The Fenceside Perennial Bed, Part 2

So, more and later pics when it was in its prime...

First, I have to say that I am bad at remembering names.  If I see a flower name, I can usually see the image in my mind.  But seeing an image doesn't get me the name all that well.  I envy those who can do both.

Stoke's Aster.  It may be my favorite perennial.  It lasts darn near forever (I think these are 20+ years old), blooms dependently, and never seems to have a weed problem.

Not sure.  Lobelia?  Salvia?

I love Purple Coneflowers!

Rose Of Sharon?  They didn't last long.

Moonbeam Coreopsis, I think...  They didn't like the garden competion much, so I moved the survivors to a large deck pot where they have resided happily ever since.

'Autumn Joy' Sedum in final color... 

A domesticated hybrid Goldenrod.  It died after several years, but I sure liked it.

Some Aster?

LC's burial spot, surrounded by lovely flowers...

And Skeeter's...

I finally gave up on edging flowers and planted species daffodils.  They still come up, but there are fewer each year.  Grass gets in and gives them some problems.  I planted crocuses among them.  The voles got at those pretty fast.  I'll have to redo that.

So that was the perennial bed in the early years.  Nothing lasts forever, though.  Spring will be the time to fix problems.

 

The Fenceside Perennial Bed, Part 1

I went through my photos and picked out early and prime-growth pictures of the fenceside perennial bed.   I'm glad I separate my processed pictures into years/month/subject.  I have one folder for just "Yard/Garden", LOL!  But there are too many to post all at once, so there are 2 posts.

About 30 years ago, I decided to establish a flowerbed along the fence, about 50' long and 6-8' deep.  I had a rototiller, but it wasn't a good one.  It would go in reverse (even though there was a lever for that) and would only go 6" deep at best.  I hired a guy with a BIG DRIVABLE ONE and he got down 12".  I dug in amendments (compost, peat moss) myself afterwards.

I planted annual flowers and a few shrubs for a few years, but that got massively tiring after a while.  So I decided to switch to perennials.  I knew little about them, but studied garden catalogs and made some choices.  Some worked well, some not so well ("perennial" can be a bit vague sometimes - from 2 years to nearly forever).  A few years later, I studied more concerning "expected lifetime" and chose those 10+ years.  I also added a small 5' plastic pond.

Some are 20+ years and still growing well.  So here are the early pictures of the bed.  There may be some repeats of one flower or another, but I will try to delete those.

The 1st year bare-bones.

Flags to locate very small transplants...

Mature potted perennials (Stokes Aster, a wonderful long-lived plant, still flowering).

Coreopsis?

Columbine.  Spring-bloomer.  They didn't do well in the bed, but they keep showing up in the shady parts of the backyard.

An assortment.  The purple ones in the back are Purple Loosestrife.  I ordered Coreopsis 'Golden Gain' and the nursery messed up.  Loosestrife is invasive.  The nursery replaced my order, but it took 5 years to finally kill off the Loosestrife.

I forget the name of both these, but they didn't last many years.  Pretty, though.

Stella D' Oro daylilies.  Bloom several times each year.

Lupine.  Also short-lived...

'Autum Joy' Sedum.  Deep red Fall color.  Dependable.  Clippings root in water for propagation.

A next-year look at the bed.  

And another...

This one isn't exactly along the fence, but is across from the garden path.  Stella D' Oro on both sides, Purple Coneflowers along the bottom, and I think I put annuals in the center.  

You can see one garden path.    It actually goes behind and on the other side.  I dug out the paths and back-filled with 3" of gravel.  I thought that would defeat the weeds, but it didn't.  But they sure are easy to pull out in gravel!

Tomorrow, Part 2...

Busy As Bees We Is, Part 4

The last post in this series is the Hummingbird/Bee/Butterfly Garden.

I have this 10' diameter edged area I intended for one plant but it spreads through seeds elsewhere.  Lysymachia Firecracker is an EVIL plant!  I am seeking to kill it before it spreads further.  Herbicide is not out of the question though I try to stay organic.  It doesn't die being scraped off at ground level; apparently, I'll have to dig each and every one out deeply.

But that left the place it was intended for.  So I bought some individual hummingbird, butterfly and bee seed mixes.  The flowers can grow in the medium soil I have, but want a good soil for germinating.  And they do best without much weed competition.

I have a big rototiller.  But it doesn't work very well in small areas or with a lot of grass roots.  So last year, I bought a little electric tiller.  It won't get more than a few inches deep. but it is light and I can hold it in place over stubborn weeds to grind down below the roots.

I'm a few days behind the actual events, but a few days ago, I dragged it out and used it in the bed.  I went north/south once and east/west once.  Then I dragged it backwards along the inside edge of the plastic edging.  I raked out most of the rocks and dumped two 5 gallon buckets of rocks along the fenceline (well, they have to go "somewhere").

