My back garden contains two small cat figurines from Smith & Hawken. One black cat sits upright and peeks through the geraniums, while another curls up in the lavender. I have an affinity for cats--their independence, grace, and general air of superiority, leavened by their occasional goofiness. While I do not qualify for crazy cat lady status--I do not nuture hordes of cats, wear appliqued sweatshirts with country kitties on them, or collect decorative kitten plates--there's no getting around the fact that cats are my favorite animal.
And I'm not the only gardener who loves them. Cats and gardens just seem to go together. In theory, a cat can cut down on the rodents decimating your vegetable garden while acting, as CAS says, as a mobile knick-knack.
Here at the Fraudulent Farmstead, we sport two mobile knick-knacks. Miss Kitty, my Siberian, is an indoor cat. She sometimes accompanies me outside during gardening, or when we need to do a very thorough brushing. (The BF calls her "Spider Cat" for her ability to--he claims--shed very fine hair at will whenever he walks by her.) As you might surmise from the name "Siberian," she's got more hair than a yak, so she's not keen on hanging about outdoors when it's hot. On those occasions when she heads into the garden, she spends a great deal of time skulking under bushes, considering escape routes under fences, and draping herself suggestively over the back steps so that I'll allow her back inside, where she can resume her daily regime of soaking up the air conditioning and shedding all over the house.
Big Lou, on the other hand, is a true garden cat. Regular readers may recall that Lou is a stray who has taken over my front porch, where he sits in the window and demands food in a strident tone as soon as he spots me in the morning.
Lou is, not to put too fine a point on it, an attention whore. As I kneel to weed, he twines around my back and shoves his head under my arms to get a better look at what I'm doing. It's tough to get that clump of crabgrass that's just out of reach when Lou insists on eeling underneath my stomach.
Should I be taking on a task he deems too energetic for close contact schmoozing, Lou will settle in a spot within comfortable observing distance. He may play with pulled weeds, nibble on the catmint, or writhe about kittenishly. One of his favorite tactics is to lie on his back with his paws in the air, inviting me to rub his belly so that he may sink all of his claws as well as his teeth into my tender forearm. Oh yes, we love that game.
For reasons I have yet to decipher, Big Lou often ignores the bowl of water I leave for him in favor of drinking out of the butterfly saucer's sand-and-water combo or from standing water in a potted plant after a rainstorm. Does he like the taste? Is there some kind of mineral he gets from drinking muddy or sandy water? Is he the feline equivalent of a paste-eater? I have no idea.
As challenging as Lou sometimes makes weeding, he's nevertheless a fun and welcome addition to my garden. Should you care to come over and help with the weeding, he'll be happy to prove it to you.
Anyone who spends time in the garden is eventually going to come into contact with poison ivy, poison oak, or poison sumac. I've encountered poison ivy too many times to count, often with disastrous results. One year I had such a case of it that I missed four days of work, most of which I spent as unclothed as possible in front of a fan to control the itching.
I'm one of the 70 to 85% of people who have an allergic reaction to the urushiol, the evil oil that causes the rash. Once you get the stuff on you, it quickly bonds to your skin. Viola! Blisters. And untreated, the rash can take a good three to four weeks to run its course. Urushiol-induced contact dermatitis is most likely to happen if you run into the plant itself, or if you touch something that's brushed against the plant--like clothes, gloves, or the cat who insists on hanging out in the PI patch. Never, never burn poison ivy; the urushiol can vaporize and get in your lungs.
So the first step in avoiding poison ivy is recognizing it. That whole "leaves of three, let it be" thing is good as far as it goes, but the serious gardener can't avoid every plant with three leaves forever (believe me, I tried). The pointy oval leaves have often have slightly jagged edges toward the point. Groups of three leaflets occur in an alternating pattern on the stem, so you won't see two leaflet groups growing from the same spot on the stem. Sometimes you'll see a red stem, and if the PI is growing up a tree, the stem has hairy little rootlets. New leaves are shiny; older leaves are usually duller. (This photo is from PoisonIvy.org.)
