Ugh!

Ya, I know it’s been two months.  I gave up gardening after the woodchucks.  We were able to eliminate several of them.  Then caught a skunk in the havahart.  FYI, if you get a skunk they suggest you cover the cage with a tarp and then pull the release handle.  We managed to release ‘Petunia’ with no harm.

As for the garden.  Ugh.  August was dry and I spent all garden time moving water from section to section.  So what the woodchucks hadn’t feasted on would have a small chance of surviving.  September has been spent cutting back and cleaning up a bit.  I did get out on Saturday morning and managed to top dress the circle beds and part of the front garden.

I have completely neglected anything that is growing in the backyard this year.  Blech.

All of this is very encouraging isn’t it?  Actually it is because Fall is zooming into view and that means spring BULBS.  Yea!  So while I continue to figure out what needs to be moved where, I take a break by visiting the local garden centers and salivating over their bulbs.

Being cheap I wait until they go at least half off.  Last year I was planting bulbs in December as we hadn’t had a hard frost and the ground was still workable.  It is however, very hard on the ol’ knees to be down on the cold ground.

What I Saw On The Secret Garden Tour

There were some very clever containers on the Secret Garden Tour this year.  I’m borrowing lots of these ideas for my garden next year.

Corn in a pig planter.  Charming, whimsical, and clever all rolled into one.  There was quite the pig theme going on at this stop.

Same stop, not 15 feet away was this gem.  So different from the piggy-in-the-corn, and yet it all worked.  I don’t have the slightest idea what the plantings are here, the tall feathery one in the back looks like dill, or cosmos.  If you know please chime in here!

Elephant Ear, and something that looks like it could be alternathera, maybe purple knight?  Very bold, just demands to be looked at.  Love the limey color with the purple.

Look to the right, more corn!  And yes, more pigs.

Very nice one color container, that’s a caladium & a clematis.  Maybe the common woodland clematis?  I really have to ask more questions next year.  The problem is the actual gardeners aren’t always around, would you stay with a couple hundred people traipsing through your garden?  I’ve rarely had any luck asking the club members about the plantings.

Great color for the shade garden.  And it’s doable too.  Easy plants to find at your local garden center.  In a couple more weeks it will be fetching as the plants fill out and over flow the container.  Unusual container too, and nice the way they lifted it up off the ground, to give it some height.

Huge, but simple planting of impatients on a column of bee boxes! (what’s the proper name for those boxes anyway?)

Completely over the top.  Giant birdbath, or fountain?  I’m not certain but I love the boldness here.  Everyone took one look and went “wow”.

Milford Pa Secret Garden Tour - The Dirt!

 

Today was garden tour day, a time I look forward to all summer.  Throughout Milford pink balloons and flags sprout over night marking the houses selected for this years Secret Garden Tour.  This is followed by crowds in hats, carrying water bottles and sporting hot pink wrist bracelets and bright pink maps.  And the ladies of the garden club with their nifty flowery t-shirts. 

Minnesota Man went with me this year.  We had an enjoyable, albeit hot time, checking out all the gardens, visiting with friends, and he even bought me lunch, plus he took all the photos and he is way better with the camera than I am.

There were so many nice plantings and clever ideas, I’ll be busy all week blogging about it!

Once again, water features were prevalent.  Every house had at least one water element, some had three or four.  Here they are in no particular order.

This is the other end of the pond in the first photo.  I love it.  I like the way the water flows simply from the rocks, no giant path, no meandering brooks, it is just right there, very open and inviting.  This garden is only a year old, and I cannot wait to see it again.  It has great ‘bones’.  I love the use of space and paths.  Splendid now, in a couple of years when the plants ‘leap’, it will be a showcase.

 

I have been wanting to do this for years!  I’m guessing it’s cast from an Elephant Ear plant.  Also guessing the shallow dish with sand and round rock is not a Zen element, but for visiting butterflies.  This was in the butterfly garden at Remembrance Place.   

Inviting isn’t it?  Check out the detailing in the floral tiles around the edge of the pool.  Hard to believe, but the gardens here were so completely over the top, that I barely noticed the pool.  (more on those later, I’m still coming down from that visit!)  Oo, oo, and they floated a clear tray with a cool drink.   No detail was overlooked in this spectacular garden.  The plantings were top-notch, and I enjoyed all of the staging.  It was like walking into a magazine or a movie set.  Every gardeners fantasy.

Very traditional birdbath in a wildflower setting. 

Same garden, funky buddha, I like the bas-relief dragonflies on the edge and the way the buddha is aged.  This is my favorite buddha by the way, the happy buddha.  I think I may have the same one in my garden.