Then I spread 1/2" of 50/50 compost/topsoil mix on the raked surface.  After that, I spread the hummingbird, butterfly and bee seed mixes on the surface and added another 1/8" loose soil on top.  Moistened the whole area with a mister nozzle (to not move the seeds).

Can't wait to see what grows!

Flower Friday

It has been a strange year for my Spring bulbs.  First, the warm weather encouraged the earliest daffodilsin the front near the house to emerge sooner than they should have.  Then a bizarre hailstorm knocked those earliest ones down and 3 nights in the low 20s finished the job.  The flowers bloomed, but only laying on the ground.  They don't show up very well that way.

But some of those sent up a 2nd wave of flowers, so there was something to look at, though thin.  Still, I have some mid daffodils in front, and the flowers are jusr emerging.    Even that is a bit confused this year.  The new bed in the backyard has 2 kinds also. One is early and one is late, but they are both blooming together now. 

Half of each of those were planted in Fall 2015 and I doubled each type last Fall.  New plantings tend to come up late the 1st year, so I have 4 groups this year.  So the established early ones bloomed and got knocked down.  The new early ones and the established later ones are blooming now, and the new later ones are just emerging.  Things should make more sense next Spring!

Meanwhile, in the good news department, the 6 patches of hyacinths I planted in Fall 2015 never even emerged last Spring, but I let them be hoping some would show up this year.  And they HAVE!  Not as many as I planted but some is better than none.

The Fall 2015 tulips bloomed well  last Spring, but the leaves look rather ratty for some reason.  I assumed they were dying young, but I noticed that they all have bud emerging and that is a good sign.  I can't recall if the leaves were up when the hail hit, but that would explain the leaf damage. 

The soil is not great in the bulb bed, so I plan to fertilize well this weekend and cover the entire bed in 3" of compost when the leaves die back naturally.  I think I will cover it then in landscaping cloth to kill the weeds.  A year of the compost nutrients leaching into the soil should help a lot.  Here is the entire bed.  You can see the daffodils easily; the tulips and hyacinths are in clumps (18 of tulips and 6 of hyacinths).

 I would like more tulips and hyacinths, but you have to bury them in wire cages to protect them from the voles around here and that is a LOT of work digging large deep square holes.  I may just add a lot more daffodils between the cages.  I have an auger that fits in my electric drill and that makes it really easy to plant daffodils.  Drill a dozen holes, put daff bulbs in them, shove soil back over.  Voles don't bother daffodils!

The bottom edge of the bed has a double row of various daylilies.  As they mature, I'll divide and interplant among them.  A 30x3' thick band should look nice.

Every year things will get a bit better!

Solstice And Gardening

One of my favorite days of the year!  It is the most natural holiday I know.  The days start getting longer.  It means the next season is Spring.  Spring means light, warmth, and gardening.  And I am planning a lot for next year.

25 years ago, I was deeply into perennial flowers.  I bought from an online place that sold 3-packs for $5 and planted a dozen here and a dozen there, etc.  Some perennials aren't very long-lived; they kept dying out slowly and there would always be holes in the flowerbed.  And even at 3 for $5, they aren't cheap.  My flowerbed is 75'x8', so 300 perennials would cost $500 and half died out after 3 years.  And perennials only flower for a few weeks.

So I switched to annuals after I retired.  Annuals flower all season, they are available as seeds, and they are easy to grow.  Planting each year is a bit annoying, but I have time and 40 sq ft of lighted shelves (a 5 shelf 4'x2' rack with 4 4' fixtures in the basement).  Plus a 4 shelf 3'x2' stand at the southern-facing deck glass doors upstairs for germinating seeds that want warmth.

Anyway...  I can grow a lot on annuals from seeds.

But I still want some more permanent plantings.  I discovered "cottage garden" planting this past month.  It's a combination of long-lived perennials and self-sowing annuals.  And you plant stuff at random.  No big patches of one flower here and another there.  The idea seems to be that what thrives thrives and empty spaces self-fill.

We'll see!  I am going to give it a try.  Large portions of my flowerbed were flowerless last year, so most of it needed to be re-done anyway.

I have a large serious roto-tiller for work in large areas.  But this will take some detailed tilling.  So I bought a 10" wide electric tiller in September.  My first attempts using it were dismal!

The grassy weeds wrapped around the tiller blades.  10 minutes tilling meant 10 more minutes cutting and pulling grass off the blades.  I learned to use my string trimmer to cut the grass tops off and rake them away.  Then use the tiller to chop up the soil.  There were still roots that wrapped around the tiller blades, but easier to remove.  Better than manual shovel work, anyway!

I have a catalog from a company that offers a wide variety of cottage garden plants and seeds.  It is from 2011 (I keep interesting catalogs), and I have arranged to get a 2017 catalog in early January.  I have some long-lived perennials that will suit a cottage garden (coneflowers, goldenrods, daylilies), and I will be ordering seeds of self-sowing annuals when the catalog arrives.  I may order a few plants for which growing from seed is very complicated.

