Recently in In the Garden Category

I've had a great morning so far! One of my friends at Facebook put up a link to Cat Stevens performing "Morning Has Broken" on You Tube, and I thought that was a great way to acknowledge the start of a beautiful day.

I was slow to get started this morning, but I was out in the gardens by 7:40. It's supposed to be in the nineties today, so I wanted to get some gardening in before the heat rose.
I deadheaded six peonies in the long driveway garden, and hacked back the Bouncing Bet that tries to take over the garden. I noticed that the astilbe is blooming at the shady end of that garden. The astilbe, hostas, bleeding heart and meadow rue have come back for twenty years now. The short gold day lilies and the nepeta are making a nice showing, and before long the Rudbekia "Goldsturm" and Purple coneflower should be in bloom.

Earlier this week I ripped some weeds out of the sidewalk garden. It was the first time I'd done anything physical since the gunk settled it, so it didn't take me long to be short of breath. I left the weeds on the sidewalk to be gathered later in the day. Of course, that was the only day I had visitors coming up the sidewalk! Today, I swept the dried weeds off the walk, cut back the vinca that has been trying to take over the entire bed, and planted a purple 'Homestead' verbena, and a fuschia petunia at the end of the bed nearest the front door. There are more to be planted but my knees were crying "Uncle!" I pulled a few more weeds, and began ripping out the volunteer ox-eye daisies that were going to seed. By that time it was warming up, so my last outdoor chore was to water the containers and the two transplants.

Bogie has ferns that she is ripping out because they are so vigorous. I have ferns that have died off from the heat we've had. The back wall of the garage is perpendicular to the house, and years ago, before I learned the microclimates of our house and land, I planted ferns in that corner. I thought it was going to be shaded and cool, on the north side of the house. What I didn't know was that it would get a lot of afternoon sun, and the bricks heat up, and retain the heat, so it wasn't the best of places to plant ferns. When I get out next, I hope to cut back the dead fronds. water heavily, and then mulch, to see if the ferns will grow more fronds.

So, my gardening is done for the day. I've been working on cleaning out the closet in the office that contains a jumble of things, including my mother's fabric stash and sewing things, yarn, some of Dear Husband's favorite posters, pads of newsprint and gridded paper, for quilt design, mailing supplies and boxes of papers that need to be sorted. It's good to be getting one more closet packed up. I think the next packing chore will be the shelves in the mudroom that hold floral and gardening items on one side, and china and crystal on the other.

So, I have plenty to do today, and I've had a nice start to the day. I hope that your Sunday has started out as well as mine.

MORE odd weather! It's been very dry. Other parts of Northern Illinois have had rain, but of the past three weeks, I bet we've had less than an inch. It's been unusually cool, but now it's warming up to more normal heat for June. My day lilies in the herb garden are sunburned, and the ferns in the corner between the garage and house have died. I'm going to try cutting them down, watering and then mulching to see if they are willing to try to grow once more.

I am still recuperating from the gunk. We visited the PA and she put us on an antibiotic and a steroid. My cough has abated, but I'm short of breath. I need to get out and build up my stamina. I'm going to start by cutting down the iris stalks. Bloom time is long over, and I hate the ragged look of the gardens. Next, I'm going to be vicious to the thistles!!! And then, I'll trim back the peonies.

Dear Husband has been enjoying the weekends sailing. He's a happy camper when he gets to spend his time on the water. He went to stow the winch handle last Saturday, and it wouldn't fit into the slot. When he looked at it, there was a black walnut, husk and all, stored there for safe keeping. Some squirrel in the back yard is cussing, I bet! lol

I can tell that summer is here. I want to do a chicken salad with celery, dried cranberries, walnuts and grapes, and I thought I might make a cold pasta salad this weekend while DH is away. It's not his favorite. I think I'll just make one or two servings, so there aren't a lot of leftovers.

Almost everything I'm doing is centered at home these days, but I'm looking forward to the Farmer's Markets, the French Market, and the Antique Fair. I'm sure other wonderful outdoor activities will come my way. I understand that I may have family visiting later this month. It doesn't get any better than that!

Happy summer to you all.

I saw SIX egrets yesterday (No, Cop Car, I don't know exactly which kind they were.) I was driving to exercise, and saw two to the right of the road, and four to the left. And, earlier, I saw one of the herons. There must be a shallow spot at that point in the retention pond, because that seems to be a favorite place for fishing for both the herons and egrets.

Spring is really strange. I think we have had below normal temps for the past week, and last month it felt like late June. I'm glad that I didn't plant anything tender this past week, because we had a hard frost and I would have lost it all.

Several of the iris have bloom stalks! Nothing is open, but give us a little warmth, and I'm sure the buds will open.

Have you heard about "Pink Slime?" Some companies add this sludge to their ground beef. Essentially, it's assorted meat parts that are ground to a filler and treated with ammonia gas. I discovered that in my area, Target, Whole Foods and Costco do NOT use this filler, so I've changed my shopping habits. I stopped at Whole Foods for the first of my shopping today and picked up ground beef, fruit and bread. I also bought a basil plant. My car smelled like and Italian eatery on the way home! *G*

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so I'm going to spend the morning boxing things up. I need to begin shifting winter clothes out of my closet, but our weather is not cooperating. I still need sweaters and wraps in the evening.

Dear Husband is clearly ready for spring to land and stay. He asked for Taco Salad for dinner this evening. My new "Cuisine at Home" magazine came, and the cover features a shrimp boil for those of us who are land locked. Sounds like a good idea to me! I think it cooks in one pot, and you eat it like a picnic meal. Very little cleanup!

Dear Husband has an appointment to put the Arr!! into Lake Michigan, May 12th. Boating season is almost upon us. (Quilting days, here we come!)

And last, but not least, today is my little sister's birthday. Happy Birthday, Frankie! I hope you have a wonderful weekend of celebration, and many, many more to come!

I love volunteer plants, but I'm being over-run this spring!

My raised herb bed has a walkway that is covered in what we call "chat," or crushed limestone. I have a number of plants that have decided they like the limestone better than they do the raised beds which are filled with dirt and compost.

Feverfew, thyme, lamb's ears, oregano, garlic chives, and lemon balm are trying to run rampant. It rained briefly in the past three days, so this afternoon I went out with the shovel and lifted the volunteers I don't wish to keep. I raked up all the plants that had been loosened, sorted through the pile to separate the plants from the chat, and then raked the limestone back into place. I was going to spread Preen in the walkway to discourage future volunteers, but realized that I have kitty litter, not Preen, in the garage. I'll have to get some Preen soon, or I'll have to repeat this process.

My sister and her family are coming for Easter, and I plan to beg for help to get the beds weeded and ready for seed.

April 1st! Who would have thought I'd be out working without my sweatshirt so early in the year!?

I was delighted this past Monday, March 26th, to see two egrets standing at the edge of one of the large retention ponds to the west of our home. Mother and I used to vie to see who might see the first egret to return, and there was always a race to see who would see them first as we drove past on our way to exercise. It's a miracle I didn't drive off the road while swiveling my head, looking for egrets!

Following two weeks of incredibly warm weather, we are now in a cooler trend, with rain expected off and on during the coming week. Many of my daffodils need to be dead-headed, but I still have a lovely collection in bloom, along with the redbud tree at the front of the house. The snowbells burst into bloom, and I discovered that they are apparently getting help from the chipmunks to expand the area they cover. The chippies have moved all my windflowers out into the lawn!

The star magnolia, squill and forsythia blooms are gone, but the tulips have opened. I wouldn't be surprised to see the iris open at their usual time, despite all the warm weather we had.

My herb garden has gotten off to a good start. I need to prune the winter savory, and dig up volunteer garlic chives. If I find the time, I'm digging them out of the garden. They have become a plant I no longer love. And, I need to dig up some volunteers in the walkway of the herb garden, just to tidy things up. I'll wait until this weekend, because it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

Usually by the middle of March we are seeing daffodil and tulip greens, with blooms expected in early to mid April. This evening I saw Ice Follies daffodils, forsythia, star magnolia, and squill in bloom. The crocus have fainted from the heat!

We've had a week of temps from the upper sixties to the upper seventies. I was talking with Dear Husband today, while standing in the kitchen. I looked out the window and saw a gray squirrel flattened out in the grass in the shade of the house, trying to cool his belly. He looked more like a flying squirrel who had come in for a landing than one of our regular visitors.

I had two golden delicious apples that were on the wrinkled side. I cut them each into 16 pieces and dropped them under the bird feeder during the middle of the week when I filled the feeders. One of the ground squirrels discovered the bounty. He filled his cheeks with seeds and then crammed an apple between his teeth and took off running up the herb garden walkway with his tail straight up in the air. He jumped over the timbers at the end, ran across the lawn and under Dear Husband's truck to the rough area east of the driveway. I watched him do the same routine twice more before I had to go back to work. Half an hour later, the apples had disappeared! *G* I wonder if he was going to have the family over to share the feast or if he was planning on canning apple pie filling....

Tomorrow, when I go out to take pictures of all the blooms, I'll check to see if the May apples are in bloom in the grove.

I love spring, but could be go back to the fifty and sixty degree temps and sneak up on it? Please!

My garden seems to be persevering despite the odd weather we've had the past few weeks. The daffodils showed up in February which is really early for our Zone 5 temperatures. The warm weather was followed by a blast of cold and snow. I thought I might loose the blooms for this year, but everything is still pushing up out of the ground and greening (or in the case of the tulips bronzing) up. Our temps the past two days have been in the 60s, so I'd guess the plants are really confused.

I saw the first of the crocus today. The chipmunks have replanted them in odd places, so I get lovely surprises. I saw one blooming amidst the mounds of oregano and another in the front garden, both some distance from where they have been planted.

When I was filling the bird feeders earlier this week, I noticed that the chives, the oregano, and the feverfew were greening up. They are truly hardy plants and don't let a little snow bother them once they feel the time is right to grow. I noticed the catnip that has transplanted itself around the north end of the house was adding leaves, too.

In the chat covered walkway of the herb garden, I have an invasion of lamb's ears. While I was working on the filing this week, I came across a card that was an advertisement for one of those gardening "books" that you buy as a series of over-sized cards. This particular card was talking about a low maintenance garden, and lamb's ears were one of the plants that had been used to make a striking border garden. Perhaps I need to trim the lamb's ears back, and get them planted in other parts of my gardens!

I love spring! I'm ready to be doing some work outside!

And I am laboring! Saturday and Sunday I spent a good part of each day in my quilting studio, working on pieces of five different quilts. I made binding for one baby quilt and sewed the binding on to two others. I cut out the sashing strips for a quilt that will go to Scraps on a Mission, and assembled all of the horizontal rows of a 6 x 6 block quilt. Yesterday afternoon I sewed the first three rows of that quilt together, and hope to finish it tomorrow.

I was in the kitchen, making the first zucchini bread of fall when the back door opened and in walked Dear Husband. He came home from the lake a full day earlier than I had expected, and told me that wind and waves forecast for today were going to make it too unpleasant to stay on the boat, even moored in the harbor. He also said his stomach was a little on the fritz. I hate to sail. My stomach is ALWAYS on the fritz when I am on a boat, so I just figured the weather was really whipping up and didn't give the comment about the upset tummy much attention.

Well, it seems he has the flu. Until the past year or two I would have told you that Dear Husband NEVER gets sick, but now that he's in his mid-sixties he picks up little bugs now and then. Or, perhaps he was just more stoic about them before and hid them well. At any rate, he's home for the day, taking it easy, reading a science magazine.