So you've identified the PI. The next step is to get rid of it. If I just see one vine, my usual method is to wait until I'm done with my gardening. I get a plastic bag and put it over my gloved hand. I yank the PI out with the bag, wrap the bag, toss it in the garbage (never on the compost pile), and immediately go inside and scrub my hands. I usually take an antihistamine for good measure.
This week, however, I had to tackle a much bigger infestation. PI has inserted itself among the English ivy on the south side of my house, and it was engulfing the windows. I'm a light freak, and I take exception to anything cutting off the amount of sunlight making it into my dining room, especially the damn poison ivy. But this was no small amount of PI. This was the brontosaurus of weeds: ten feet tall and about twenty feet long. This called for the gardening hazmat suit.
My hazmat suit consists of a long-sleeved tee shirt tucked into light cotton pajama pants that have at least seven different colors of paint on them (the waist hits me attractively just under the breasts). Black knee socks under the pants minimize the potential of PI at the ankles, and gloves protect my hands. Over this example of sartorial splendor I wear a man's button-up shirt, buttoned tightly around the wrists. (In my experience, it's the wrists and ankles that tend to be your vulnerable areas when taking on PI.) And because I was yanking PI down from overhead, I wore a bucket hat.
Oh, yeah, I looked good.
It was about 85 degrees the day I took on the PI, so I was sweating like crazy. I yanked it all down, stuffed it into trash bags, and hauled them to the curb. I then headed to the basement, stripped at the washing machine, and tossed every article of clothing into the washer. I took a lukewarm shower, scrubbing three times with soap and a washcloth. I took a Zyrtec, too.
I still got poison ivy.
Granted, it's not too bad. I have a couple of itchy spots, and it's pretty contained. Don't believe the myth that poison ivy spreads. What actually happens is that the areas that get a higher dose of urushiol break out into a rash first, and areas that weren't as exposed react later. That oozing stuff from the blisters looks gross, but it doesn't actually spread the rash.
It does itch something fierce, though. Most people say that cortisone cream (the 2%, not the 1%) is the best way to control the itch, but I've had good luck with the clear Caladryl stuff, too. Unfortunately, I have to give up my beloved baths for the duration of a PI outbreak in favor of showers; prolonged contact with water can aggravate the itching. And I'm pretty religious about taking the antihistamines during an outbreak. Staying cool helps, too. Heat and humidity are even more miserable when you're dealing with PI.
So I got the PI off the house, but the PI got in some small jabs. In my ongoing war with PI, I'm calling this one a draw. Next time, though, that weed is going down!
So I'm picking up lots of useful information working for Spotts. Not just run-of-the-mill garden info like plant names and pruning techniques, either. No, I'm learning such helpful tips as how to use a wheelbarrow without turning it upside down or banging it into your shins (I'm still working on this), how to corral debris using a backpack blower (ditto), or the proper way to store tools.
Terry is the best equipment manager in history. His tools are spotless, sharpened, oiled, and returned to the correct storage place. I have yet to go to the truck for something and find we don't have it. Frankly, it makes me a little embarrassed about the condition of a lot of my tools, so I'm making a real effort to keep them clean and organized.
Did you know, for example, that the worst thing for your pruners is dirt? Given that most gardens have quite a lot of that, you want to keep your pruners in a holster, not set them on the ground. If you have to set hedge clippers down, put them with the point toward the ground so that the pivot point is facing up.
We use gardener's knives for nearly everything. They dig out weeds, act as trowels, saw off recalcitrant root masses--you name it. The orange handle gives you a fighting chance of remembering where you left it. Still, it's awfully easy to set one down and leave it behind. Instead, you fling it toward the ground, snapping your wrist so that the knife stands upright in the soil. The orange handle sticks up so you can see it, and the sharp part is in the ground where no one can cut themselves on it.