And I have 2 planting areas in the middle of the yard that I didn't do anything with this year.  Nice edged areas I can mow around to control invasive flowers.  I want one to be for Lysimachia ‘Firecracker".  It's invasive.  I tried to kill it for 2 years and it keeps coming back.  So next Spring, I'm going to transplant it to a 10' edged circle and mow around it.  That should stop the "invasiveness".  It's annoying but lovely.  Purple foliage and bright yellow flowers most of the Summer.

The 2nd edged area will be a wildflower patch.  I scattered seeds from a packet I bought last Fall.  The instructions said to raked the soil roughly, scatter the seeds and smooth soil over them lightly.  I got a few flowers, but not many.  Most are perennials that need 2 or 3 years to flower, so I will give them time.  

But another old catalog I have offers high-quality seeds suited for scattering on bare ground in Winter.  That's actually the way they normally grow, so I'm going to give that a try.  And they offer a flowering enhancement packet for $10 to give some flowers the first year.  I'm going for 2 of those.

The 3rd edged area is mostly planted already with caged tulips, caged hyacinths, and lots of daffodils.  I added 2 dozen daylilies, some common and some fancy.  

This year, I thought I would remember exactly where the tulips and hyacinths were.  HA HA HA!  Next Spring, I will mark the spots with landscaping flags so that I can plant flowers in between the spots.  I want no spot to be un-planted if I can manage it.  The bulbs like to stay dryish most of the year, so I need to plant Summer flowers that don't mind dry conditions.  So I may plant 200 marigolds of various varieties among them.  They like hot dry conditions too.  The point being that I will never deliberately water that 3rd edged bed.

They will do fine with normal rainfall, I just won't add to it.

A cottage garden bed, a wildflower bed, a purple Lysimachia bed, and a Spring bulb/Summer annual bed...  Should be a good view from the deck!

Yardwork Again

I wasn't sure I was gong to be doing much yardwork the rest of the year.  I usually try to do at least one useful thing each day.  Sometimes I don't, but that is the goal anyway. 

So when I twisted my right knee in early April, and it was difficult to walk the first couple of weeks, I grudgingly waited for it to heal.  I do these sorts of injuries every so often but generally heal quickly enough.  I'm used to it.  You live on your own, you push yourself to do more than you should sometimes, and there is the occasional time your body says hey ease off on me a bit. 

It has happened before.  10 years ago, I casually tossed a rock at a squirrel and strained my rotator cuff and I could barely raise my arm over my shoulder for 4 months!  But it healed fine and I kind of expect that.

But this time, April rolled into May, and May into June and eventually September and it was better but not normal.  Some projects got delayed.  I had planned to repaint the bathrooms and kitchen, but crawling all around washing the walls, putting tape along all the edges and then doing the actual painting seemed too awkward.  But it could wait.

I had also planned to use my gas-powered weed-whacker with the steel cutters to eliminate the backyard brush and brambles that sprung up after I had a few trees removed  several years ago.  That didn't happen.

A few weeks ago, my right knee suddenly felt much better.  Not perfect, but good enough, and I started some minor yard projects and felt ready to do more.  I got some work done.   Mostly de-clutterring the basement the computer room, and the cat room.

And then I went and did something to the left knee.  No idea what I did.  It felt like I had banged it against a door frame, but for 2 weeks, I had 2 bad knees.  I was worried I was sufferring some serious problem (like Lyme Disease affects your joints, or longer term problems like arthritis). 

But I woke up 2 days ago and the left knee was back to normal and the right knee wasn't bad.  I could walk around pretty much normal.

So I had found a sealed bag of grass seed in the basement left over from last year .  I mowed the front yard grass very short.  Today I raked all the loose grass and dumped it where I plan to put a flowerbed island around a large rock and tree in order to smother the grass and weeds and leave some improved soil.  Then I spread the grass weeds all around.  And then I spent 90 minutes carefully spraying straight down onto the grass to beat the grass seeds onto the soil surface and give them enough water to germinate.

It is a bit late to do that.  But I had the seeds and they won't last another year.  And we are having a warm spell, so the seeds should germinate if they are still viable.  There are 2 bare spots, so I will know if they germinate.  At least that is SOMETHING done.

And both knees felt just fine after all that.  So that's good.

The next things to do are planting Daffodils in mid November, tilling some dead areas of the flowerbeds, and eliminating weeds in the paths between the framed veggie beds.  

Are you familiar with those long strips of brown paper used as packing material?  I've been saving the longest strips for several years.  The stuff comes all twisted and crinkled, but I untwist it and lay in on the basement floor and use a push broom to flatten it out.  That works very well.  Then I fold it up in 4' lengths and put a piece of plywood on it to flatten it further and keep it out of the way.  I have several hundred linear feet of it now.