I got up early this morning, intending to go out to weed as soon as the sun was up, but I stalled. It was about 56 when I checked the temperature at the NOAA site. DH and I had breakfast together and we talked about meals for this week and next. I checked to see what we needed from the store.

Usually the first thing I do when I go out to work on the gardens is to feed the birds. I was working on that when I realized the mice and chipmunks had made a mess on the shelving above the seed bins. I cleaned that up, mixed up more seed, filled the bird feeders and then headed out with the weedeater. I got the area at the front of the house finished and then pulled the spent day lily stalks. I had the chance to look over the beds and plan my attack over the next few days.

The budlea that I thought would never amount to anything is suddenly a blooming shrub. My sister, Frankie, has warned me that it will grow out of hand, and that I may regret having planted it where it is. I'm pretty sure she's right :-( (But, it's a really pretty plant!)

Later today, I'm going to use the weedeater in the back, around the herb garden and finish potting up some mums for the front of the house. I'm eager to make the front of the house more inviting for fall. Maybe it's time to pull out the tomato plant that's creeping across the sidewalk! *G*

Happy Labor Day to you all!

I was out weeding today. I probably should have started earlier than I did, but the day was pretty reasonable until about 12:30. The gardens along the brick sidewalk to the house are one of the hotter areas to work.

I could post a picture of an area totally cleared that is about 4' by 4', but that seems sorta silly. Just envision it. From there I crossed the walk to the garage side of the gardens.

Having seen it from this perspective, I've decided to take out everything to the wall to the left of the downspout. The iris right next to the downspout have to be moved this week. I can't decide whether I want to put them in the ground or try to winter them over in large pots. I think they might do better in the ground, but I'll need to baby them for the rest of the growing season to get them settled for winter.

I moved up the walk toward the front door and cleared the area between the purple fountain grasses and the mum.

Below is a long shot of the garden. I wanted you to see the tomato plant that has taken over the west end of that garden. The chipmunks must not have liked my choice of plants. I've actually left it because it's shading a coral bells that is planted in a too-sunny area. And, my Dad and Mother always seemed to have a stray tomato plant in their gardens. I suspect it was a private joke between them.

This is the pile of weeds that came out of these three small spaces:

After I weeded, I thoroughly watered. We had heavy rain on Saturday, but the gardens were bone dry. More to come later.

Oh, my......the gardens have gotten away from me once again.

It's silly to think that they are going to behave while I spend a month indoors hiding from the heat. It was cool at the start of the day, so I went out to work in the long bed along the drive. I thought I just needed to pull about six tall weeds and cut out four shrubby starts. On the drive side the gardens weren't too bad, but on the lawn side of the bed it's nightmare. I did a quick and dirty cleanup of the center of the bed on the drive side, and cut down the shrubs. I'll have put put hours in on the gardens every morning for the next month!

Johnson's or who ever it is who makes "Off" is going to make a fortune off me because the mosquitoes are dreadful! The hard part about working in the cool of the morning is that the mosquitoes are still out in force. I wear long pants, a long-sleeved shirt with a turtle neck and a hat, and all my clothes get sprayed. I add a little to my neck and ears, and do a lot of ducking from the 'sketers that get past the Off.

I'll have to make a note to myself to do before and after pictures.

We have reached the point of summer where I need to be careful of the heat and humidity and sunshine. When it gets too hot, I wilt, and there are too many things I want to do to be sitting on the sidelines recovering.

For years I've talked about working in the gardens a little every day, and this year seems to be my year to accomplish it! I've been getting up at 5:00 a.m. and putting in between 90 and 150 minutes on the gardens, almost every day. I was a lounge lizard on the Fourth, but I moved right along most of the week before, and returned to work today.

I have sternly forbidden myself from buying any plants until everything from the previous round of shopping was planted. I HATE loosing plants that succumb to heat. It's awful to see them waste away. I feel bad about killing off perfectly good plants, and hate to waste the money. Limiting what I purchase to what I have a chance of getting planted has been a win-win situation all around.

This weekend I planted two scented geraniums, two spicy globe basils, and three lemon verbena in the herb garden. Along the front sidewalk, I planted two thirds a flat of white alyssum, and five red-violet petunias. I've been weeding in the gardens along the front of the house, over a period of about four days. I continued today digging up a patch of crabgrass, pruning the junipers and birch, and starting to clear a path for the meter readers around the corner of the house.

The south side of my home is edged with a bed of day lilies. Unfortunately, this bed is infested with a strange weed that propagates via very shallow runners. The plants grow up to five feet tall and are topped with a small yellow flower that looks rather like a dandelion. The good thing about this weed is that it is very easy to pull! I spent about 20 minutes this morning clearing all but the last six feet of the bed. I came to a screeching halt when I found very healthy poison ivy plants. I need a hazmat suit that I can wear to protect myself so I can pull out those plants.

I've left the weeds lying on the lawn, which is a no-no, but I'll collect them tomorrow morning, and add a bit more of the evergreen to the wheelbarrow. I may have some teenaged assistance this weekend, so perhaps I can get some mulch down to prevent the return of the weeds. And, I hope to spread some cosmos and cleome seeds across the front of the house, so we may have some color later this season.

A little gardening each day seems to be the way to accomplish my goal. *S*

This week has been a busy one for me. On Tuesday, Scraps on a Mission met here and five of us continued to work on lap quilts for charity. The house was filled with the sound of busy sewing machines and women's laughter. We have five small projects completed, and I have seven more packaged and ready to be pin basted for quilting. YEA!!!

I've been working on the Casa Buffy National Park this week. It's not its stunning best, but we are well on our way to getting things manicured. Dear Husband has seen to the mowing, and I have used the string trimmer and the trimmer with the shrub blade. (Note to self: get that darned blade sharpened!)

I've been getting up at 5:00 in the morning to weed. It's been cool, even chilly at that time of the day, so I've gotten a lot of work done. There are still spots here and there in the gardens that need work, but the overall look is of lawns and gardens that are loved.

Yesterday I weeded for two and a half hours, and then went for a pedicure. A pedicure is one of the absolute best ways to pamper yourself! I came home to work in the office, and then I used the leaf blower to "sweep" the garage. If you try this, I suggest you cover your hair with a bandana, wear a face mask to avoid inhaling the dirt, and remember to carry the blower tube pointing up until you are ready to put it to work. Oh....and move the cars first! lol

Tonight is the "Fourth of July" picnic for my quilting bee. The ladies will bring dishes to pass and Dear Husband and I will grill a variety of meat. This is the only meeting where husbands are invited. I decided to do some extra things for the meal: deviled eggs, hamburger beans and a fruit salad, and we'll provide all the condiments and beverages. I have some cooking to do, so I'll keep this short.

I'm going to see "Larry Crowne" tomorrow. I love all of Tom Hanks movies. I expect this will be rather like "You've Got Mail," not his most serious work, but the perfect sort of movie for a summer afternoon. I need to get bird seed, and potting soil, and rooting hormone in the morning, and I may make a stop at our local farmer's market, and I plan to be lazy and bring something home for dinner so that I don't have to cook. It should be a lazy day!

I hope you will all have a wonderful Fourth of July. Be sure to teach the younger ones why we celebrate, and the responsibilities that come with freedom! Happy Fourth!

Between quilting and rainy days, I have not been in the gardens enough this spring. I had the pleasure of shopping for plants today, and hope to get some "dirt therapy" tomorrow.

The NW corner of the herb garden needs to be weeded and then I can plant the lemon verbena and scented geraniums. I'll check on the seeds that I planted a few weeks ago. From the kitchen window I can see zinnias coming up, but I need to walk out to check the things I've planted in the veggie beds. I wasn't good about keeping them watered, so I might have wasted seeds and time there.

I need more Homestead Purple verbena. I'd like carpets of it in two more parts of the gardens. I want to line the sidewalk with alyssum, and set out pots with lantana and ivy and ornamental peppers in a deep purple shade. I need to get a purple sweet potato vine, too.

I have TONS of weeding to do. Thank goodness we got a lot of rain this week. It will make things easier to pull. It's time to begin working in the gardens between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning. The heat will drive me inside, as it did earlier this week. Still, it's nice to be able to play in the dirt again!

Could it really be nine says since I last posted? I've certainly thought about posting, but my days have been full, so the ideas haven't made it to the page.

The egrets and herons returned around the seventh of May. We don't have huge numbers of them yet, but I have the pleasure of seeing at least one of them each time I go out. I have seen the big gray herons in flight several times, and they always remind me of pterodactyls.

Up until this week we had a long run of gray weather without the rain. This week we have finally gotten the rain. I made a trip to Morris, Illinois last Tuesday, and was pleasantly surprised to see that about 90% of the fields between Yorkville and Morris were planted, and many even had corn 4-6 inches tall. I know that many of the Midwestern states have had so much rain that the farmers haven't been able to get into the fields. We seem to have been a little area short on precipitation, so I'm not complaining. What I don't care for is being drop-kicked from the 60s to 90 degrees overnight!

Despite my post on being frugal, I bought a sewing machine! I have been concerned that my beloved Singer 301A would eventually go kaput, and not be repairable. I've sewed on that machine for more than fifty years, and adore it! I thought that it might be wise to have a newer machine as a back up, before Dear Husband and I retire. The new machine couldn't be more different. The Singer is a straight stitch portable machine made of iron. While I can drop the feed dogs to stipple quilt, it was never really intended for that purpose. The new machine is computerized, has a built-in dual feed system and an 11 inch opening through which I can feed quilts. There is a built-in needle threader. It has more than 100 stitches, an alphabet and numbers, and pattern memory. I can arrange for the needle to stop in the down position and there is a knee lever for lifting the presser foot. It's possible to run the machine without using the foot pedal. Most women who sew today take a lot of this for granted, but it's all new to me! I hope the learning curve won't be too steep.

I've planted all but two of the plants I picked up in my first garden shopping trip. The last two to go in were purple fountain grass, along the back of the bed next to the garage wall. If I had planted them a month ago, it would have been a lot easier, but this week I had to work around iris that were ready to open, and the last of the tulips. I asked DH to bring a chair and sit where he could keep an eye on me as I planted. I was afraid that I would get into a position I couldn't get out of. Luckily, the plants went in well, and with the use of the shovel handle, I was able to maneuver myself out of a tight spot and back onto my feet. I'm sure that his presence was what made that work. Had he not been there, I'd still be waiting for a hand out of the garden! *G*

I believe that eight to ten iris were blooming yesterday. One was open for a couple of days, and then it was a domino effect. It must have been just warm enough, and sunny enough to move them along on Tuesday. I have a lot of dark colored iris: navy, purple, burgundy, bronze, contrasted with yellow and peach. There's no rhyme or reason. If I see one I like, I try it, and they almost always multiply for me. They are at the top of the list for my favorite flowers.

We are going to celebrate my oldest granddaughter's seventh birthday today. Her birthday was last week, and they did a party for the kids, but the adults are gathering this weekend to celebrate. Last weekend was so popular there wasn't enough time to fit everything in. I was tickled to hear that GD1 wanted to be the Cake Boss. To further this goal, I bought her a Nordic pan that lets you create filled cup cakes that resemble a soft serve ice cream cone in shape when they are assembled. The top and bottom are baked separately, and then pudding or frosting or even ice cream can be spooned into the indentation in the bottom half. I doubt her mother has the time to cook with her, but I thought it might be something that GD1 and I could do this summer. It interests me that it's not the eating of the cupcakes, but the baking of them, that appeals to her.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. I hope that those of you who have been around for our wars will help our younger generation understand why we choose to remember those who have fought on our behalf.