My knife throwing skills are not great yet, although I manage to stick it about one out of two times. Amy F has trouble with knife flinging; her technique involves something that looks a bit like spear-throwing instead of the twist-and-flick Terry uses. Terry, of course, can flick a knife into the ground without even looking at it. Sometimes all three of us fling knives at the ground over and over; we look like a demented circus act.
Other helpful hints: Like knives, shovels and spade should be stuck into the soil so they stand upright. This requires a bit of a forceful heave, and you should do it slightly away from where you're working. I've backed into spades more than once. If you have to put a rake on the ground, place it with the tines facing down, so as to avoid the Tom-and-Jerry rake to the face situation.
And if you're working in a garden with low-voltage lighting, you might want to check to make sure that the cord is buried. If it's not, you might want to keep an eye on where that cord is. Otherwise, you might be talking to Amy F over your shoulder when your big toe catches on the cord and sends you flailing through the air to skid across a concrete path on your hands and knees, at which time you might roll over on your back and try to breathe while reassuring Amy and your boss that you are not seriously hurt, even though your knees look like hamburger and are bleeding freely.
You might have to hobble to a nearby bench, graciously thank Amy for retrieving the first aid kit, pour water over your knees to clear out some blood, and ask Amy to poke around in there with a pair of tweezers looking for any stray gravel. You may then have to try to clean out your knees, slop some ointment on them, bandage them, and attempt to continue gardening. You may find that the fabulous combination of sweat, sunscreen, and bug spray you have accumulated ensures that bandages of any kind are not going to stick to you, so you may have to just do the best you can to keep dirt and bugs out of them. You may find that gnats particularly love your open wounds.
You may find that skinned knees at 35 are an even bigger pain in the ass than they were at 6, when you fell down while running a race on the playground while wearing party shoes. You may recall your father doing the picking-gravel-out-of your-knees thing while muttering abut incompetent school nurses who didn't bother doing it, followed by a bout of iodine to your scratches, which prompted howling (from you) and blowing over your wounds (from Dad). You may be grateful you don't have to use iodine anymore, although you may still do a little howling when you clean out your knees with hydrogen peroxide at home that night.
So, you know, check for the cord. That's all I'm saying.
While I've been busy working in other people's gardens, mine has been busy growing in an insane fashion. Normally, July is kind of slow for the garden. The roses, peonies, and other May and June flowers are done, and the caryopteris and asters won't start their show for a while. Still, the daylilies are blooming, the hydrangeas and lavender are hanging in, and the first of the zinnias are starting to bloom. Plus the potager looks pretty full.
So here's a little photo tour:
The alley next to the house has all my working essentials--potting bench, hoses, trash cans, and grill--as well as hostas and hydrangeas.
The Endless Summer hydrangeas have faded a bit since the garden tour, but even their pastel shades are pretty. They're fading toward pink, though. I'll need to acidify the soil again to move them back toward blue.
As you round the corner into the back garden, the phlox in the rose border make a nice frame for my blue bench. The pot next to the bench contains three kinds of coleus (which can handle both sun and shade). There's a rescued banana plant in a pot back there too.
As for the rose border, the catmint, phlox, butterfly bush, and nigella are blooming, but the roses are long gone. Even the Knock Outs, which should bloom all summer, have fallen prey to the thrice-damned Japanese beetles. Evil, shiny little bastards.
If you stand behind the bench (with your back to the compost heap), you can see the shade border is looking better. The ninebark (that burgundy shrub in the foreground) is doing well, and the Anabelle hydrangeas have really taken off this year. Speaking of which....
They make a nice foil for Lou's cat house, don't they?
The yellow daylilies and yarrow are blooming in the butterfly border, and the Blue Muffin viburnum is finally starting to stretch out. It even has berries!
The lavender isn't quite as gorgeous as during the tour, but lots of it is still blooming. The space under the lilac standards is mostly devoted to annuals--primarily zinnia and salvia--that are just starting to bloom. Plus I planted a big-ass French pumpkin in there that now has fruit on it. I can't wait to see if I get pumpkins from it!