It seems like great stuff to put between the framed beds, on top of weedy dead sections of the flowerbeds, and on top of all the Spring bulbs to smother weeds (with shredded bark on top).  It will probably decompose by Spring, and in not, it will certainly be easy to pull up at planting time.

It may not kill all the weeds, but it sure won't do them any good.  I am reminded of a W C Fields vaudeville joke where he says he swallowed a few moths and said he swallowed a couple of mothballs to get rid of them.  The sidekick asks if it did any good.  Fields says "well it sure couldn't have helped them any".  (Do not do this at home, mothballs are toxic).

My point is that the brown paper cover is worth trying.  If it works, GREAT!  If not, it is easy to remove and will make good compostable material after 5 months exposure to rain and melting snow all Winter and early Spring. 

Gardeners might object that  covers the soil gives voles safe space to run around under.  I did cover part of my flowerbeds with black plastic 10 years ago, and they did love it.  They ate every tulip bulb, safe from predators.  But this time, there won't be anything for them to eat.  Well, the weeds, and if they want to eat the roots of those, they are not welcome, I encourage them.  Otherwise, they don't touch Daffodils or Daylilies (toxic to mammals), the Tulips and Hyacinths are in wire cages they can't get into, and the seeds from the birdfeeder will be on top of the paper where they waill actually have trouble getting to the spilled seeds. EVIL LOL!

So I am getting into the yardwork late, but not impossibly late.  The last project, which is to plant specimen trees that won't grow tall enough to shade my garden and flowerbeds is still in reach.  By "specimen trees", I mean Korean Dogwoods, Sourwoods, Wisteria shrubs, and Star Magnolias.  Those will shade out the brush and brambles like the taller trees used to do, but not cause shade problems across the yard.

I will surround the new trees with used carpeting.  That has really worked well for me over the years.  Rain soaks right through, but weeds won't grow up through it.  And it it is usually free.  Just look for some place being renovated and ask for the old carpet.  They will usually just give it away. 

OK, I'm off to buy some specimen tree saplings...

Back, I ordered 3 Sourwood trees and 2 Korean Dogwoods.  Sourwood trees are great in Fall.  They have small grapelike clusters of yellow berries and burgundy leaves and grow to about 25'.  The Korean Dogwoods are great in Springs, don't have the same disease problems as American Dogwoods, and spread sideways.  I have one on the shady side of the house that has been happily existing for 25 years at 20 feet, and I will take some tip cuttings next June.  It has pink flowers. The dogwoods I ordered have white flowers, so that will make a nice change.



I also filled in all the screw and nail holes in the main bathroom a week ago

Catching Up With Weeds

I guess I haven't posted in a while.  I guess I haven't done much to mention.  Who gets excited reading that you watered the garden and routine stuff like that?  But such things do need to get done and in August, sometimes just keeping up with watering the garden and flowers is plenty.  Never mind all the inside work which I had gotten behind on as well.

So we had a couple relatively cooler days (meaning 90 instead of 100F) and I took a look around for other things needing attention outside.  Weeds are insidious!  They look about the same one day to another but after a few weeks have gone from a few innocent inches high to 2' high (some straight up, some spreading out sideways).

You may (or not, LOL!) remember that I set up 3 roundish prepared edged planting beds last Fall.

The far one was for wildflowers and I scattered 2 pounds of wildflower seeds there.  A little thin for the space, but I figured I would add transplants into the area later.  I have native flowers growing in a few areas and would add them to places without flowers.  The results have been rather "less than mediocre".  May have been 2 dozen blooms in the whole area.  But most were perennials and they don't bloom the first year much, so I will add more seeds and some transplants this Fall and hope for better next year.

The middle area was going to be for Lysimachia, which has lovely purple foliage and small yellow flowers, but it is invasive.  So I thought putting it were I could mow around would control that.  Alas, I discovered that it is also called Loosestrife and if you look at the common name "loose" and "strife", you can tell it is a problem plant.  I  found it growing in several places on its own and I am trying to pull them all up!  Now I am thinking several dwarf butterfly bushes intermixed with Knockout roses which are generally pest-free and self-dead-heading.  They have no fragrance, but you can't have everything.  I will add a few oriental lilies for some fragrance.

The near area is for color.  I planted 100 or so tulips  and another 100 hyacinths in mesh cages (protection from the voles) and a couple of hundred daffodils straight in the ground as they need no protection).  I'll be adding another couple hundred daffodils in early November.

The hyacinths never came up last Spring, and I figured I planted too late.  But as I was digging around, I found one of the cages and opened the top and pulled out a few bulbs.  To my surprize, they were all solid and had some roots!  They didn't get enough chill time to bloom last year but they seem firm and healthy, and I expect them to come up gloriously in Spring!  And if not, I will dig the cages up and try again.  And if they don't grow next Spring, I will dig the cages up and plant more tulips!

This Spring, I took divisions of standard daylilies (as odd as it might seem, I had a couple dozen 6" pots of daylilies just sitting around existing on rainfall for 2 years) and planted them between the tulip
and hyacinth cages.