As I cleaned earlier this year, I came across little collections of seeds everywhere. I dedicated one little basket to the seeds, and it finally overflowed with packets. I sorted the seeds a few weeks ago and decided that I would put them in, as many as I could, this year.

I have no idea if they will all germinate. It's possible that some of the seed it too old, but I'm planting it anyway!

I used a shovel to turn over the dirt in most of one arm of the herb garden. I broke up the clumps and took out old stems and new feverfew starts. (Feverfew is lovely, but it will take over your entire lot if you let it!). Once the bed was smoothed, I planted rows of giant State Fair zinnia. In front of that I planted a row of Giant Cactus zinnia, and in front of that a row of Cut and Come Again zinnia which are slightly smaller. Along the edge of the bed, I planted Nasturtiums. I didn't soak or nick the seeds, so I'm not sure what kind of turn out I'll have from the Nasturtiums.

Around the corner from the zinnias, I've planted a stand of Evening Sun sunflowers, with a row of Tithonia (Mexican Sunflowers) that should bloom in an orangey shade. When I clear the section between these two pods, I hope to plant Lemon Verbena and two scented geraniums.

The sky became threatening, but I ignored it to get the basil and parsley planted. I put in both curly and flat-leafed parsley, as usual. I still have to plant the basil at my kitchen sink, and the dill, but I'm moving right along.

I think the next area I'll finish is the center of the center box. I need to re-seat the St. Francis statue. He lists a bit. While I'm at it, I hope to dig up some of the crab grass roots that infest that area of the garden. The roots like to hide under the chive plants.
Once that part of the bed is done, I'll plant the miniature tomato plants, a Sweet 100 cherry, a yellow pear, and one new one that seems to be an orange/red version of the cherry tomato.

There are times when I drag my feet at the thought of going out to do this work. It isn't always fun, but the more I get done before the heat hits, the easier it is to maintain the grounds through the summer. I think I have about two more days of work on the herb garden, and then I can resume working on things at the front of the house. The rain we are supposed to get the next few days will make things easier.

Yea, for dirt therapy!!

So much has happened since I last talked about my gardens that I hardly know where to start, so this may be a scrambled account.

The bleeding heart is beautiful this year, next to the last of the daffodils to open, a set that is all white. The peonies are doing well, and have pushed up through the wire supports. I'd guess that they are over two feet tall now. I need to move mulch to cover parts of the driveway garden...as soon as it stops raining!

The hostas have come up. I need to trim the spent flower stalks from last year. I hope this year the bunnies will leave me a few hosta leaves. I believe that I am going to try a cayenne spray to see if that will help!

The daffodils are mostly gone now, but the memory remains of one of the most beautiful displays they have ever given us. I need to dead head so that they will bloom beautifully next year. I know that many people dislike dealing with the daffodil leaves as they ripen, but I don't mind leaving them into June. In some places other plants will cover them, but I just wait them out. It seems little enough to do in return for the pleasure they bring us.

The oldest lilac, one that was here when we built, is in bloom, and those that we planted should follow suit soon. Lombard, Illinois, has a lilac festival during May. I should drive over and take in the festival.

My chives are incredibly healthy, and almost ready to bloom. When the blooms have faded, I'll cut the plants back to encourage new growth, and I'll harvest that new growth and see if I can dry it. I am very seriously considering digging up the garlic chives. They insist on relocating, and once the little bulblette grows, they can be tough to weed out. I don't use the plant enough to justify giving them garden space.

I trimmed back the clematis and added new twine supports to the arbor. I used the string trimmer around the herb garden and north side of the garage, and I managed to get baby romaine, spinach, two kinds of dill and sweet basil seeds planted. Mother Nature is overseeing the watering this weekend.

I have an infestation of grass and bunnies where I used to have a thyme bed. The thyme got disgusted and climbed over the side of the bed to grow in the chat walkway. I'm going to dig out an area about 3 x 4 feet, and sieve the dirt, and then replant more thyme. There's also a salvia plant that I want to slip a support over, so that it doesn't sprawl this summer.

I have one arm of the herb garden that I think I am going to dig and amend so that I can grow zinnias. Zinnias were one of my father's favorite plants, and I'd like to see a riot of color in that corner.

I made my first trip to The Growing Place, and picked up parsley (flat and curled), Sweet basil starts, three kinds of tiny tomatoes (Sweet 100, pear and one new one whose name I can't recall), a Roma tomato, four pots of purple fountain grass, three of Homestead purple verbena, and two scented geraniums. It's time to start moving the geraniums that I wintered over outside, but I need to wait for it to warm up again.

The star magnolia and forsythia blooms are gone, and have been replaced by pear and apple blossoms. The air is filled with the petals of these plants as they near the end of their bloom season.

The honeysuckle, both the pink and the white/yellow versions are in bloom, and we are once again surrounded by the greenery of the shrubs and trees that give us the illusion of privacy in the midst of more than a quarter of a million people.

I love watching the changes, counting the passage of time by watching what's in bloom. As usual, Spring has brought great joy to my life!

I've seen egrets this week! Or, maybe I've seen the same egret more than once. He/She must be the scout to see if our weather is ready for the migration! lol Now, I'm watching for the herons. They are harder to see because of their smoky gray color, and how thin they are. If you are not seeing a side view of those birds, you might miss them!

Spring is FINALLY showing up!

I asked the man who has helped with some of our landscaping to fill my veggie beds with a mix of compost and dirt. I thought it would be delivered about three weeks ago, and was getting ready to call to find out what had happened. Dear Husband pointed out that it had been delivered yesterday. I have seeds to plant! I'll have to pass on the spinach until this fall, but I can get other things in, soon!

Tomorrow the Arr!! goes into Lake Michigan. Dear Husband is going to come home tomorrow night. He says that it's a bit too cool to sleep over on an unheated boat. He'll go back Sunday to get things squared away, and I'll spend the day piecing quilts!

Egrets, the Arr!!, seeds and quilting. It's Spring.

Well, it's greening up! The honeysuckle shrubs are leafing out. My chives are full, bushy clumps of green, and the grass is mostly green.

Easter was so late this year that my family has FINALLY had the chance to see the drifts of daffodils all across the lot. I created a cutting area years ago when I replanted two groups of daffodils to give them more space to branch out. I must have at least a dozen varieties of daffodils, perhaps more. I sent one of my nieces out to clip daffodils for an arrangement in the kitchen, and she chose tall ones and short ones, white ones and yellow ones, single and doubles, to make a beautiful bouquet. One pod of tulips were open and this week more will open as we loose some of the early daffodils. This cold weather has made a huge difference in the length of display. While I'd like a little more sunshine and just a few more degrees of heat, it was wonderful for my family to finally get to see what I've been bragging about all these years.

As for the green, I've noticed that the weeds are pretty healthy, too. I have perennial thistles in my front sidewalk garden. I pulled a lot of them, but you know they are just going to come back. If it ever stops raining, I may try some weed killer on them. Perhaps something systemic will keep them from coming back.

Coming soon: tulips, iris, lilacs and peonies!!! I've cleared everything off my camera so I can take more pictures, and I'll share some of them with you.

Happy Spring!

It's supposed to be Spring, but this is the oddest weather I can remember having in April. The really good side to all of this is that the cooler weather is allowing the bloom on the daffodils, tulips, forsythia and star magnolia to last unusually long.

Dear Husband came home around 4:00. I was watching Mr. and Mrs. Mallard out the kitchen window. The change in the amount of greenery, and the shades of greenery between noon and 4:00 was astonishing! We had a chilly, rainy day, but the grass, the honeysuckle bushes, daylilies, chives and everything else in the herb garden just seemed to be jumping out of the ground, shaking off winter and embracing a new season!

I took the bows off the evergreen (or not so green) wreaths that had been stored in the garage during the last month or two. I save these bows from year to year and hadn't gotten around to storing them. That paved the way to move wood from the wagon so that we could have a fire after dinner tonight. It was lovely, warm and inviting. I have enough wood left to repeat the fire tomorrow. Actually, I may refill the wagon and have a fire every night of the coming week, since it's supposed to remain in the fifties all week long.

I hope we get a break in the stormy weather tomorrow. I'd like to take pictures of the daffodils at the front of the house. I thought I'd put together a book of pictures of the gardens so that I can remember what blooms and where it blooms. Like my mother, I seem to always want to plant something where something else already lives.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

I weeded one of the raised veggie beds today. I don't know the name of the weed that was trying to take it over. It might be Creeping Charlie, but I'm not sure of that. This weed forms mounds of leaves in a shape that is rather like half of a ball. The leaves are a medium green, medium sized, rounded and very gently indented on the edges. The weed has a taproot that will probably come out in China by August. It was well developed and it's only early April. I'm going to have compost added to the veggie beds this year, and it would have been a mistake just to pour the compost over these plants. I'm sure they would have found a way to push through it. It was easy to weed them from the friable compost/soil in the raised bed, but that tap root would be a killer to deal with in our clay soil.

I'll have to ask my sister when she returns at Easter to tell me if the plant that I'm trying to eradicate is Creeping Charlie.

Tulips, and crocus, and snow bells a-rising.....

Daffodils are making lots of headway, and I can see chives from the kitchen windows. The oregano was greening up under the stalks that had wintered over. I can see the lamb's ears beginning to shape up. They're not just a mound of sad-looking leaves any longer.

I planted six specimen plants under one of the front windows, and I can see two small plants greening up. Unfortunately, I can't recall just which plants they might be. I know there's foxglove and phlox but I don't think these little plants are either of those. I'll have to wait for bloom and mark them.

The ox-eye daisies that I have been ripping out of my flower beds are coming back, especially where they are growing among old iris. I didn't want to sacrifice the iris just to pull out the daisies, but their time may be coming!

The iris have very nice new leaf starts on them. I need to walk down the driveway to see if the new iris I planted have made it through the winter. It would be a good time to check on the peonies, too.

I have a mound of mulch that I want to spread over the gardens, and I should get some Preen out there where I don't intend to plant seeds.

I love Spring!

The daffodils are coming up!!

As I was coming up the driveway yesterday, I could see a stiff stand of leaves about two inches tall in the bed at the front of the house. Today, I stepped out to check on them, and could see that pods of daffodils are up all along the face of the house. YES!!

Last week, as I fed the birds, I could see that the oregano was greening up. No doubt the other herbs will make a showing, especially tomorrow when it is supposed to be 44 degrees.

This little bit of greening is just the start of a rush that will come during the next month, but it's always the best. It confirms that spring is coming, that things will renew, and that there is hope that the cycle of our days will continue as expected.

I think I'll spend a little time with the White Flower Farm catalog, dreaming of just how beautiful the grounds could be.

I'm SUCH a happy camper!

The amaryllis is at least 34" tall, but since I last wrote about it, there is another bud stalk coming up, and there are at least four leaves. The longest leaf is about eight inches long, the others are just starting to come up.

The bud on the tall stalk is just beginning to open. I noticed a slit on the outer shell, and you can see the tips of the flowers within.

