Picture post the second: May

So here's the tulips starting to get going in the front...

Missed out on a picture of the early ones this year. Pattern seems to remain early reds and pinks and purples moving to later white and black-purple.

 View going into the backyard.  Some minor tidying to do, but: SQUEE.

Overall in the backyard, featuring swank copper fountain and awesome tulips!

Shade bed (need to move/disguise the extension cord currently powering the fountain):

 Tulips!  Gypsophila appears to be another random winter casualty.  Will have to find something else to replace it.

Wall bed. This is not the spot I had in mind for the fountain, but it really works well there, as it turns out. Just need to bend over it to spy for lily beetles.

 My god, this thing is gorgeous. Seriously worth every penny. We've been running it constantly; with the windows open, you can still hear it.

Those heucheras are solid gold in the east bed. Really rounds out the colour palette.

 Dwarf korean fir.  Could not resist this texture. Have put it in the shade bed next to the maidenhair fern.

Aaaaaaaaand another week later. Amazing how much things fill in given a cool, rainy week.

 Again with the heucheras.  Damn.  Might need to look for a few more of these.

Rampaging bittersweet vine and increasingly dilapidated shed. I kind of enjoy the wild-and-woolly look of the vine, actually, and the birds love it, but it desperately needs a haircut.

Picture post the first: end of April/early May

I was a little worried about the magnolia given all the freeze-thaw fakeouts we got before spring finally decided to arrive, but as it turned out it bloomed spectacularly this year.  Behold:

Full landscape, for the record.  Should totally have gotten a picture of the crocuses that bloomed a week or two earlier, but I don't think a picture really does justice to how uplifting they were anyway.

Wow, blogging fail for me this spring.  In addition to it being effing cold and miserable out well into April, other projects and preoccupations kind of took over.  Highlights in this post, to be followed by a few picture posts.

* One lesson learned: the seeds really do need to be somewhere that jumps to my attention in my daily routine, because after a promising start in the downstairs storage closet with a timer on the lights, I forgot all about them and they dried out and died.  ARGH.

* Plant sale was glorious as ever. Mostly bought irises, since looking at pictures of the yellow one in the front bed all winter convinced me that I need many more of them. Also picked up some stinking hellebores - they don't really stink, god knows why they called them that - since I have been eyeing their lovely foliage for ever; some white-flowering opuntias; and a dwarf korean fir. Got my mother-in-law a moon frost hemlock and now I want one too. Am getting to be a real sucker for dwarf evergreens.

* Insect plagues seem somewhat reduced from last year - there's the silver lining for a chilly spring, I guess. Knock on wood, anyway. Roses may have been badly compromised, though; fucking sawflies, or whatever the hell those things were that I found on EVERY SINGLE BUD in the front yard.

* Apparent casualties of the winter, bizarrely enough: kerria, backyard euonymus, and artemisia powis castle. My Monet weigela is also looking pretty straggly.

* Not just one but TWO flower stalks on the go on every eremurus except the really big one. OH HELL YEAH. I was afraid they were in some sort of snit over the soil conditions, but I guess they just needed a couple of seasons to get established.

* Didn't plant any new tulips last fall, but as it turned out they almost all came back anyway.  Must get some of the interesting-shaped ones my mother-in-law has, too; was not too fussed about them based on the picture, but seeing them in person has convinced me.

Also, garden destinations for the spring:

Whitehouse Perennials
Rideau Woodland Ramble (at rhododendron time)

Garden destinations for some other year:

Stratford Garden Festival (end of Feb/beginning of March)
Flora Niagara (international horticultural to-do in 2017 - good excuse for a getaway, right??)

I am not ordering seeds right this minute.  First off, I can't actually start them for another month, and second, I am desperately broke at the moment.  BUT for future reference, and because poring over seed catalogues is a reward in itself:

Sunflower Russian Giant (T&M 90416) - promised height of 8-10' is unlikely in our soil, but fun to try!
Other sunflowers TBD
Queen Anne's Lace (T&M 90636)
Alyssum (T&M 91394) - multicoloured this time, why not
Chicory (T&M 91203)
Digitalis (T&M 90399)
Heliotrope (T&M 91171)
Nicotiana (T&M 90235)
Primroses (T&M 90436)
Scarlet Kale (T&M 90323)
Cardoon (http://www.cottagegardener.com/search/cardoon/) - gigantic spiky silver plant?  Yes please!

I guess I will wait until after Seedy Saturday to place my order, and then if I can find all of the above without shelling out for shipping, so much the better.

It is -20 outside at the moment and there's a big-ass snowstorm on the way tonight.  Fervently hoping for another freakishly early spring and meanwhile consoling myself with hot tea and garden ruminations.

The deck, alas, is not happening this year, as we lack the ~$5K the materials would cost.  Sigh.  So what else am I going to do outside this year, aside from standard maintenance?

* Put some sort of stone edging between me and the next-door neighbour in the front yard.  He's been very laid-back about it, but still, it only seems fair to make the shared edge tidy.  Should probably do the same at the edge of the driveway, but that will probably necessitate trimming the asphalt a bit, which prospect is a little daunting.  Will have to ask Bob about it.

* Tweak sprinkler system.  I'm not sure that the soaker hoses in the front are adequate, and the fence-mounted setup out back could probably be lowered so as to not make things flop over.

* Install copper fountain of awesomeness.  The artist recommends eventually making its final home on the deck, where we'll be best able to hear it.  Meanwhile I think it will probably live in the little corner prepared for that purpose, although I need some sort of screening solution so as not to juxtapose it with the neighbour's recycling bins.

* Rake/sweep out the river rocks out front and then put them back again, since the swale rapidly silted in past usefulness and will probably only be more so now given fall leaf detritus.  May have to dig a steeper slope into it to keep this from happening so quickly.  Digging that close to the road is a big fat pain in the ass because it's all compacted gravel, but as a silver lining I might be able to repurpose what I scrape up as a base for the edging mentioned above.

* Look into polymeric sand for the side yard walkway, because as it stands I will be weeding it till hell freezes over

* Divide some of the more enthusiastic plants (e.g. golden oregano!)

Shopping List

* More tall bearded irises in many colours (plant sale, possibly; also maybe divisions from Mom)
* More rue (yay butterflies!)
* More oriental poppies
* Golden spikenard, because I think the bitty one from the catalogue got devoured by slugs...we'll see if it comes back
* Annuals: cleome, tall cosmos, purple verbena
* Another shrimpy evergreen or two

Sunflowers!

Pictures from early October, I believe, for the record.



Complete with sleepy bees:



Nice burst of height and colour in the landscape, too, albeit only for a week or two: