few more options as to what I do with it, at least!

Awesome idea from the April ish of Canadian Gardening: a circular patio, with garden beds around it divided up by paths like spokes of a wheel. This way there is a nice spot to sit and enjoy the garden, beds of manageable size, access to weed everything, and beds that can be viewed on three of four sides. Dammit, I should have taken masonry instead of carpentry. I could be doing my own hardscaping. Paying to have someone lay something down like that beautiful spiral of cobblestone would probably be insanely expensive.

Further awesome idea: "underplant[ing a tree], in the style of an English cottage garden, with...spring bulbs of every colour." I spy a use for the ground around the white pine out back, yes I do. In fact, sometime this week I am going to march out there and stick my tulips in the ground, since the snow is off the back of the yard. I figure since I did leave them outside over the winter there is the remotest chance they might come up, although I doubt they'd have frozen as hard in the ground as they did sitting in the carport.

Also inspiring from said magazine is that the gardens featured that aren't professionally designed and planted are typically the product of 20-odd years' work. So it's no tragedy that my gardens have not looked like that. My mom has remarked that it takes 10 years for a garden to really "arrive". And the idea of spending 20 years on the same garden is oddly appealing, despite my typical impatience. After all, you do get gratification year after year in between.