Perhaps most people are not as interested in how an amaryllis grows, but it reminds me of my father. The last year or so of his life, I lived in Missouri in a cabin on my parent's property. I worked for my Dad, and ate meals with them. Dad had built a rustic fireplace in the dining room and that particular year, Mother was growing an amaryllis. Dad's chair at the head of the table had him facing the fireplace, and as the amaryllis grew, he kept track of its height by measuring it against the stones of the fireplace. We received a daily report, and it created a sense of anticipation as the stalk grew taller and taller.

I'd forgotten how tall this particular amaryllis was. It might have skipped a season of bloom, or perhaps I was just too busy last year to make a mental note about it's growth. My Mother would be thrilled to see it blooming again. I'm sure she would encourage me to take pictures and print them out for her. She truly loved these flowers.

I'm blessed that such simple things bring good memories.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I have an amaryllis that I was going to pitch out that decided to bloom. I moved it out into the sunlight and started watering it again, and it has grown at a phenomenal rate!

There's a stalk, with a bud at the top, and now two leaves have pushed their way out of the bulb. This morning I measured the stalk and it topped out at about 30 inches. This evening, just out of curiosity, I checked it again, and it's a tad over 31 inches. I think the growth of the stalk is slowing down and we may see the bud begin to develop.

I hope it it one of those gorgeous white flowers with the pink stripes down the center of each petal. Pictures to follow!

I have an Amaryllis that is growing a bloom stalk! I was going to throw it away, but surfed on amaryllis care and decided that I might try for one more set of blooms on my four pots of amaryllis.

This particular plant lost it's last leaves and I had set it out in the mudroom where it got no direct sun, and very little indirect light. I learned that I didn't want to put it in the garage where it would freeze, so it was just waiting there for me to find a place to store it. I was VERY surprised when I discovered a bud and a couple inches of stalk. I moved it to the kitchen where there's a lot of indirect light. I may move it once more, to the office, where it could sit next to a south facing window. I cant wait to see this plant bloom!

Yea, plant!

I noticed while I was on my hands and knees a few feet further down the garden that a small patch of iris was really short on dirt around it's roots. Since I was there, I added som dirt, bringing it up around the edges of the rhizomes. Iris do really well in cool weather, so I thought there might be a bit more growth this fall, as they get ready to settle in for the winter.

I was putting a chrysanthemum in the basket by the front door and looked down at the iris as I passed. I could see the roots again! Apparently, where my iris is planted there is a back door to a chipmunk burrow. It's too late in the season to move the iris, so every day from now until the chipmunks go into hibernation, I'm going to have to add dirt around these iris.

Doesn't this have the feel of one of the Looney Tunes cartoons? I can just see one of those characters pouring tons of dirt over the iris and the chipmunks flinging back out again at jet speed! Darned little rodents!

I've planned to get into the gardens for an hour or two a day, while the weather lasts. It's got to be easier on my body, and on my schedule, to spread it out over several weeks. With that in mind, I went out yesterday to plant six tulips about about a dozen lilies in the garden closest to the front door.

I wrote earlier that I had trimmed back half of the vinca in that bed. As I got ready to plant the lilies, I thought that it would be wiser to cut out the superstructure of the vinca, and remove as much of it as possible. I told Cop Car that I'm not kidding myself that I've eradicated it, but at least it will start from a much smaller base next year. That little project took the half hour that I thought I would be spending in the garden.

I started moving dirt with a trowel before I smacked myself in the head, got up, and started to shovel dirt out of the way. Clunk! Huh?? I tried again. Clunk! Okay....back to my knees with the trowel. I heard a metalic scrape. Light began to dawn. Probably 15 years ago, in an effort to outsmart the chipmunks, Dear Husband created a box for me out of hardware cloth. It's a grid of wire that must be a half to three-quarter of an inch square. I dug out a huge hole, lowered the box into it, partially filled in the box, planted the tulips, covered them, lowered the lid, and covered that with dirt, too. It's been buried there all this time. ONE lonely tulip has bloomed every year.

I figured that I was this far along, I might as well dig the thing out. Oh boy.....do my muscles feel it! Most of the work had to be done with a hand trowel. When I got most of the box emptied, I used the shovel to lift it out, and it came out in pretty darned good shape. There were two crocus bulbs, and three baby crocus bulbs. Not a single tulip to be found.

By that time, I had a hole that was perfect for the tulips and the lilies. IF the chipmunks let me have a year of bloom on the tulips, I'll be lucky, but the lilies should last for a while, and be a nice addition to the garden.

I have been THINKING about gardening for a month or so. Lately, I've been telling myself that I needed to take advantage of the wonderful sunny, not too warm days, to get out and begin the work of putting the gardens to bed for the winter. When I started falling asleep planning what needed to be done, and waking up, thinking, "I'd better get into the gardens today, the rain is coming," I figured I'd better DO something about it.

This morning I worked in the herb garden. Because we put a new layer of chat down in the walkways this year, there wasn't much that needed to be done there. What a relief. It's stupid to spend your time on your hands and knees weeding a walkway when it's chilly and damp! I'll put some Preen down later this month and perhaps that will help head off any seeds that have strayed from the garlic chives and feverfew and lemon balm.

I clipped the tomatoes at the base of the stems and then lifted out the branches and the supports. I decided to cut the garlic chives back this year, but I waited too late to keep them from spreading their seeds. I'm seriously thinking about digging them out next year. I don't use enough of them to justify the headache of weeding out the new plants.

I cut back the sweet basil plants. There are still two small globe basils, but I'll get them the next time. I'm growing zinnias in the herb garden this year. Zinnias were one of my Dad's favorite plants. I thought the seeds I had would be plants about twelve to eighteen inches high. These are HUGE! I think some of them must be over 36 inches tall. I've left them for the time being because the birds seem to like the seeds, and we've seen humming birds visiting them. Once the hard frost kills them off, I'll probably cut them down.

After lunch, I worked in the sidewalk garden at the front of the house. I pulled spent plants from several planters and moved three of the planters into the garage. I've had volunteer tomatoes growing in the volunteer vinca, and I ripped out all the tomatoes on the north side of the sidewalk, and half the vinca. I added dirt around the base of a very old Palace Purple huchera, and planted three small starts that were knocked off when I weeded. I have six tulips and about a dozen lilies to plant in that area when I get the rest of the vinca cleared out.

I still have some iris to clean out, and a dahlia to lift. I hope it will store over in the basement during the winter. I want to put straw down over the ferns and some of the daylilies, and there is a garden on the east side of the driveway that needs some TLC. I'm not done by a long shot, but I got a good start today. I think the rain that we are supposed to have this week will make some of the chores a little easier to do.

It was a good day for gardening!

We live on a wooded lot, and I have learned that where you have dappled shade, you also have poison ivy. We have a LOT of poison ivy, unfortunately, and I am very allergic to it. For the most part, I can ignore it, or kill it off, but there has been a rash of it (Get the pun???) in the garden at the front of the house.

Dear Husband was kind enough to spray one of the plants that was in an area where other plants wouldn't be hurt by the spray. But, there's an amazingly healthy poison ivy plant that has settled into the middle of my perennials where I can't spray it. Because I've dithered about this, it has sent out arms to colonize the area, and now, I must do something about it.

Either tomorrow, or very shortly, I plan to pull on an old pair of pants that I can throw away, an old turtleneck with long sleeves that I can ditch, and old socks. I'll find three bandanas and cover my nose and mouth with one, my forehead with another and my hair with the third. I'll put on latex gloves, and cover those with a pair of gardening gloves that can be pitched out, and I'll wade into battle with the darned plant!!

I can't burn the plants I pull, and if I leave them lying somewhere, we could still brush the dead plant and pick up the oil. I guess I have to put the plants into a garbage bag and dispose of them. My clothes will go into another, and I'll leave the gloves on until I have thrown my outer wear away. I'm not taking ANY chances. I know what it's like to have poison ivy, and I really hope to never have it ever again!!

Wish me luck.

I have harvested my first tomatoes of the season! I thought I'd get the jump on the chipmunks and deer and bunnies and pick the very few tomatoes that were ready to eat. I have three yellow pear tomatoes, the tiny ones, a cherry tomato, and what I think may be a "Celebrity" tomato.

The chipmunks planted tomato seeds in the gardens at the sidewalk leading to the front door. The seed was in seventh heaven, because that's one of the areas that has full sunlight, and it gets water regularly from roof run off, and overlap from watering the containers. It turns out there are two cherry tomato plants. They exploded with growth when the heat arrived and were growing across the sidewalk. Our guests had to hop over them. I should have corralled them sooner, but didn't have anything to use. Dear Husband clipped apart an old trellis and we slid it under them and propped them up. It could look better, but the plants seem to be thriving.

When I weeded across the front of the house, to see if the Russian Blue sage was still there, I discovered more tomato plants, and left them. We'll see if there will be tomatoes to harvest, there, too.

I'm looking forward to ripe homegrown tomatoes in "Summer" salad, and "Farmer's Tomato Pie!"

Visit the May 13, 2003 archives for the recipe for Farmer's Tomato Pie. "Summer" salad is diced tomatoes or thin tomato wedges, with cucumber slices and sliced green onions, with dill, in a vinaigrette. You can add other veggies, or omit those you don't care for to personalize the recipe.

I MUST get into the habit of taking before and after pictures!

Frankie worked with me in the herb garden for an hour and a half yesterday, when it was deliciously cool in the early morning. I looked out over the garden this morning, and to the side there are three huge piles of herbs and brush waiting to be picked up, and a wheel barrow that is filled to the brim, waiting to be sent to the north 40. There's also a new pile of mulch that needs to be distributed, but I'll have to wait until the guys empty the wheelbarrow for me.

We cut back the chives, feverfew, lemon balm, the flower stalks of the lamb's ears, and a good portion of the oregano. I decided to take the oregano down to the crown, and in the process came across a bunny nest. Something moved. Oooops...... I left some of the oregano around it to shade it. I hope....well, never mind. Enough said.

I also cut back spent stalks on the salvia, at Frankie's suggestion. There are new starts coming up in the center of the plant, and Frankie tells me that there will be a flush of new growth now.

I have a rudbekia "Goldsturm" in the herb garden, and one more in a tiny area to the left of the back door to the garage. Catnip was trying to overgrow the one by the garage, so I pulled out all that catnip. It has spread to virtually all the gardens, so I don't have to worry about running out of it. Besides, with Ed gone, I don't need a lot of catnip right now.

I was startled to find that the chives were already growing back today! What an amazing plant!

Friday we had unexpectedly heavy rain. Frankie was woken by the sound of the rain on the roof, which is a pretty rare occurrence in this house. It's structured in a way that there's a lot of air space between the roof and the ceilings in most of the rooms, but the two "barrel" bump outs at the front of the house and the skylights can be pretty noisy in really hard rains. When we were out and about on Saturday morning, we found lots of streets that were closed due to flooding. I understand that some of the expressways in Chicago were closed for a bit.

I was delighted to have the rain. We were getting a little desperate, and I had begun watering with a hand-held watering wand. I was going to have to shift to a sprinkler, not my favorite thing to do. I had just planted cosmos and cleome in the gardens at the front of the house. I suspect that all that seed is now lodged at the front of the bed, and I'll get a line of plants right at the sidewalk! Still, I am glad we had rain.

I have five oregano plants in my herb garden. Each of the five would like to multiply, but I've discovered that five oregano plants provide enough oregano to supply all of the collar counties around Chicago, so I'm pretty ruthless about ripping out new starts.