Again, same garden as happy buddha and wildflower birdbath.  This was a large yard and the gardener had lots of room to play.  The agricultural water tank had a varied selection of aquatic plants and there was a nice, gurgle/bubbling sound.  I’m really picky about the way water features sound, I can’t stand the sound of water hitting plastic, or running too fast or dripping in that way that reminds one of torture.  This was pleasant, and the close enough to the patio area to be relaxing. (yes, I resisted the urge to yank out that yellow dead leaf.)

I think the homeowner must enjoy the sound of this water feature.  It’s just off his screened in porch.  I asked fellow garden spy (stranger) who was coming out what his thoughts were about this garden.  His observation?  Cozy, homey and approachable.  The house looked that way too, the garden was a good extension of the house then.   This was number 8 I believe.  Nice touch with the mossy Japanese lantern.

There were two interesting and very different birdbaths at No. 5, I’ll show you this one, I’m saving the other for another post.  What I like here is the very simple common pachysandra combined with this rather ornate, there is an intricate pattern in the bottom that is hidden by the water’s reflection. and unusual birdbath.  I’m pretty sure that’s cast concrete, it matched perfectly with the stone in the house and stone throughout the garden.

Coming soon, wine & swine!  Also a look at the multitude of paths, and areas of rest.

 

 

Astrantia

 Or Masterwort.  My kids have fun with that name.  Master of the house…master of the wort.  Then they collapse as children do in fits of uncontrollable laughter.  Rolling on the ground, holding their aching sides.

It is currently my favorite shade plant.  Interesting leaves, odd little tufts on flowers on spikey stems, and it self sows.  I have a white, and I hope to get some pink ones soon.

Mine is under a lilac, so it must do fine in sweet soil.  It also grew in my back bed which was deep shade and dry.  It didn’t thrive mind you, it did survive however.

The giantic mail box came from Minnesota Man’s family farm.  Back in the day, when people mailed letters to one another.  I use it to hold my gardening tools.  It is huge, I have a 2 gallon bucket in there with the hand tools, clippers, string, and gloves, and there is still room for the various bottles of elixirs, um er pesticides and insecticides and a mixture of bleach.  My arsenol, so to speak.

Fall 08

Note to self; this is where it’s suppose to go.

The plants are barely peeking through the soil and I’m already deciding where to move them.

That’s not entirely true.  A couple have overgrown their homes.  The big yellow one is moving to a new shrub border by the drive.  It was a tiny thing when I got it three years ago and filled the space beautifully.  But now it’s too big.    The minature spruce is moving just a bit south of where it is now, and the light green heurchura, ummmm haven’t decided yet.

Still trying to find the perfect shrub for next to the porch.  I’d like something kind of rounded, but naturally so, and evergreen.  It would be nice to have a little color year round.

What to do, What to do

HEMEROCALLIS Hyperion

Hyperion daylily.  I’ve had them around 11 years now, but they’ve only been deer free for 5.  If I could only grow one daylily, this would be it.  Huge flowers, blossoms for several weeks and is a bit fragrant too.  Yep if I could only grow one, this would be it.   There is a reason it’s been called a border favorite for decades.

Or maybe I’d only grow this one.  (you can see where this is going, can’t you?)

Also big & bold, a regular drama queen.  I like to put her next to this one, Pandora’s Box.  They have the same bloom time.

Eupatorium rugosum 'Chocolate'

Behind this dark beauty is a chocolate Joe Pye Weed.  Which I think isn’t really a Joe Pye at all, but the garden centers call it a chocolate Joe Pye.  Next year I want to get all three of them closer together.  This year they are next to some ordinary Cosmos, I really like the effect of the lacy Cosmos foliage next to them.  I’m hoping it will all work, as the Cosmos won’t bloom until the daylilies are through.  And maybe I’ll cut them for bouquets?

Here is the Cosmos foliage.  Cause I like it!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Garden

 

Good. Divided the Ajuga Burgandy and it is doing nicely.

Good. Children have caught a bazillion Japanese beetles for me, I pay them a nickel for each one.  Must bring in the hide to receive the bounty.

Bad. I have had to pay the children 12 dollars this week alone.

Good.  The men-folk killed the woodchucks.

Bad.  Before they died the ‘chucks told their friends about the good eats in my garden.  Two more appeared and munched on the lettuce, green beans, the pumpkins, cucumbers, coneflowers, and on and on.

Good.  They only eat the leaves of the bean plants, they left the actual bean pods.

Ugly. The garden after the woodies have dined.  Lots of sad pathetic little green twigs missing all of their leaves.

(photo to follow.)

Ugly.  The roses have canker.  Blech.

Bad.  The fountain is leaking.

Good.  It’s a slow leak and it’s watering the upper bed nicely, during this dry period.

Ugly.  One of the Adirondack chairs is rotting and falling apart.

Ugly. This whiskey barrel planter.  It had a nice bunch of purple and pink tulips this spring, but now.  Yuck-o.