 There's a reason for that; the tulip/hyacinth bulbs like to be dry in Summer, and lilies have tuberous roots that store water so they don't need watering in Summer (much).  They make a good combination. I think I will add some Sedum 'Dark Magic' as they are about a foot high and drought tolerant as well as blooming in Fall.  A drought tolerant threesome in Spring Summer And Fall would be awesome. 

But the near spot looked terrible when I paid attention to it last week.  Grasses were growing up all over and spreading weeds below them. 

So I took care of the tall ones first.  Well, there are only 2 good times to weed.  The first is when the soil is soaked.  The weed roots can't hold on to the loose wet soil.   The other time is when the soil is bone dry (unless it is clay).  In good soil the roots come up like they were growing in powder.

So I pulled up all the tall ones in bone dry soil.  I left that one small pile to show them pulled up.  Actually, I filled a trashcan with them.  Not that I would trash them; the nutrients are free and they are great compost after being heated up by sunlight in the closed trashcan for a couple days to kill any seeds.  They look like cooked spinach afterwards.  And then straight into the compost pile they go...

I have some annuals around the outer front edge just for some color this first year.  Being downslope, I can water them enough to keep them happy without soaking the tulip bulbs that don't want to see water until Spring.

And I'm putting up with the orange landscaping flags this year.  Some mark the small newly-planted daylillies (so that I don't pull them up thinking they are grass weeds - because they sure look a lot alike when you are tired) and some mark the tulip and hyacinth cages (so I don't plant anything on top of them). 

Next, now that the tall weeds are gone, I can get at the low-growing weeds. 

Yardwork

Well, I may have had some problems after the yardwork yesterday, but I did get some good work done that I will enjoy seeing later.

I have 3 edged areas in the middle of the backyard.  One is for wildflowers (nearest my garden, so I am hoping to attract a lot of native pollinators).  The 2nd was originally intended for a lovely but invasive plant with the idea that I could mow around it, but it spread seeds around so I am killing it (it will take some time).  The 3rd is my favorite so far.

That is the area where I planted tulips and hyacinths in cages to protect them from voles and squirrels.  The tulips all came up nicely, but no hyacinths.  Well, they were planted late.  I worried that the hyacinths all rotted (or oddly, grew stems larger than the wire cage mesh and were cut off).  The 200 hundred daffodils were planted freely as they are ignored by pests. 

So this Summer, I gave thought to other plants to grow there.  A single-season flowerbed is sort of wasteful of space.  Spring flowering bulbs want to stay a bit dry Summer and Fall (or they rot) so you can't surround them with plants that need regular watering. 

So I thought about lilies.  They are tough, they have tuberous roots that collect and hold what little water they need, and I had lots of them rescued from an area that was dug out 2 years ago.  Really, they survived plopped in small 6" pots and ignored except for natural rainfall.  So they were good to add among the tulips for Summer color. 

Well, it is probably too late for blooming this year, but I managed to plant 30 of them around the outer edges of the circle the past week.  And then, knowing they wouldn't bloom this year, I considered what I had that could survive no special watering this year and might provide some color.

I should mention that my regular flowerbeds need serious work.  I didn't give them the attention they needed last year and couldn't do it this Spring (my bad knee).  And I had planted 3 dozen marigolds, 2 dozen zinnias, and 2 dozen salvia indoors under lights in March, expecting to use them in the regular older flowerbeds.

Well, marigolds are pretty adjusted to dry soil, so I started planting them around the lilies today.  And then added most of the salvias and zinnias when I ran out of marigolds.  If they live on natural rainfall and bloom "HURRAY"!  If not, there wasn't anywhere else to put them.

So I planted most of them among the lilies and will hope for "something" from them.  And even then, they were the lesser of all the seedlings.  I used the best in 7 deck planters last week.  So no loss and some possible gain.  I bet in a month, I will have some good flowers to show.  I don't grow wimpy flowers.

That 3rd 20' diameter edged circle is the one closest to the deck, so I will see it better than the other 2 most of the time.  And the main birdfeeder is in the center of it, so that draws my attention there as well.  And to not disturb the plants, I have a small path to the feeder from the side and stones to set my ladder on for refilling it. 

This Fall, I will take some leftover largish flat rocks I bought for edging the old flowerbeds and make a path to the birdfeeder.  I intend for the area to be filled enough with future plantings to need places to step.

And cramps or not, I have more annuals to plant, so I will be out there again tomorrow...

Other Complaints

Sort of continued from yesterday...

Aside from the heat pump problems, I've had damaged/loose tiles around the bathtub for almost a year.  At first, I couldn't get any highly-rated company on Angie's List to come out.  The job was too small.  Then it gradually got too big.  Them I couldn't get a bathroom remodeler to come out because the job was too small. 