Here's a link to a recipe for fingerling potatoes with Oregano Pesto that I'll be trying this summer. Get out there and harvest your oregano, or find a friend who will share. There are loads of great recipes that use oregano!

According to Wikipedia:

"Deadheading can refer to the following:

* Pruning in landscaping and other plant care.
* Deadheading (aviation) - the transport of off-duty crew to their next assignment.
* Deadheading (railroads) - the movement of non-revenue personnel or equipment to a position required by schedule."

This is the season for deadheading iris and peonies. We dead head the iris for aesthetic reasons. The stalks with shriveled, dead flowers are not the prettiest sight, so once we have gotten to the end of the bloom time, I cut back the stalks and dispose of them.

The peonies, if not dead headed, will create a seed pod. Rather than have the plant put the effort into making seed that I don't want, I cut off spent blooms so that the plant itself will grow and become hardier. Elegante Mother taught me to cut the stems back to shape the plant for the summer.

Soon, I'll need to deadhead coreopsis plants to encourage them to continue to bloom.

I should be deadheading the daisies, but instead, I plant to either dig them up and give them away, or I'm going to prune them back so severely that it would be considered more than deadheading. We have masses of them this year, and with the recent rain, and the heat of summer coming early, they have gotten lanky and are leaning out from the center of the pods. There are so many of them that you can hardly get up the sidewalk.

So, I have my work cut out for me (no pun intended). The gardens will look better, and the plants I want to keep will be healthier. We'll have greater air circulation and each plant will get more sunshine.

Summer's here.....and it's time to be in the gardens!

I may be pushing it just a bit, but I started planting annuals, and herbs today and I think I may plant tomatoes this weekend. I'll have to keep an eye on the forecasts for the next ten days or so, to be sure that we aren't surprised with a frost, or I could loose everything I planted today.

I have an inordinate number of volunteer ox-eye daisies. I ripped out several pods of them about ten days ago, and a few more today. (I'm going to send them to Bogie for her gardens! lol) That made room for Homestead purple verbena, nicotiana, petunias, and allyssum. I've already planted two more lavender plants, and a dahlia. I think I may have crowded that dahlia a bit. I'll just have to see how things develop as the weather warms up.

This evening I planted Genovese basil, sweet basil, lemon verbena, rosemary, flat leafed and curley parsley and dill. (I forgot that I have two globe basils to plant.) I need to clear a section of the herb garden that has been taken over by plants I don't want, to make room for a miniature pear-shaped yellow tomato, and a cherry tomato plant. I think they should do well there because they will be easier to water.

My iris are going to open a week or so early. I already have a gorgeous dark blue, a garnet, burgundy, peach, and two rose bi-color iris open. I'll take pictures of them tomorrow, and post them on the blog.

I decided to use the Homestead purple verbena as a theme through three of the gardens. I've planted it at the sidewalk garden today, and tomorrow I hope to plant it in the long driveway garden south of the house, and the smaller garden across from the house on the east side of the drive. I think the purple will be a good contrast for the plants in those gardens, and will give a sense of unity to the landscaping.

More, tomorrow!

Twenty years ago, Dear Husband created a raised herb bed for me during the summer. I was eager to have some color and display, so that first year, I planted a wildflower mix in the center box. I thought that I'd be able to cut flowers for the house, and the following year the box would be ready for herbs.

What I didn't understand, not having had a place to grow wildflowers, was that the chipmunks would harvest the seeds of the annuals and store them, and the following year I would find flowers growing in all sorts of unexpected places! The hardiest of all those flowers were ox-eye daisies. They are the traditional simple white daisy that everyone recognizes. They start with a low mound of leaves and then shoot up multiple stems with blooms. I still have the relatives of those first plants growing twenty years later!

We have had two days of rain and these low mounds of leaves have exploded into two foot tall plants ready to bloom! They were shading the rose, the iris, and several plants that I have been babying, so some of them had to go! I went out for two "weeding" sessions today, and by the time I was done there was a pile of unwanted plants roughly four feet by three feet by two feet sitting at the edge of the drive.

The sidewalk bed is looking much better, and now I have a place where I can put in a few annuals to give the bed color during the hot months. I planted two lilies, a dahlia and two lavender plants, and potted a geranium. My iris already have buds (it seems just a little early), and we'll have masses of daisies to accent the iris color later this month.

My next foray into the garden will be to plant spinach and wildflowers. I'm looking forward to my trip to the nursery. I need to pick up tomatoes and basil and some alyssum, but I'm going to do one bed from seeds. Spring has arrived so early that I may be able to get things started by the end of the week.

If you should be in the vicinity of Peru, Indiana, I highly recommend that you look for Garden Gate Nursery. I've been visiting this nursery for years on my annual visit to my sister, and they have wonderful plants! The variety is excellent, and the plants are healthy and strong.

What makes me tell you about them is not the quality of their plants, but their generosity of spirit. While I was there, I dropped my cell phone in their parking lot and left without realizing my loss. When we returned to Illinois the next day, there were two messages from them on my answering machine, asking me to call to determine what to do about the phone.

When I called, I asked if they would mail the phone to me. The owner took my name and address, and then made a sound of understanding when he realized I live in the Chicago suburbs. It was going to be difficult for me to get back to them the next day. I offered my credit card number to cover the cost of postage and handling, but he refused it! They wrapped the phone in bubble wrap and placed it in a Priority Mail box and sent it off. It arrived safely two days later.

So, I am pleased to let you know about this company, and hope that you will have the chance to visit with them. I'm sure you will enjoy the visit, and the plants you purchase, as well.

I know that you will see this before you get to the next entry, so this thought is a little out of order, but related.

I had the pleasure of working in the front garden yesterday. I decided to deadhead daffodils, and worked for an hour clipping them back. I need another hour. I think I might have gotten about half of them done. It was an incredibly prolific year for daffodils.

While I was there, I took the time to trim back the Russian sage, which has a nice start. I also pruned dead branches off the redbud, and cleared some weeds from the mulched bed. It's VERY satisfying to know that so little effort can make such a difference in the appearance of the gardens.

I've been blogging in my head for the last month, and almost every thought had to do with the spectacular Spring we have been experiencing. Starting at the end of March, we had a spate of warm weather that lead up to Easter. I was afraid that the daffodils, which had opened early in the warmth, would faint before my family could see their glory at Easter. Not only did they last, but more opened. This is the first time daffodil season and Easter Sunday have coincided, so that my extended family could see the display.

Thanks to a shift back to more seasonal weather, the daffodils hung on for weeks, joined about ten days ago by tulips. Each time I walk outside, I feel like the dog in the commercial who is tossed a doggie treat, and he floats into the air in happiness! I wiggle with pleasure at the beauty around me!

Dear Husband, wonderful man that he is, has slipped the rings over the peonies. They have responded to the warmth, and are easily 15 inches tall now. I plan to harvest some of the buds before they open and refrigerate them, so that I can enjoy peonies for weeks in flower arrangements.

I spent a couple of days working in the herb garden several weeks ago. I got in early to kill off thousands of feverfew starts that I didn't want. That's an incredibly prolific plant. If you don't plan to make your own tinctures and teas, you might want to think twice about planting it. I cleared the walkway while I was at it, and put down Preen, but I should have watered the Preen in, and I can see that I have more volunteers to kill off.

When we visited with my youngest sis a week ago, we made our annual visit to her favorite nursery. I brought home a few plants that I hope to get in this week. I'll have to wait on the basil, but the lavender can be planted now, and I think I might get away with the annual red fountain grass. It's tender, but it will be planted next to a brick wall that should radiate heat during the night, and allow for the earlier planting.

I have spinach plants rising up through the dirt in the trial pot. I believe that I can start spinach fully eight weeks prior to our last frost date and have a viable crop. I have some in the bed now, and I'll try to get another row in tomorrow. We're having on-again off-again rain for several days, so I'll have to run out between storms to get it planted.

I think this may be one of the best Springs that I can remember. The period from early April to late June is my favorite in the gardens. They have their best display, and I love the early bloomers. Iris are coming on strong, closely followed by lilies and day lilies. There's something new blooming almost every week. I'll try to be more vigilant with my camera so that you can see what's sending me into raptures!

Happy Spring to you all!

I can see daffodils just waiting for one slightly warmer day to burst into bloom! The daylilies are coming up nicely, as are the tulips. The crocus are still in bloom, but the cold, windy weather has been hard on them. Some of the larger ones have been blown over, or perhaps the raccoons have trampled them.

The chives have greened up and I can see starts of feverfew in the herb garden. The forsythia is taking on a golden hue. I hope to do a little trimming in the gardens next week. I need to cut down purple coneflower stems from last year, as well as chrysanthemums and verbena.

Wednesday afternoon I spent about 90 minutes raking gravel out of the lawn. Dear Husband had to plow the drive this winter and he managed to deposit a good portion of the drive on the lawn. We've both worked at this project off and on for a week or so. DH moves the heavier stuff, and then I come along with a leaf rake and get the finer pebbles. I've managed to thatch that portion of the lawn at the same time. We still have a bit to do, but I think we are two-thirds through the project. It will be time to sow some grass seed soon.

This weekend I plan to start my spinach test. I have conflicting information on how early to start spinach seed out of doors in my hardiness zone so I'm starting seed in large containers this week and next, and then in the raised veggie beds in three weeks. I should be able to get an idea what conditions will work for spinach seed starting, so that I can get an early crop started next year.

I'm going to see if I can buy some pansies to plant near the front door for Easter. We need a little color to welcome our guests, and they should be hardy enough to cope with the cool weather.

I hope you're all getting the chance to get out and work in your gardens. I know it's rushing the year a bit, but I have cabin fever, and really need to play in the dirt. Happy Spring to you all!

Our chipmunk population has been redesigning our gardens. I have a wave of tiny purple crocus across the garden at the foot of the sidewalk. I was sure that I planted crocus closer to the front door! There's still one gold crocus, and a white one, but these tiny purple ones are multiplying and making a pretty spring statement.

The iris seem happy with the weather. I see short leaves from all of them. I hope to do a major redesign of the sidewalk garden and I'll be sorry to move all those iris. We haven't recovered from the move of two years ago. I suppose that means that this would be the right time to make the adjustments.

I wish I could tell you that I had made good use of the 60 degree weather yesterday and today. Unfortunately, I've been chained to my desk this afternoon. I may go out for 30 minutes to rake the gravel off the front lawn. The chipmunks aren't the only ones who have been redesigning here. Dear Husband relocated the lawn in four places when he plowed the driveway this winter, so we need to roll out the lawn and reseed. Too bad I can't get the chipmunks to work with DH. ;-)

Wednesday, I looked out the kitchen window and saw that my herb garden was covered with a hard frost. I thought, "That's the end of the growing season!"

But, I was wrong. When the sun melted the frost away, many of the herbs perked up, and they are still growing. The parsley, in particular, seems to like to cold, but the oregano, thyme and sage are still growing.

I cut down the columnar basil last week. It's pretty tender, and it doesn't take much to end the basil's growing season. I also cut down the lemon verbena, and let it dry inside. I pulled the leaves off to use as a room freshener. I grow lemon verbena as an annual here, but I understand that in the south the plant is perennial and gets quite large.

We have a few chores to do this weekend, and the grounds will be mostly ready for the winter. Dear Husband has covered the long driveway garden with leaves. I want to rake back the leaves on the peonies, cover them with compost and humus, and then recover them with leaves for the winter. I also need to spread straw over the ferns, and there's a volunteer tree growing among the daylilies outside my office window that needs to be cut down.