Good.  Happy Returns daylily is still blooming away in the very neglected, very shady backyard.

The Wall That She Built

 

The building of the last wall is what led to the name of the blog, Incremental Progress.  Walls take time, especially when you are a-woman-of-a-certain age, and that age is not 21 or even 30 something, it’s barely hanging on to 40 something and your only heavy moving equipment is your own two legs.

Here in NEPA I’m stuck in the middle of the woods, with very little sun peeking through the trees.  It’s lovely, but annoying when you’d like to plant acres of sunflowers and beebalm.  I realized the sunniest part of my garden was on a steep slope in the front yard, and then it’s only half day sun,  And like all the ground here, rocky.  And the only way I could utilize it was if I  terraced it or put some kind of raised bed there.  Personally I voted for a raised bed, that my husband could build, or terraces that someone else could build, naturally none of these items made it into the budget.  Hard to believe isn’t it.  Shazam.

Here is the problem area, Spring 2007.

Ugly isn’t it?  I’ve disliked it for years, for years, it has gnawed at the back of my brain saying, “fix me, fix me, fix me.”  Sometimes it said, “I’ve got all the sun, ha, ha, ha, and I’m growing weeds here, ha, ha, ha, and if you come down here you’ll trip and fall and won’t that be pretty.”  In the winter it said, “great place to sled, if you’re not worried about the kids bonking their noggins on trees!”

One day I had another one of those Shazam moments.  (Hey, it only took 10 years.)  I could take the rocks from the semi-circle wall down by the playset and use them to build my new rock wall.  Yippee, no trips into the woods hauling rocks and all the nasty things under them back to the wall.  I just had to take down this wall, the first one I’d ever built, full of nice big rocks, and move them 150 feet or so uphill and use them to build the new wall.  Voila!  New wall.  Oh.  I skipped the part about aching joints, sweaty body, and nasty things under rocks. 

Playset with wall that would be moved in front of it.  Hey, that half circle seemed like a good idea at the time.

 And so I began.  See that pathetic excuse for a birdbath in the very front?  That is the pipe to the dry well, it’s what the septic guy looks in when he comes to check your tank.  There is also a big huge concrete thingymajig behind it, that is where he actually puts the hose down, and does whatever those guys do.  The point is I have another problem area.  What to do about the septic is an on going issue here.  Obviously, painting it with granite paint and disguising it to look like a very short birdbath did not work.  Pulling it out is not an option either.  Former neighbor, whom I like to call the ditzy-one, did pulled hers out because she didn’t like the look of it.  That is another story.  Back to work.  There’s a wall to be built here.

Sad first stones when I am trying to get an idea of what it will look like. Visualize!  Visualize! Visualize!

.

Off to a nice start with all the important sophisticated rock moving and building tools, a child’s old pink sled, blue bucket for fill and a girl’s best rockwall building friend, the three pound sledge!  Knock those babies into place.

.

.

You never see most of the rocks in a wall.  The majority of the rocks are inside or hidden in the back.

,

I’m not sure what I was watering there, maybe myself.

 

The problem here is where to end.  Which is why we dubbed this part of the wall, phase I.

.

This is not the end, nor the real corner.  I was just stacking the nice corner pieces to get an idea of how high I was going to have to go on this baby.  Yes, I know real men use a plumb line and a plumb bob, this wall is being built by a woman.  I place the stone, I look, I walk away and look some more to see if it is kinda sort straight.  And then I hit it with the three pound sledge, just because I can.

Early April 08 and the dirt has arrived.

Ta-Da!  Same spot one year later May 2008, with a load of topsoil, and mulch.  The plantings are not firm, they are all the bargins I bought at the end of season sales, and had to dig in somewhere fast.  I’m still thinking through the plantings here as I battle off the woodchucks.

And I swear that is not the same bale of peat moss that was in the first photos.  Really, truly, honestly, it’s a different one.

Breadseed Poppies

My friend and gardening guru Judy gave me these seeds.  She’s been supplying me for a couple of years now.  This year they are all an amazing dark purple/red color.  I think she’s been selecting her favorite burgundy ones so she has all the same.  I had ‘bing’ moment this week and realized that next year I should plant them so they grow up among the ajuga burgundy glow.  Here are the poppies and my attempt at O’Keefe-ing them.

Growing up from the phlox sublata, ummm okay, but not a knock your socks off moment.  Next year I want them to be peeking out of this stuff.

The O’Keefe moment.

 

 

 

 

What’s Blooming?

The Oakleaf hydrangea is nice this year.  I think it’s now three years old.  Has some hefty blooms, despite our icy winter and the attack of the woodchucks.  Now if we can continue to fend off the japanese beetles it should have a pretty good chance.  It’s all about survival out here in the garden!