I have a plastic trash bag duct-taped over the loose tiles.  Well, it FINALLY got big enough of a problem for one remodeler to come look Wed.  Quite frankly, I hadn't looked under the plastic covering lately, and it was worse than I thought. 

I expected bad news and I got it!  Now let me mention that this "starter house"  (where I have lived for 30 years) was not the best-built of houses.  The builder took shortcuts all over the place.  Apparently, one of those shortcuts was around the bathtub.  The seal around the tub faucet was leaky, the tile was poorly applied, the grout cracked, and the wall behind the tiles was truly waterproof. 

The remodeler popped one seemingly sound tile right off and pushed an awl right through the wall behind it.  Everything seem rotted...  So he came by yesterday with a basic proposal, subject to change after they remove the tiles and see behind the wall. 

They propose to remove all the tiles, replace the backer board wall, repair some damaged drywall, replace the tub faucet and showerhead (upper tile loosening suggests it is leaking inside the wall), and re-tile higher than it currently is  (which is below the showerhead).  And replace the bathtub itself.

I asked about why to replace the bathtub, and he said that, at 30 years old my cheap one won't last much longer and it would require pulling off the new tiles and some drywall to replace it then at twice the price.

I did some internet research and I know the routine for bathroom remodelers.  They get the initial job, then find all sorts of further problems (replace studs, scrape and spray mold, replace the floor, discover insect damage, etc).   I'm resigned to that.  There are some repairs you just HAVE to have done even when you know you are being taken advantage of.

At least I have some advantages myself.  I know wood, so they won't be able to lie about the condition of the studs.  I know the floor is solid; I can see it from the basement and there is no waterstain.  But also, I chose this company because their Angie's List rating is A+ for price and quality of work.  So they not only have a good rating, they care about their rating.  And if *I'm* not happy, they won't be happy!

At $5700 for the contracted work, they BETTER make me happy.  But it will be 3 weeks before they get to me on their schedule.  And they estimate 10 days of work (not every day, some parts have to sit a couple days to set). 

And then there is my right knee.  It has been a month since I first twisted it.  At first, it was pinful just getting it and out of bed.  And getting up and down stairs was an adventure in caution.  At least now I can walk almost normally.  Stairs are still annoying, but not actually painful.  Putting on my right sock and shoe are still awkward (but just an "err" and not a "GRRRR".  But it all means that I have not been able to do any gardening work in this extended mild temperature we have had all April and early May.  It will heal...

But then there is the weather.   After 3 weeks of drought late March and early April, we have had 10 days of daily off-and-on drizzle.  5" of drizzle and not any heavy rain but 1 hour.  So, good knee or bad, I wasn't going to get to do much work in the flower or vegetable gardens.  The vegetable garden is newly redone, so it doesn't need much work and the early crops were in and the warm weather crops will wait. 

But the flowerbeds are all gone to heck.  Weed grasses and regular weeds are nearly taking over.  This was going to be a Spring of renovation.  Too many of my perennial flowers have slowly died back (perennials don't live forever) and I was planning to dig up everything worth saving and rototill large areas to start over with some perennials that DO seem to live forever and add lots of annuals this year while I decide what to do in the future. 

I went big into perennials 15 years ago, but they are disappointing.  Most only flower a week or two.  Some flower longer, but are shorter-lived (3-5 years).  Some are very special in their short blooms (oriental lilies, tulips, daffodils, etc), and some have great foliage (Hostas, Brunella).  But I like the ones that flower all season or at least all Fall (Coneflowers, Goldenrod, Astilbe, Clatis, Asters).

I'm going back to annuals ( Zinnias, Salvia, Marigolds, Coleus, Impatiens).  More work each Spring to plant under lights inside and transplant, but I have time for that.  And growing seeds from scratch gives my better varieties than the local Walmart sells.

But if my knee doesn't heal soon, I won't be able to get down and scrape the weeds off the soil (and dig out the deep-rooted ones) and plant all those seedlings. 

Mom used to tell me that "getting old isn't for sissies".  I understood that theoretically a decade ago; now I know personally.  I'll turn 66 in 2 weeks.  LOL!

I've stayed young long.  You know how, in high school, there were those who matured fast?  Well, they aged fast too.  I always took some comfort in that.  Well, age is starting to catch up with me...  Small matters to be sure.  But I bet I need a knee transplant in 10 years.  My knees have always been a bit loose.

Most people fidget in some way.  They doodle, they hum, they tap their fingers.  I shake my ankles.  Sound weird?  Put your right ankle up on your left knee.  Now shake your ankle up and down constantly.  That's what I do at the computer.  I'll bet I loosened that knee badly over the decades...

"tempis fugit, momento mori".

 

Error, Error!

Oh wow, I almost made a BIG mistake in cutting out pieces for the crocus bulb cages I am making.  Drawing diagrams on paper, I had it pretty well set so as to fit the cutouts as efficiently as possibly.  The 1/2" wire mesh isn't cheap.