This morning I will be going to services for the husband of a dear friend. Dorothy and Emil moved to Cincinnati when it became clear that Emil was developing Alzheimer's. They wanted to be closer to their daughter, where they could ask for help, if needed. Emil has passed away, and Dorothy decided to have his service here, where they had made so many friends. This is a sad duty, one I feel I must do. I met Dorothy when she visited during the monthly Empty Nesters Sewing Circle Elegante Mother hosted. For EM, and for Dorothy, I'll go and celebrate Emil's life.

I'm delighted to tell you that Christmas has arrived! I have a plant that we call a "Christmas Cactus." My understanding is that it blooms these absolutely gorgeous blooms at Christmas.

Well, this plant is just a bit confused, and more so than usual. Normally it begins blooming late in November, sometimes in time for Thanksgiving. Then it blooms again, sometimes for Christmas, for Valentine's Day, and for Easter. It's covered with the palest fuchsia flowers. It looks a lot like this.

So, my plant is confused. Elegante Mother's Christmas cactus is confused, too. Soon we'll have a mass of hot orangey-red blooms open on her cactus. That MUST mean .... IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!! Break out the mulled wine!

Well, actually....I hurt like hell, but I'm delighted to have accomplished so very much today!

I started out early this morning trimming and pulling spent plants from the gardens leading to our front door. There's a lot of work to do there to put the gardens to bed for the winter, and it was so nice today that I just kept working my way down the walk. Dear Husband came out about an hour later and started blowing the leaves into piles. I took a break and went back to it, and then we both stopped to have a sandwich.

After lunch, my stepson joined me in the gardens. We cut down the peonies and purple coneflower in the driveway gardens, and pulled the metal plant supports. He raked up the spent plants while I finished cutting down daylilies.

One of the big projects for today was to reorganize the garage for better storage, and cleaning the garage floor before we close up for winter. My stepson has recently purchased a motorcycle, and we've had to figure out how to squeeze everything in. I have eight pots of plants that I winter over in the unheated garage, set on a stack of styrofoam insullation. We reorganized garden equipment storage, and the recycling bins. Some things were thrown out, while others went down into the basement.

On paper it doesn't sound like a lot, but it was six hours of constant work, and it clears the way for us to settle in for the winter. I'm just SO pleased that we got so much done. I still have a short list of things to do, but with Frankie's help on the herb garden, and what we accomplished today, I can go into the holidays knowing that the grounds look tidy.

I need to have Dear Husband pick up a couple of bales of straw for me. I want to cover the ferns and daylilies. I need a couple of bags of compost. We covered peonies with dirt today. I'd like to top that off with compost to give them some organic food next spring.

So, this has been another of those "A day in the life of...." posts, but I can tell you that I FEEL GREAT!!! YEA! What a nice way to start November!

I have my annual Fall cold. I have been blaming my stepson for sharing his with me, but I discovered that my niece has the same cold, and she was with us for an afternoon. On top of that, I've been exposed to the swine flu, so I have spent the past two weeks pretty close to home. I chose not to go to exercise because I felt it would be wrong to share the swine flu with the senior citizens in the class. I hope to get back to exercise next week, before all my muscles turn to jello!

It's supposed to be almost 70 degrees today. It's sunny, and will be the last of the sunny days this week. We have rain forecast from this evening through Saturday. I should do a little work in the gardens, to move us through preparation for winter. My dear sis, Frankie, has done most of the work in the herb garden. I need to work at the front of the house, and in the long driveway gardens where the peonies grow.

Dear Husband was able to bring the boat home safely last weekend. Other than being swamped by a huge wave as he motored south to the yacht yard, it was a relatively uneventful trip. I suspect that he did better without my help than he does with it. He's been offloading anything that would freeze, and winterizing the motor and bilges. Poor guy. Seven months and he'll be back on the water!

Zucchini bread and pumpkin muffins are the only things I've baked so far. I'd like to make a carrot cake, and some pumpkin bread, and maybe some zucchini bread to freeze. I love the scent of fall seasonings. Cinnamon must be my all time favorite flavor!

I've managed to enter my Mother's checkbook onto Quicken, but I realized yesterday that the program sees it as my property, rather than a separate account. I need to see if there is any way to sequester that data so that I can run reports, or I'll have more work to do at tax time. Darn it all!

And that's about all the news that's fit to print. I hope you are all having a good Fall!

My sister, Frankie, of Just My Opinion, is not happy to be just my sister. She has also applied to be my Fairy Godmother and I think she may beat out all the other contestants!

Last weekend, Frankie and her youngest daughter, our artist-in-training (AIT) came for a visit. It was MUCH too short, but they were able to arrive Friday night, and could stay until Sunday morning. Believe me, if you could see the Day-Timers for these two women, you would know how blessed I was to have even that much of their time.

I THOUGHT that the reason for this visit was to blitz the sewing of a new quilt top for Frankie. This summer she called me while she was standing in the midst of a fabric sale (be still my beating heart!) and asked me how much fabric she needed for a log cabin quilt. I was surprised to be able to give her any kind of sensible answer, but she seemed happy with my response, and brought the fabric to show, the next time she visited.

I'd cleared off the table in the quilt studio in preparation for cutting the strips. I thought we would start early Saturday morning and zip right through this to give her a completed top to take home. She had other ideas.

It was supposed to rain on Saturday. The clouds were out west, and I thought it would be rainy all Saturday. Frankie had mentioned that she wanted to help me clean up my gardens. It's about a month too early to put them to bed for the winter, but they were looking pretty woolly, and needed attention. She decided that we needed to get out and put a couple of hours in before the rain came.

"But, the quilt..." "We'll get to it."

So, we put on our gardening clothes and gloves and trouped out. Frankie decided to start in the herb garden, which of all my gardens needed the most help. The herb garden sits to the north of the house, even with the kitchen. I can look out over it as I work at the sink. She asked me what could go, and what needed to be trimmed, and went off to collect her tools. She brought the entire compliment of loppers and rakes and hoes and shovels from home!

The area immediately to the east of the herb garden (on the north side of the garage) is rather like the poor relation in my yard. It really needs to be cleared, so that I can have a paved patio installed, but at the very least, I should put down landscaping paper and mulch or gravel. It was a mess of weeds and equipment, and it was driving me crazy.

While Frankie cleaned up my herb garden, I used the string trimmer to cut back all the weeds. Then, I moved three different sizes of Weber grills, the sieve I use when cleaning dirt from pots, the saw horses, and some potted plants onto the newly cleared area. (Frankie, I planted chrysanthemums in that little box at the front of the garage!)

The front of the house looks vastly improved, and so does that area north of the garage. But, the herb garden.......WOW! Frankie cleaned the walkways. ALL of the walkways! I tend to get one side or the other when I get to working on the garden, but she got the entire path! Even the little areas that lead to the lawn, where I traditionally heap up weeds waiting to be picked up! It looks astonishing! I know...a picture is worth a thousand words. I promise to take pictures and post them here.

Frankie cut back the rudbekia, and the oregano and the chives, and the lemon balm. She ripped out the spent basil plants, but had the sense to leave the lemon verbena and the columnar basil. We decided to leave the purple coneflower, which looks really untidy right now, but it feeds the finches, so it gets to stay another month. We both like the look of the lamb's ears that has escaped the formal bed to grow in the walkway, so we agreed to leave those, too. It looks absolutely wonderful.

I should also sing the praises of AIT, who got out of bed to pick up loads of weeds and run them to the back in a wheelbarrow that had a tire going flat! She made things fly for us, and I can't praise her enough for her part in all this.

We worked for close to four hours! I was really glad to "tweet" and call a halt. We were both at places where we were willing to quit, in other words, DONE! My herb garden is glorious! Thank you dear Sis and Niece for all you did!

Oh...I forgot to mention that they spent about half an hour pulling grapevines from our shrubs. I can't wait to see the finished project that Frankie is working on. I believe she is creating a grapevine Christmas tree.

As for the quilt top, it was interrupted once more. We all showered and had lunch and the girls went to buy a pair (or more) of shoes for AIT. She is a college student and has discovered the necessity of having good shoes. She found a pair of shoes and a pair of winter boots. Frankie found a pair, too, so shopping was a success.

When they returned, tired, I cracked the whip, and insisted that we work on cutting the strips for the quilt! I ironed fabric and handed it to Frankie, and she cut the strips. We were two thirds of the way through the project when I had to fix dinner, so she kept cutting and got it all done. AIT and I worked on dinner, and we put out a bowl of mixed fruit, tuna melts on English muffins, and a huge bowl of salad with strips of chicken and practically every veggie in the house!

After dinner, Frankie thought she was going to be allowed to rest. There was some mention of aching muscles, and how long a day it was, but I was of a mind to SEW! I told her she could sit, but I wanted to make up at least one block to see what it looked like. Well, with the method she was going to use, I actually ended up with three finished blocks and part of eleven more, but who's counting?

I know she was exhausted, but there was a satisfaction in being able to put up those blocks to see what her quilt was going to look like. She was surprised, as we frequently are until we can see them on the design wall, but not unhappy with how they looked. I wish she had left them to me. I'd have been happy to complete the blocks for her in return for all the gardening help she gave me. Perhaps, when the project is further along, Frankie will post pictures of the quilt.

We breakfasted together Sunday morning, before seeing our visitors off. AIT needed some time to work on her homework, and they have a long drive home. I always hate to see them go. Dear Husband and I will drive down to their home in Indiana in October, and their entire family will be with us for four days at Christmas, but I've been spoiled this summer, seeing my sis several times a month. We may need to live closer together when we are all retired!

It was a GREAT weekend, and it's been a good week so far. Thank you, Frankie and AIT, for all you did. Don't you all wish you had family like this!???

I adore my herb garden. It's twenty years old, and shows signs of wear and tear, but I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to work with plants that smell so wonderful, and to be able to incorporate them into a raised bed with native flowers.

The only difficulty with this garden is that we never completed the walkways. Originally, we intended to lay brick in the pathways, but we've just never gotten around to completing the chore. Each year, at least three times during the growing season, I've had to weed the walkways. The herbs, as well as weeds seem to like the ground up limestone (chat) as a growing medium. When the chat is dry, it's impossible to weed. I can't figure out how the plants can grow in it. When it's rained, the chat is a breeze to weed.

I spent about two hours, two days in a row, and this was the result:

The "after" picture looks SO nice that you can see why I want to keep those walkways clean.

Below is the "Before" picture for the other half of the job. My garden helper left some plants in the walkway two weeks ago, so it looks worse than usual, but you can see what the rains have done for the weeds and volunteers.

If we don't have rain in the next two days, I'll be watering the path so that I can rip out all the volunteers and clean things up.

We thought for a while that the Summer of Oh-9 might not ever make its appearance. It was cool into July, and blessedly rainy. It was rainy to the point that hearty Midwesterners who are used to cracked, dry clay were beginning to wonder if they were going to need to grow gills and fins. But, all good things come to an end. We have passed through the season of the pretty pinks and burgundies and pale peaches and whites, to the season of COLOR!

When it finally turns hot at Chez Buffy, Rudbeckia save the day. I have two types of rudbekia which are volunteers (thanks to the chipmunks), and a third that I've planted intentionally, called Rudbekia 'Goldsturm.' These are the plants that will carry us through August and into the season of chrysanthemums.

The plant in the picture below is the simplest of the rudbeckias. I think of it as a Black-eyed Susan. The petals are a little rounded, and it's just gold and dark brown.