The potager is full. Here you see the bean teepee, which is made from conduit left over from the trellises in back. There are carrots and lettuces in that bed too, but you'd never know it. The beans have taken over. The bed on the right is my nightshade bed--tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are all related to nightshade, and it's easier to pronounce than the family name, Solanaceae. More tomatoes in the back to the right,; pumpkins and watermelons to the left. Left of this picture, yet more pole beans are climbing a net trellis, and the last of the potatoes (also part of the Solanaceae family, by the way) are ready for harvest. I'll replant that bed with fall veggies like carrots, radish, and spinach.
In this shot (taken while standing next to the grill), you can see the long view of the potager. I named the pig in the front Mortimer. He's a watering can (with holes in his snout), and I got him cheap because his tail is missing. Even tail-less, he seems pretty happy in the potager.
Check out CAS's lovely blog entry on my big day at the garden tour. I particularly love the photo of Calvin and me, although I never thought I'd look like a Mary Engelbright card!
Huzzah! The Irvington Garden Tour today was a resounding success. I'm not sure how many people came through, but I made about 200 maps (see previous post) and we went through all of them. Despite the occasional threatening cloud, we had gorgeous weather: blue skies, light breeze, and temps in the mid-70s. CAS and son came over to help out; Calvin spent a goodly part of the afternoon mowing my sidewalk with his plastic mower. Amy F. volunteered for ticket taking, along with a couple of other lovely women. And the people were wonderful.
I spent almost all four hours in the back garden expounding on my garden, gardening in general, and cultivation of some specific plants. I answered lots of questions, and several plants came up over and over. So here's the Irvington Garden Tour FAQ, Fraudulent Farmstead edition:
Spiderwort (Tradescantia andersoniana 'Caerulea Plena')
This unassuming shade plant was an object of intense interest by visitors, partly because it's one of the few plants that flowers well in shade this time of year. It has long, strappy leaves and a scrambling habit. The blue flowers bloom in clusters in the morning, but close up by late afternoon into buds that resemble bunches of grapes. In my garden, it blooms from late spring through mid-summer. It can't handle sun, so give it full or part shade and ample moisture. Wikipedia has this to say about spiderwort.
Anabelle hydreangea (Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle')
This old-fashioned hydrangea sports giant clusters of white blooms that dry well. It's best in a part-shade setting, since full sun can fry it, but full shade inhibits its growth. Anabelle generally gets about 4 feet tall and equally wide. Best of all, it loves Midwestern humidity. It blooms on new growth, so in late February or early March, whack it back to the ground. You'll get stronger, less floppy stems and more blooms. Here's the Wayside Gardens entry for Annabelle.
Endless Summer Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla Endless Summer)
This relatively new mophead hydrangea blooms on both old and new wood, so you are guaranteed blooms even in the event of a late frost. Don't prune it at all, unless a branch breaks off or something. Full size is about 5 feet tall by 4 feet wide, but my four-year-old plants are still at about 2.5' x 2.5'. These hydrangeas do best with protection from the afternoon sun and a lot of moisture. They'll be pink in alkaline soil, which is what most of us in central Indiana have. If you want them to be blue, you need to acidify the soil. You can use aluminum sulfate, elemental sulfur, or the old-fashioned method, burying rusty nails in the soil. I only need to correct soil pH every two or three years. Here's more about Endless Summer from Wayside Gardens.
Lavender (Lavendula angustifolia and Lavendula x intermedia)
Lavender is my favorite plant; contrary to what you've heard, you can grow it in Indiana. The trick is to find plants well adapted to Zone 5. My favorites are Lavendula angustifolia (which is narrow-leafed or English lavender) 'Hidcote' and 'Mustead' for their dark purple blooms and intense fragrance. Lavindin (Lavendula x intermedia) varieties 'Grosso' and 'Provence' have long stems ideal for crafts and are particularly good for Indiana. Plant them in full sun in little hills amended with some sand to improve the drainage; they don't like wet feet or rich soil. At the end of the summer, cut off the flower stems to shape the bush into a globe. In late February or early March, cut them back by about 1/3. Don't cut into the brown, woody part, though; they won't releaf from the woody stems. Expect about a five-year life span for each plant. Wikipedia has more info about lavender here.