But, as part of my plans, I built a wood form to use to bend the wire over.  The form needed to be 8"x6"x4".  I had fun cutting some scrap boards, running the pieces through the bench planer for utter flattness , gluing them together, and then sanding them smooth this afternoon.  Perfect 8"x6"x4" blocks.

But, um, something didn't look right...

You remember those school tests where they showed you a folded shape and you had to decide what it looked like when unfolded?  I was great at those.  Except this time!

I got one side off by 2"!  I had the small ends of the cages diagrammed at 4"x4" and they needed to by 4"x6".  If I hadn't actually built the wood form for bending the wire mesh around, I would have cut all the pieces the wrong size.

Look at the end of this; it obviously isn't 4"x4"...

I was lucky that there was a series of events that led me to see my error.  I had to take the roll of 3'x50'x1/2" wire mesh and unroll part of it.  The roll is held tight by some wire that has to be cut away.  And it was rolled under tension, so when I cut the last wire, it sort of exploded.  Which I was expecting, but not quite the way it did it.

I'm not stupid, I wore goggles as I cut the last wire.  You never know quite how these rolls will suddenly unwind.   It's a guy thing.  You KNOW its gonna get you somewhere but not just WHERE.  Fortunately, I heal very fast.  Ever get shots or give blood?  They slap a bandage right on you.  I don't need them.

So I had to flatten it to be able to cut the sections off in the size I needed later.

So while the wire mesh was being forced to flatten (a common problem with stiffly rolled material), I went to change the laundry from the washer to the dryer and start a new load.  And THAT got me to taking out a frozen steak to thaw for dinner, which led me to feeding the cats, which led to me checking my email, which led to me getting back downstairs...

Where I looked at the wood block form I realized that I had a dimension wrong.   Not on the wood block; on my wire mesh cutting diagram.  I just spent 30 minutes redesigning my cutting pattern on the wire mesh. 

Sometimes you just have to build shapes in reality to make sure they are right!

The Last Edging Circle, 2

Well, you may recall that I had a ridge leveled in my back yard, the soil moved to raise a part of the front yard and that I was creating some areas bordered with edging so I could plant stuff.  And that I had become royally tired of digging trenches for the edging in the rocky soil.  And because there were some large tree roots I did not want to cut which meant cutting the edging to fit on top of the roots.

So I left the last one half done for a week and did other stuff.  Well, I am happy to report that I finished it today.  No more digging in that soil...

There are 3 edged areas.

The far one has perennial wildflowers mixed in with enough compost to barely cover.  I have no idea what will happen there.  The package of seeds did not specify which plants were, and they grow so slowly that I won't recognize any until they bloom, and there were already some small weeds growing there.  I might end up nurturing 400 sq ft of weeds until next Summer when I see nothing blooming  when I have to replant more carefully.

The middle smaller area is for Lychimartra Firecracker, a lovely bronze foliage plant about 24" high with lots of small yellow flowers.  But it is a bit invasive and needs to be contained by itself.  It has its own 200 sq ft circle so that I can mow around it!

The nearest area, also 400 sq ft will be a combination of daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths for Spring color; with transplants of purple coneflowers, black-eyed-susans, and goldenrod for Summer and Fall color.  Plus I plan to add a few dwarf butterfly bushes.  I may get a package of seeds of plants that attract butterflies and bees to scatter among the plants next Spring. 

This last area will take some work planting.  Tulips and Hyacinths don't last long here because of the voles, so I have to make cages to plant them in.  The daffodils are fine without cages, being toxic.  But the bulbs haven't been delivered yet, and the transplants still have green leaves so I can't move them yet. 

Which means I can start on the new border of the older flowerbed (up against the fence to the left of the above picture).  I originally planted the border with alternating 12" sections of yellow then purple crocuses.  And 4" gaps between sections for annual Summer flowers.  The voles ate most of the crocus bulbs in just a few years, so this time, I am planting them in cages.  I'll still leave a 4" gap between the cages because it is nice to have Summer flowers there too and change them each year (yellow marigolds one year, dusty miller the next, orange zinnias after that, etc).

At least I don't have to install more edging there.  It's already in place!  And the soil there is soft and the border is the width of my spade.  "Piece of cake".  Right?  Yeah, right...

Fortunately, the weather is forecast to stay nice into mid-November, so I may get away with all this before the first hard freeze hits.  But I had better get working of those cages.  Two sizes of cages actually.  8"L x 6"W x 4"H for the crocus bulb border (so I need about 50 of those).  I haven't decided on the size of the cages for the tulip and hyacinth bulbs yet.  I need to sit down and diagram cages what use a 3' wide roll of wire mesh efficiently.

But I have the crocus bulbs now, so they come first.  The tulip cages can wait a few days...  But they will look basically like this...

 


















 12-18" square, 6" high.  It only needs making a wood form to bend the wire mesh over.  Not that that takes no time, but it beats buying cages at $30 each!