This plant, with the extra ring of burgundy on the petals, seems to be the one that is everyone's favorite. It's very tall, and unless you stake it, it will drop and flop any way it pleases, usually impeding the use of the sidewalk.

And this plant is Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm.' I have six or seven of these plants scattered throughout the gardens. This is just one plant in the picture. Those that receive more water (or less heat, or more sunlight) are the biggest, but it grows under almost any adverse condition.

I have one other tall gold-flowering plant that has just been planted in the gardens near the front door. This year I bought a gold/yellow version of a purple coneflower. I may look for the "sunset" colored variety next year, to encourage the red shades in the garden.

Sounds that quietly took over my thoughts:

The insistent rapping of a woodpecker's beak on a tree in the grove.

The warning beeps of heavy machinery, backing up as they work on a road nearby.

The sound of birds chattering about that person in the pink hat keeping them from the newly filled bird feeders. (The goldfinch was fearless, or very hungry. It disregarded me and ate it's fill.)

Laughter from women walking on the path to the east of our house.

A plane flying over as it nears the airport.

My ankles popping, when I stand.

I spent about an hour in the herb garden on my hands and knees, weeding. I haven't even finished one quarter of the path. I'll be going out for one more hour very shortly, but I wanted to note what a noisy place it turned out to be.

Noise or not, it was peaceful, and I appreciate the sense of accomplishment it gives me.

I've been working in the herb garden this Spring. I want to renovate the northwest arm of the raised beds, and I need Dear Husband's help to get new chat down in the walkways.

I was a sloth Memorial Day morning. I was sitting in my chair in the kitchen, reading, when Dear Husband walked in. Usually I don't see him until late in the afternoon, and it was 11:00 a.m. Apparently, with the front coming through, he had endured a difficult night on the boat in the harbor, and felt enough was enough. I gave him some tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, and let him get his land legs back a bit.

After lunch, I headed out to get my gardening done. I watered, and then started working on the east walkway, trying to remove weeds, and getting lambs ears ready to transplant. Wouldn't you know it....as soon as I started working on the weeds it started to rain.

This is as far as I got:

Everything looks robust. I could start harvesting oregano next week, and I'll give the chives a crew cut and let them grow back. I can only hope that the bunnies decide that something other than my parsley tastes good!

We have a terrible time keeping tulips growing here. We have a colony of chipmunks who think we put them out to provide gourmet meals for the darned critters! Seventeen years or so ago, Elegante Mother, Dear Husband and I made a trip to Holland, Michigan with Frankie and her family, for the Tulip Fest. We bought tons of tulip bulbs to decorate our (fairly) new gardens, and within two years, not a bulb was left! (Picture me pouting, here.)

At any rate, we managed to get some tulip blossoms this year, so I thought I'd share them before they disappeared. It the first picture below, the one yellow tulip is not a sport; rather I think it is the only tulip left of a dozen yellow tulips from the previous year.

I believe the short tulips in front are called "Angelique." They have been with us for a couple of years. I keep waiting for them to disappear, but they may not be tasty to the chippies.

And these are the Darwin tulips, the only tulip we have ever found that rodents don't disturb. These tulips are one of the earliest flowers to bloom in my gardens, beating out many of the daffodils. The color looks to be in the pink range here, but in full bloom, on a warm day, they tend to be more of a hot orangey-red.

Elegante Mother and I have always loved the many varieties of daffodils and jonquils that are available to gardeners these days. Each year we tried to add a dozen of a new variety, so they bloom throughout our gardens. It's really difficult to choose a favorite, but I love the early white Ice Follies, and those with apricot trumpets.

These pictures show a few of the bulbs that bloomed this year.

Iris are classified as Early Spring, Mid-Spring, or Late Spring bloomers. Most of the Iris I grow fall into the Early to Mid-Spring range. They started opening here last week, thanks to a warm spell, and about half of them are open now.

In the photo below, the pink iris were the second to open this year. Behind, and to the right you might be able to see the white iris with the dark raspberry edges that was the first to bloom, and to the left, out over the sidewalk is a purple iris.

The iris in the picture below did amazingly well to bloom this year, because they were disturbed when I was dividing iris last year. The tall yellow iris would be classified as an early spring flower, while the bronze at the bottom of the picture and the very dark iris at the center right are just opening their first blooms.

I think this iris might be 'Rare Wine.' It was the most vigorous bloomer of all my iris, and I divided it last year, and shared it with friends. Unfortunately, it took me a long time to get my iris back into the ground, so I might have lost some. I'm pleased to see that this iris persevered and made it through the winter. (Please disregard the weeds.
I'm planning a special party for them next week! ;-) )

And purple and lavender and pink and yellow and gold....

I was working in my veggie garden this morning. I planted two well established tomato plants, one a Celebrity, and the other is a cherry tomato. I planted four tiny yellow pear tomato plants, and two Better Boys. I have one more cherry tomato plant to put into that bed. I've got cages around all but the Better Boys so far. I planted four bush-style pickle cucumbers. Does anyone know if they need to be caged for support?

I watered everything I planted and all the plants waiting to be planted, and the containers that I wintered over. I even watered the plants I put in two weeks ago under the window at the front of the house. The only thing I missed was the parsley plants the rabbits have been enjoying.

I had a chance to see all the weeding that STILL needs to be done, so that I can plant the annuals in the front gardens. I need DH's help in the herb garden to move one timber into place, and then I can finish planting in the herb garden. I have tomato plants left over, and I'm giving some thought to growing them in containers. I HATE to throw things away, but it might be the better choice,given that the chipmunks have a colony and have invited ALL their relatives for the summer along the front sidewalk. They'll probably burrow into the pots and kill off the plants.

I thought we'd have a pretty poor iris display this year, but it's coming along nicely. I was in the midst of dividing my absolute favorite iris when Mother had a seizure. I found homes for most of them with friends and family, but I think mine were out of the ground too long. I'll have to see how they do. Right now I have one iris that is yellow, another than is a delicate pink, one very ruffled one that is white with a raspberry edge on the petals. I think several dark ones will open later in the season.

I have an azalea, a hydrangea, two buddleias, a Russian sage, and a miniature lilac to plant, and I think the rhubarb that wintered over is going to become part of an ornamental garden! I also need to pick up potting soil and refill the containers for the sidewalk, so I can get them planted.

MY peonies are astonishing. I didn't protect them with compost last fall, and I haven't fed them, but the temperatures and the rain must have been just right because they have more buds than I can ever remember seeing!

So, with the exception of a bad knee holding me back from weeding, I'd say we're moving right along with the gardens. I hope you're having the same good luck!

For my friend Cop Car, and anyone else who plans to garden vigorously this spring, here are a few warm-up movements to do, before you swing that ax!

These exercises are done to a slow count. Don't hurry through them, and if they hurt, STOP!!

While standing, move your arms as though you were swimming forward., and then do the backstroke. Follow with side strokes to the left, and then to the right.

Shrug both shoulders forward several times, and then shrug both shoulders back several times.

Reach up left, and then right, as though picking apples. Reach forward. Reach left and right.

Extend your left arm to the left, and your right arm to the right. Move your arms in a huge circle, as though you were turning a giant doorknob. Reverse the direction.

Pretend that you are drawing back a taut bowstring....to the right, and then to the left.

And...with your arms extended, fling your arms to the left so that your left hand bumps your back (kidneys) and the right arm bumps the left shoulder. Reverse the direction of swing.

Keep in mind that these are all warm-up movements, and should be done slowly to wake up the joints. You can also do them as a cool down.

Our exercise guru always advises us NOT to do anything that hurts. I hope this helps.

OUCH! I need a new body!

I spent about four hours on my hands and knees in the garden under the front sitting room window. It was heavily mulched last year, but a lot of seeds were trying to take root, and I have an infestation of crab grass. I got about half of the garden across the front of the house weeded, and I planted a dozen or so annuals and perennials.

I need to plant a few more rows of spinach and dill, and this time I'll add a couple of rows of romaine, too. In about ten days, I can plant tomatoes.

My efforts are puny compared to my sister and my niece and my friend, Cop Car, but I'd really need a new body to keep up with them.

I hope to do some more gardening either tomorrow afternoon, or Saturday, depending
on the weather. It's Spring, after all. We dance to Mother Nature's tune.

If I can only keep my eyes open, I plan to go out into the gardens today!

We are supposed to have a 50% chance of rain today, and more rain coming the next few days. Most of this area is really saturated, but my gardens have dried enough for me to get into them.

Ten days ago, we were in Indiana, visiting my youngest sister, Frankie, for her birthday. I always enjoy a trip to the nursery with her. They are just a bit ahead of us on the last frost date for the spring, so we go and stock up for her gardens. I can never resist picking up a few plants for my gardens, too. This year, I seem to be attracted to small shrubs and perennials, but I brought home a few things for the container gardens, too.

I have an area under one of the front windows that seems to have some weeds despite a thick layer of mulch. I'm going to strip out the weeds, and then plant several things to create an English cottage garden look.

I've also ordered a catalog from Cooley's Gardens, in Oregon. Last year I was dividing the iris when EM became ill, and I doubt that those that were planted (late) will make it back. I'm looking at it as an opportunity to introduce a few new iris into my gardens.

The little azalea we planted last year bloomed, and it's gorgeous! The bridal wreath looks like it came through the winter well. I bought another dwarf lilac to replace one that died off two years ago. I hope this one will pull through. On my trip to our local nursery, I hope to pick up ornamental grasses for the back of the east driveway garden.

I'm halfway done weeding the herb garden walkways and boxes. I have one entire arm of the herb garden that I want to renovate. I can't decide what I want to grow, so a visit to the nursery will help there, too. I'll flip through some of my herb books and magazines to see if I can't get some other ideas. I need to buy a LOT of basil, and some more parsley. I'd like to get at least two rosemary plants, and some lemon verbena.

Okay, enough talking. I better get to work! I hope you all have the chance to play in the dirt, too!

Sorry, Blue Witch. I know you were trying to get people to plant lettuce, but the first seed that went into my newly refurbished raised veggie bed was spinach, closely followed by Long Island Mammoth Dill.

I had intended to start my planting on Saturday afternoon, but I was overcome by a bad case of couch slothism. The day passed, and as it did, a storm front moved in. I was kicking myself around for having missed the perfect opportunity to get those seeds planted. It rained all Sunday, and was still raining this morning.

I came home from exercise and made my bed, watered the houseplants, started a load of laundry and completed assorted other chores. As I puttered around I realized that some of the clouds had parted, and we were getting SUN! I grabbed my gardening bucket and the seed packets, and made a bee line for the veggie boxes. I was planting the second row when DH drove up. "WHAT are YOU doing home??" "We were rained out."

I looked around me, and wondered where he had been working that they had missed out on this wonderful sunny day.

The clouds have come and gone several times today. We may get a few more storms tonight, which won't hurt those seeds at all, but they will be confused. We're going to go from the 40s to 80 on Friday!

So, Blue Witch, I'm going to start looking for lettuce seeds, but I'll hold off on the planting for a while.

It isn't often that my sisters and I are able to get together, but today is one of those rare days. My Second Sister has been invited to preach at My-Sister-The-Nurse's country church. Since Frankie is up visiting with Elegante Mother, we plan to all meet at church this morning, and then go to lunch. I've heard my SS give the children's sermon in her own church, where she is Director of Christian Education, but I've never heard her give the main sermon of the morning. I'm looking forward to hearing what she's chosen as her message for the day.