Caryopteris (aka Blue Mist Shrub, Blue Beard, Blue Mist Spirea)
This shrub sports small purple flowers when it starts blooming in August, and it keeps blooming through frost. Butterflies love it. I can't remember the specific variety I have, but the mature size is about 3' x 3'. Cut it back in late February to early March to between 6 and 12 inches; it flowers on new growth. It roots easily too; after a few years, you may have little shrublets for your pals. It likes full sun; in my garden it gets eastern light. It will tolerate less-than-stellar soils. This Bluestone Perennials link is for Caryopteris Longwood Blue.
Love in a Mist (Nigella damascena)
This full-sun annual fills in among the perennials in my rose border. It self-seeds like crazy, but any unwanted plants are easy to pull up. Its flowers look like bachelor buttons, but the ferny foliage is soft. The white, blue, and purple flowers are followed by seed pods that look like little lanterns. I think my Nigella is the Miss Jekyll Blend, so that's what I'm linking to.
It was a fabulous day, and I loved talking with people about my favorite plants. Thanks to all who visited!
Not to brag or anything, but people at the garden tour liked these maps. And given that Illustrator has regularly been kicking my butt over the last ten years, I feel entitled to gloat ever so slightly at finally turning out a good product with it.
Unfortunately, Vox doesn't support PDF files. I had to upload these as JPGs. Click on the image; it will take you to another screen. Then click on the image again for a full-size version.
It's one more day ("One daaaaaay mooooooorrree!"--sorry, too much musical theatre at a tender age) until the Irvington garden tour. You may have been wondering why I haven't been blogging. Well, I'll tell you.
I was working. I was, in fact, working like a borrowed mule. Sometimes with Spotts, sometimes at the store, and often in my own garden, attempting to get it ready. The good news is it was in pretty good shape for the party last weekend, so this week has been a bit less frantic. Still, I have quite a bit left to do:
- Finish weeding and deadheading the front yard borders.
- Prune the front yard lilacs. I finished the viburnum in that border already.
- Set new stones in berry bed.
- Finish spreading the yard of mulch currently in a great hulking pile in my back yard.
- Finish my totally cool garden map. I've dusted off my long-forgotten Illustrator skills to make a map/program. It's not done yet, but you can rest assured that it will rock. I'll post a PDF of it when I'm done.
- Make with the general tidying up and whatnot.
As I have only tomorrow from about 4:00 on and Sunday morning, I'm grateful I managed to get the lawn mowed before the thunderstorm that is currently rampaging about my house. Many, many props to Amy F, who devoted an evening to weeding with me; the woman can clear a border faster than you can believe.
Will I make the deadline? Who knows? Either way, the garden is looking pretty good. Once the tour is over, maybe I'll be able to kick back on my (newly painted) garden bench with a cold beverage and watch the butterflies.
With the Midsummer party fast approaching and the garden tour hot on its heels, I'm starting to feel some pressure to complete garden tasks. I'm not too worried, though, as the BF spent a goodly portion of Sunday helping me in the garden (he mowed the lawn and cleaned the gutters, which were starting to sprout maple seedlings) as well as completing work on my most excellent potting bench (see previous post). Terry and Amy from Spotts have both offered to help with weeding, etc., and both my sister and CAS are on-tap for day of hostessing duties with me. So it's under control. It just doesn't look like it when I examine The List.
- Finish planting berry bed.
- Mulch the berry bed and add some stepping stones.
- Cut back the honeysuckle bush before planting in shade border.
- Plant the ninbebark shrub in the shade bed .
- Plant a coleus container.
- Plant window boxes and pots. The windowboxes are seriously waterlogged thanks to recent heavy rains. I'm hoping with a severe cutback I can salvage most of the plants.
