this just makes me laugh. My cat's litter box is in the basement, so this reminds me of her.
more cat pictures
My garden is going to be on the Irvington Garden Tour. It's on Sunday, June 29 from noon to 5:00. I'm very flattered to be asked. Also, I've found that nothing motivates me to get projects done like the prospect of having people over. Given that these people will be paying for the privilege of stomping around my yard, I expect I'll be even more motivated than usual.
Thus, a list of tasks to complete before the tour. It's just about a month away, so I think these are doable:
- Finish planting the berry bed in the front yard as soon as additional blueberry bushes arrive.
- Replace nest spruce next to front door. It's the second one to die in that spot. Find something else, maybe a cotoneaster?
- Plant windowboxes and containers.
- Add a shrub to the shade border in the back. Terry suggested Hydrangea panniculata tardiva. See if I can find it.
- Help the BF finish and transport my big-ass reconditioned potting bench. Place in hosta alley.
- Clean up the work area in hosta alley (mostly a matter of putting the bench in place and untangling hoses).
- Screw down the popped-up slat in the garden bench. Maybe paint the garden bench, if there's time.
- Label plants.
- Do a thorough weed, deadhead, and mulch.
- And of course, mow.
It looks like a lot on paper (on screen?), but I've finally learned that the key is to work a bit each day instead of trying to get projects done in a marathon session. I don't have the stamina (or the chunks of free time) to devote full days to the garden.
Check back for progress updates!
I've started working a couple of days a week with the awesome Terry and Amy of Spotts Lawn and Garden. This microcompany is based here in Irvington, so I can ride my bike to headquarters in about five minutes. We tool around in a big black truck with a dump trailer attached. We weed, set stones, make garden plans, plant shrubs, pot up container gardens--we're like the organic avengers. It's hard work, but so much fun.
Anyway, I've seen some very cool gardens in the last couple of weeks. The act of weeding provides lots of time for thinking, so here are a couple of the very random thoughts that have occurred on the job:
Uniforms act like an Invisibility Cloak. Weird.
The Japanese hoe rocks. Seriously. Amy F. prefers her gardener's knife (another excellent tool, and one I use all the time), but for those shallow-rooted weeds, I love the long-handled Japanese hoe.
When we work in public spaces, we spend about a third of our time picking up cigarette butts and other refuse. While butts will eventually break down, it takes a long time, and in the meantime they are trash. Come on people; if you have to smoke, at least try not to litter too. (As a side note, tobacco has been shown to negatively affect the growth of other plants, so don't smoke in your garden.)
I saw the weirdest fungus ever. It had orange tentacles growing off a center mass that looked like a bunch of eyeballs. One was even split like an eyelid with an oozing center. Did you ever see the episode of Angel where someone gets infected by a demon and starts growing an eye in the back of his head? That's what it looked like--with tentacles. I rooted that puppy out pronto.
Old-fashioned neighborhoods have the nosiest (and friendliest) neighbors. When we work in Irvington, people stop, look at what we're doing, sometimes start a conversation. We worked in one of the newer neighborhoods (big houses, no sidewalks) and no one batted an eye. We could have been boosting massive appliances and I doubt anyone would have noticed.
One of the things about seeing all these great gardens is that you become even more aware where yours could stand a little improvement. I knew I needed a few more shrubs (at least one in back and one in front), but seeing these gardens cements it. The shrubs provide structure, some differing height, and winter interest. And there are so many great ones that there's no excuse for landscape designers to keep using the same ten that they seem to love.
There is more to mulch than the bags from Lowes. A good mix of compost and fine mulch covers the ground, suppresses weeds, retains water, and breaks down to improve the soil. It also approximates the dark look of soil really well. As for gravel mulch, don't be seduced. It's a bitch to weed. If you're going to use it for paths or whatever, be sure to put down some landscaping fabric first.
No matter what people tell you, gloves will not keep you from getting dirt under your nails. I've tried digging my nails into soap before putting on the gloves, but I still have to keep a nailbrush at every sink in the house. Also, my hands are like sandpaper. I've started carrying around a thick hand cream to apply between jobs. At least then the gloves with be rubbing cream into my skin instead of just rubbing the skin.
And by the way, those rubber-covered gardening gloves are great for all kinds of jobs. Get ones that fit though. I forgot mine one day and had to use some that were too big. I had to keep flipping the fingertips out of the way, which feels even weirder than it sounds.
I've always believed in planting what grows easily in my yard. Not thugs, mind you, that completely overtake the garden beds and have to be rooted out one damn tuberous rhizome at a time (lily of the valley, I'm looking at you). But I do not believe in fussing over my plants. If they can't make due with well-composted soil and an occasional supplemental watering in the dead of summer, I don't need them.