Busy Day

It was unusually nice weather today (partly cloudy, dry, 30% humidity and 80F).  I won't see many of those again until September.  So I was up early, for me;  10:30 AM.  I know many of you cringe to think of that as "early",   but an advantage of being single and retired is setting your own hours.

So I started the day with an English Muffin and a cheese/bacon/bell pepper omelet, a glass of green tea, and a glass of V8.  I've been cooking for so long now that all my cast iron pans are utterly non-stick.  They are wonderful!

Fed The Mews first, of course.  AND after.  When they haven't eaten for 10 hours (because I've been in bed), they need a 2nd breakfast.  I'd just give them more at first, but Iza can't keep it down all at once.  And normally, I would let them out afterwards, but it was lawn-mowing day.

So I went out and mowed the lawn.  Takes about an hour for mowing and 30 minutes trimming with the new string-trimmer.  There are a lot of places I just can't mow closely, so I finally bought one of those new 18 volt lithium battery trimmers and it works GREAT!  When they say "it's like a gas one", they are darn close!  I need to get a shoulder strap though; its not one of those little 2 lb jobs...

I let The Mews out after the mowing was done and the fence gates were shut...

After that, I decided to attack some of the brambles that have been invading the more civilized part of by back yard.  My "poacher's shovel" is great for that (think of an industrial-strength 18" trowel on a shovel handle).  I need the narrow blade because the brambles are among plantings.  I got about a dozen dug up.

Then I needed to do some watering.  All you sufferring from drought, forgive me, but we have had unusually frequent rain here and I almost didn't notice we had finally gone a week without any rain.  I started the watering because the annuals I still have in pots looked a bit wilted.  And once I get a hose in my hand, EVERYTHING gets watered, LOL!

Not that I water everything by hand.  I have a tripod with a fan-nozzle attached that I build a few years ago.

This original had a shower spray nozzle, I replaced it with one that spreads more sideways.  I use the shower head nozzle for hand-watering now.

And then I had to water the enclosed veggie garden.  I'm not used to the tight spaces yet, so it is a bit awkward.  I'll get the tricks for worked out this year.  Watering the 6 new raised beds takes a good 30 minutes.

And THEN I had to water all the deck containers.  I tried just filling and re-filling a watering can to water them, but that got pretty tedious.  I thought I would try either one of those super limp hoses that collapse back into a small container, or one of those coiled types that stretch out and fit back in a metal holder.  You've seen them on ads. 

But I was at a D-I-Y store and I noticed they were using the coiled type themselves.  So I figured they probably have some experience with their products, and bought the Melnor green coiled one.

So far, it is working very nicely and sure doesn't take up much space.  I screwed the wire frame to a piece of exterior plywood and attached the plywood to the side of the deck.  A short hose reaches to the multi-outlet water outlet.

For the record, I use one outlet for the hose to the deck, one for the hose to the nearby lawn, one to an industrial strength hose that goes 150' to the back veggie garden, and one for a jet nozzle right at the spigot that is useful for many things (cleaning buckets, hands, boots,  etc).  Dragging hoses all around the yard is both difficult and damaging to plants (I have the entire area around the spigot planted).

So I came back in at 6 PM and decided about dinner.  I decided I'd earned a steak.  I buy them in bulk from the local meat store, cut them in half, and freeze them in sandwich bags (wrapped in a bigger bag, wrapped in a heavier bag - no freezer burn).  So I stuck one bag in a pan of hot water (gentle thawing), made a nice home-grown tomato salad (with some minced onion, chopped cucumber, and shaved carrot), sauted some wedges of red and green bell pepper, M/Vd a potatoe, and poured a glass of wine while I sauteed the steak (its more stovetop-roasting in the covered cast iron pan). 

Dessert was cut-up fresh fruits (cantalope, green grapes, a plum, a navel orange, and some prunes).

Life is good...

Now I need to consult with The Mews about what they want to post for tomorrow. 

Renovating The Flowerbed

They HAD to go!  Two Eunonymous shrubs I've had for 20 years...  I liked them, but what was "supposed" to be "5 feet high and 3 feet wide" was 8 feet high and 6 feet wide.  And started to get invasively sending up shoots all around the flowerbed. 

The remaining parts will get chainsawed soon and the shoots dug out.

They were evergreen and variegated, which was nice, but there comes a time when too much is just too much.   They will be replaced with Butterfly Bushes and Nandina.  And space for annual Sunflowers.

They will add to my compost pile.  But it does give a chance to redo the fence background.

I have several in other spots.  They are "polite" neighbors there either.  They will go soon too.  But on the chance that I will find a good spot for cuttings, they will stay for now.  I'm thinking they would be a VERY good privacy border along the drainage easement in the front yard.  And since they are nearly impossible to kill (but don't spread much unless pruned), they may find that a wonderful permanent spot.

Everything has a place, even if not where originally placed.