- Figure out a shrub to replace nest spruce in front yard. Found a deutzia 'Nikko'. Planted it on Sunday.
- Finish painting potting bench and place it. It is, as earlier reported, fabulous.
- Clean and repair garden bench.
- Paint garden bench the same turquoise color as my potting bench. Primer and one coat done, one still to go.
- Level out holes where potting bench will go, move it into place, and clean up work area. This is mostly done, but the BF and I agree I could use some pavers under the spigot to control mud issues.
- Label plants.
- Add planting markers to raised vegetable beds. I thought I had finished this one, but the yardsticks I used for this purpose last year look terrible, so I need to replace them with the same kind of wood I used on the other square bed. On the upside, I made a very cute 4' tall bean trellis out of the conduit lengths left over from making trellises.
- Plant summer seed vegetables.
- Plant annuals.
- Plant annual herbs.
- Replace pavers in front of grill .
- Weed and deadhead. A lot.
- Mulch. Also a lot.
- Mow.
- Prune the lilacs and viburnum in the front yard.
- Finish digging up half of remaining hell strip. Plant. I transplanted some very pretty fern-leaf peonies from the BF's farm to that strip and added some divisions of Siberian iris and geranium. But I need to strip some more sod out. I still have strawberry plants awaiting planting, so they may also go in that bed.
- Create map/shameless self-promotion piece for the garden tour.
- Stock up on drinks and snacks for my cohostesses and garden volunteers.
The astute reader will notice that new items have been added to The List, even as old ones are crossed off. So there's still lots to do, but I (and team Farmgirl) are making big strides. Updates as they occur.
I have mentioned several times the potting bench the BF was constructing from an old workbench located in my basement. It sat in the furnace room for all of my eight years in this house, a useless brown hulk taking up space. But when I mentioned it to the BF, he told me thought he could make me a potting bench from it.
I was thrilled, of course, especially since I know what potting benches cost. I came home one day to find he had maneuvered it (all 100 pounds of it, at a conservative estimate) up the basement stairs and into his truck to take it home and work on it. When I got my first look at the re-imagined bench, I literally jumped up and down and clapped my hands. Now, after some primer and two coats of outdoor paint, I present to you my potting bench, destined to be the talk of the 2008 Irvington garden tour.
The original bench had just the tabletop level and an upright back, but no shelf. I'm not sure what the back was for, unless maybe to keep tools from sliding off of the bench. (At one point my house belonged to the handyman from hell, so I'm sure he could use all the help he could get. True story--when I had someone come out to give an estimate on replacing the garage door, he told me that in 30 years it was the most badly botched do-it-yourself job he'd ever seen.) The BF scavenged some wood to create the lower shelf (currently holding the watering cans), two uprights for the sides, and a narrow shelf to run across the top. Then he made some even more impressive changes.
You may recall I had mused about installing a potting sink on one end of the bench. The BF had an even better idea. First he built the counter out a bit so he could install a drawer with no bottom that holds a feed bowl (from--where else?--the Rural King). That drawer is on slides that can take up to 100 pounds, so it's perfect for holding soil or water, with the bonus feature that's it's easy to lift out and dump.
Then--and this is true genius--he mounted a swiveling arm on the right side of the bench. I hook a hose from the spigot to the lower end of the arm, and it feeds directly into a short hose that ends in a very fancy nine-setting nozzle. And the arm pivots, people! The BF says he got the idea from the dishwashing set up in the restaurant he worked in in college. I say, thank god for crappy part-time jobs if they result in this kind of problem solving.
And just because he knows me so well, the BF topped off my magnificent bench with a personalized drawer pull. See left. I'm going to call him Fred.
And now, of course, you wonder where you can get such a fabulous, personalized creation. You wonder if perhaps your significant other could build such a monument not only to your garden but also your relationship. You wonder if perhaps the BF might be looking for a new girlfriend. And I say, go find your own, sister. This one is mine, and I'm not sharing.