The thing about growing what grows well is that eventually it's going to start muscling in on its neighbors. Then it's time to get the shovel and whack out some clumps, transplanting them elsewhere in the yard. This process is euphemistically called "editing." Other forms of editing include moving a plant to three different places in the yard to find a spot where it does well, yanking out plants that are past their prime, or rearranging the entire planting scheme by digging it up. "Editing" is the gardening equivalent of forced relocation.
Today I edited. CAS put in a new garden last year and would love some pass-alongs. As the iris was slowly disappearing into the hardy geranium currently in bloom, I pulled out the shovel and sawed off a few clumps of the geranium for her. I also moved the white Siberian iris from along the fence (where I'm planning to put herbs) and into some bare spots between the caryopteris in the garage blue-and-yellow border. They'll be almost completely engulfed by the caryopteris when it leafs out, but that won't be until later in the summer, well past the irises' bloom time. In the process I divided those. I heaved the clumps on the ground, put the point of the shovel in the middle of the root mass, and jumped on it. Voila! Multiple iris plants. And I'm pretty sure they'll do just fine, even though they weren't divided in the fall.
Many will say you should only divide perennials when they are resting: in the spring for summer- and fall-blooming plants (such as asters or coneflowers) and fall for iris and geranium. I say that's all well and good, and it does improve your chances of successful transplant. But my babies are all pretty hardy and unlikely to take offense at an out-of-season move, provided I keep them watered. Besides, I like the instant gratification of moving plants when I get an inspiration. Also, I had to jump on an shovel jammed into the root mass to separate the iris. It's not a fussy plant.
I'm just saying. Plant what grows well. It cuts down on headaches, you'll be able to take lots of divisions and give them to your friends, and you'll become very popular at the garden club meeting.
While all the recent rain has made the garden lush and green, it has been hell on my mood. But this morning the sun is shining, the dew is sparkling on the grass, and...I have to go to work. It would be a great day to work in the garden, but alas, it's not to be. I'm working all day and then filling in for a friend as deck manager at Victor/Victoria at American Cabaret Theatre. Come see me move furniture!
Anyway, that leaves little time for garden puttering. As I am hosting Mother's Day brunch here tomorrow, I at least hope to squeeze in a quick lawn mowing between jobs. I cut the grass on Monday, I believe, and it needs another chop. Garden pictures to follow, once I get the grass under control.
So I was going to do that parking strip in bright pinks and purples to echo the colors elsewhere in the front yard. I was planning on Siberian iris, catmint, maybe some lady's mantle, all anchored by the Double Knock Out rose that I ordered via catalog. Unfortunately, a screw-up resulted in my order being cancelled.
Since I no longer had a rose to dictate a certain plan, I decided to try something else. I had a 'Darrow' blueberry bush that had to be moved to make way for another bed in the potager. It's been back there for three years, growing from a tiny stick into a less tiny stick, but never giving me more than a couple of berries. Presto! A new concept for the parking strip: fruit bed.
I love blueberries, but the prices in the stores are not cheap. The problem with growing your own in Indiana is that they require acidic soil. We have so much lime in our clay that the soil tends to be neutral to alkaline, which means that if I want my blueberries to do well, I have to amend the soil. Lots of people do that with aluminum sulfate (the same stuff they use to keep their hydrangeas blue), but as an organic gardener, I needed to find another route: peat moss, a natural acidifier.
Ideally, you start trying to change the Ph of your bed at least a year before your plant. Right. Like I think that far ahead. I needed to transplant pronto, plus I wanted to get that strip planted before weeds could take hold and ruin all my hard work.
In a fortuitous coincidence, the original bush had struck a new bush right next to it. I have transplanted both the blueberry and son of blueberry to the parking strip to anchor my new fruit bed. I had already amended the parking strip with composted manure and mushroom compost (acid soils tend to be highly organic). I dug extra big holes and tossed in some peat moss, as well as mixing peat moss into the back fill. If I stick to mulching that bed with acidic materials like peat moss and pine straw, I should gradually be able to lower the Ph to the 5.5 or so berries need.
If you think I'm going through all this trouble for two blueberry bushes, think again. I'm ordering some more on the Web. Blueberries do better with cross-pollination (some can't self pollinate at all), so extra bushes should also help the yield. These are high-bush blueberries, meaning they grow in bush form and not flat to the ground like lowbush berries.
As for the bare soil problem, I have filled in around blueberry and son of blueberry with strawberry plants gleaned from elsewhere in my garden. For some perplexing reason, some enormous strawberry plants were growing in the part shade border next to the Anabelle hydrangeas. I think they might be the spawn of some strawberries from when I used that spot as a holding bed when I had all the hardscaping done a few years ago. So I dug them up, dropped them into the new berry bed, and watered the whole thing. It looks a bit of a mess right now (see photo), but in a month or so, I expect there will be a bit less bare soil. All that extra space will be filled with new berry bushes and whatever other fruit I can come up with.
Bring on the whipped cream and shortcake!