Dear Husband has decided to accompany me. It's less than a month until it's time for the Arr!! to go into the water, so usually he would be busy sanding and varnishing, but we're having a rainy day, perhaps the first since Spring officially started.

I had intended to get my spinach planted yesterday and didn't. :-( I KNEW it was going to be good weather for those seeds to germinate and simply didn't get out there. We had my favorite landscaper and his crew visit and they renovated the raised veggie boxes for me. I'd been having a terrible time with weeds in those two boxes. When DH cobbled them together for me, he didn't sink them into the ground, or line the bottom of the box with landscaping fabric, so weeds licked their little lips and slipped under the edge to the choice dirt, and thrived! The guys removed a tree that had grown out over the boxes, and then emptied out all the soil in the boxes and lined them. They replaced the dirt with fresh soil mixed with compost, so I should be good to go! This year I hope to plant spinach, dill, romaine and tomatoes. IF I can find a pickle cucumber bush, I might plant one, and I might plant a zucchini, just one! That's about the extent of my energy for veggies this year.

So....I'm going to order some veggie and Iris catalogs and be on my way to church. I hope all of you are having a warm, sunny Spring Day!

What's the equivalent of a couch potato for a gardener?? Whatever it is, I've been one this year. I usually come to a screeching halt in mid or late July, and then resume my chores in mid-September when it's cooler, but this year I have relied on others to do what little gardening got done.

I'd be the first to recognize that I have other responsibilities, but I'm not even dead-heading along the sidewalk. I was looking out the kitchen window at my herb garden, ruing that it's so overgrown. I think I may start putting it to bed a bit early this year. It would be lovely to spend an hour in the gardens each day. I can time it so that the care giver is with Mother, and then just go and cut back a little bit of the garden at a time.

Earlier this year I was working on the oregano, which wants to take over the entire garden. I shear it back to very low mounds as it begins to grow in the spring, and trim it back at least once, if not twice more during the summer. I was trying to figure out why one bunch of oregano was sitting so much higher than the others, when I realized that the bunnies had burrowed in under it and made themselves at home. Drat! That explains why the bunnies are so quick to chew every little start that comes up. They're sitting right there waiting for it to grow up through the dirt!

At any rate, I miss the gardens. I think I'll have to work them back into my schedule

I have a bunny who thinks my herb garden is his private preserve. Peter is not just a daily visitor, he LIVES there. I first realized he was around when the spinach I had planted early in the spring began to disappear. I thought I'd find the time to put wire cages around the plants, to give them a chance to grow, but I forgot. I was in the garden several weeks ago and discovered that Peter had eaten them right to the ground. Maybe I'll try for a fall spinach crop, complete with sirens and flashing lights and cages that slam down over the plants when something with a furry tail gets near.

I saw Peter checking out the basil one Sunday morning. I wonder if he has Italian heritage, or whether he just fancied a little pesto to wash down the spinach.

Yesterday, he was standing in the walkway near the oregano, calmly denuding what I think might have been an aster plant growing in the chat of the walk. He chewed it off halfway down so that he didn't have to manage the entire plant.

When I complained to a friend about this bunny with the huge appetite, he said...."Think about what Farmer McGreggor would have done." Yeah, right! Can you see me holding a gun??? Nah....but cayenne pepper water sprayed on some of my plants isn't a bad idea! For those of you with similar problems, here's a list of plants that are usually safe from bunnies. Dear Husband, when we first moved here suggested that I be prepared to share half my crops with visiting animals. I don't mind a little sharing, but it ticks me off when they take it ALL!

I hope you've found ways to deal with the bunnies in your life.

This entry is for Adele, who asked if I would post pictures of the herbs. Sure thing! *S* And you can count on my posting pictures of the iris when they bloom, and after I've divided them. Thanks for asking!

This shot is an overview of the herb garden. You're looking northwest. The house is behind and to the left, and the attached garage is behind to the right. This garden is still a work in progress. I have a lot of work to do in the north end of the garden, and I have to get serious about pulling the volunteer plants in the walkways. I HOPE to get a new layer of chat down. (Chat is a finishing grade of limestone that looks white in the sun. It's ground, but not as fine as sand.) Please note....NO BOAT in the back yard!

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This is the southeast arm of the garden, looking south toward the house. Those beautiful mounds are oregano. (I probably have enough for the entire city. *G*) Beyond the oregano you can see chives about ready to bloom, and to the right are garlic chives. (If you grow garlic chives, do NOT let the flowers go to seed, or YOU will have enough for all the Chinese food in London for a year!)

This is the lower part of the NE arm of the garden. The small dark plant is a rose; to the right are two lavenders, a spearmint contained in a furnace flue, and a dark blue perennial salvia. Across the bottom of the picture are two of the lemon scented geraniums and a small silver thyme.

I'm addicted to thyme. I love growing it, and I love the smell of it. I have it in several of my gardens, and even in one pot. This particular bed needs a little renovation. The thyme has overtaken two thirds of the box and is creeping into the walk, and now the lemon balm is trying to escape from the furnace flue in the corner. Just past the timber on the north end of the box, you can see the clematis, which is growing by leaps and bounds!

This is the Angelica, surrounded by fever few. We destroyed a square yard of the feverfew to plant the tomatoes, and I have more to rout out in the walkway. I need to research Angelica. I have NO idea why I planted it. The tomatoes are south of the Angelica, and south of the tomatoes, I've planted spinach, which the bunnies really like! Tomatoes and spinach are not herbs, but they go so well with the culinary herbs that I couldn't pass on them.

The deer severely pruned the sage this year. I wasn't worried, because last year it came back well when I pruned it in the spring. Unfortunately, large parts of it died off this winter. Dear Husband pruned for me, and you can see the remaining gnarly arms, with two fairly healthy groups of leaves. I added a golden variegated sage, a tricolor sage, and a Berggarten sage yesterday. I haven't had a lot of luck with anything other than the traditional sage, although I've managed to grow a white sage for several seasons. That was odd, because we're one zone too cold for the plant. I think a large part of the problem is that chipmunks have taken over that bed, and may be cutting the roots of the plants as they burrow.

This last picture is of the south end of the center box. In the corner you can see Purple basil, and Purple Palace basil, with its ruffly edges. There are five plantings of sweet basil. From here you can't see the miniature purple basil. I'll take a picture of that, later. Off to the left you may be able to see the parsleys and a rosemary. To the end of that box are Purple Coneflower, and I'm going to plant dill and nasturtium.

I think the lemon verbena is going to be planted to the right of the Angelica in the northeast corner of the garden. It can be used for tea, and in baked goods, but I usually save it for potpourri.

I'm going to mulch around the tomatoes, spinach and basil. I plan to add compost to several of the boxes, and clean up the walkways, and we should be good to go when the exercise class visits. I think it will hold until the Red Hat Ladies visit i June, with the exception of the chives needing a haircut. From then on, it will be mostly weeding and watering and harvesting.

Thanks for asking about my herbs, Adele! *S*

I was on my way back from an errand for the company when I realized I was going to be within three blocks of my favorite nursery. It's May 19th and I had not yet purchased tomatoes and herbs and bedding plants. In this part of Illinois, the general rule of thumb for planting tender annuals is to wait until May 15. We're already 4 days past the frost free date! I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to purchase, so my visit was less than 30 minutes. I was able to find everything I was looking for, and a bit more, of course! *G*

Dear Husband cleared a portion of the herb garden that was being overrun by feverfew, and he dug two good-sized holes for the tomatoes, then he went off to mow.

I planted the tomatoes, a "Big Boy" and a "Sweet 100" cherry tomato. The nursery was sold out of the miniature yellow pear tomatoes that I really wanted. I worked my way around the garden adding 5 sweet basil, a purple ruffles basil, purple basil, and a miniature purple basil, 2 rosemaries, a curly parsley, 2 scented geraniums, and three sage plants. I worked on cleaning out some of the volunteers in the walkway before it was time to go in for dinner.

In the herb garden, I have dill, lemon verbena, another lemon geranium, and some mums left to plant. My mint had died off. I'm not surprised, because It's been growing, sequestered, in the same pots for easily four years, and had to be root bound. I bought a chocolate mint, a curly mint, and a pineapple mint to replace them. Tomorrow, I'll empty the pots, refill them with new potting soil, and get the mints planted. I have a Scottish spearmint that smells heavenly, planted in a flue pipe in the herb garden, Next to that I have a salvia that will need to be supported. It's beautiful this time of year, but before long it will become top heavy and spread out from the center.

Both of the roses and the clematis that are next to or in the herb garden have come back nicely. The smaller of the roses will bloom about the time the lavender blooms. Scent is a large part of my herb garden. As I planted today, the scent was heady! I had visions of pesto, sage stuffing, roasts with rosemary, and mint juleps! Everything I brushed added it's fragrance to the blend.

This was one of those days that make me happy to be a gardener. *S*

Ed's sitting in the curve of my arms as I type this. If there's an unusual number of typos, chalk it up to my communing with my cat...

Yesterday, I spent about three hours in the gardens along my driveway. I saw some weeds encroaching on my peonies that I knew had to be dealt with. Several years ago I used the lasagna method to reclaim the center section of the garden along the lower driveway. That bed is probably 60-70 feet long, and has three distinct sections. The center area is still rather bare, but I've got rudbekia, perovskia and some salvia started there. I believe that I will be transplanting more plants into it fairly soon. The north end of the bed needs weeding to kill off an infestation of Bouncing Bet, a plant that I put in the gardens years ago and can't seem to kill off, but there are day lilies, daffodils, iris, lamb's ears and more salvia settled in there.

The south end of the garden is really in disrepair. I had planted physostegia and echinnacea over two-thirds of it, but the physostegia has died out, and there are places where I have sumac, poison ivy, grapevine and some shrubby volunteers that I really don't want. I think I may transplant some of the purple coneflower to the center part of the bed, and move one beautiful meadow rue plant to a more shaded area, and then ask Dear Husband if he will help me take the rest back down to dirt.

Which brings to mind.... I called a local gardening company which is just getting established. I asked if it would be possible to hire gardening muscle for either a morning or an entire day. I need just one man, I think, to help lift lilies in mid-June. When the owner called back to talk to me he told me that the best he could do was two men for an entire day, complete with truck, trailer and tools for $800.00! HOLY COW!! I COULD put two men to work for a full day, but the price is simply outrageous. I hope DH will take this as a sign that my garden time is really valuable!

I think I will try calling a few other landscapers to see if they are willing to spare a laborer for half a day. I need someone who understands about lifting the iris with as little damage as possible, and once they have been lifted and stored where I can work on them in the shade, I want the soil amended so that I can replant. I could put someone to work for an entire day, but not for the first price I've been quoted. I hope there will be someone who wants the work.

I spent this morning raking up the weeds that I'd pulled on Friday. I sawed down a few branches on the pear tree that had died, and I used the weed-eater to clean out an area that is getting infested with weeds. I used the weed-eater around the edge of the front lawn gardens, and along the south side of the house. It made me run a bit late for the Red Hat ladies, but it was worth it to get it done. The next time out, I'll need to cut down volunteer shrubs and mulberries, perhaps on Monday.

It was good to get some of the cleanup done while the grounds were still moist and easy to work with. There's a lot left to be done, but I'm glad I made the start.

We have several plants that are harbingers of spring. They bloom when all the others are still thinking about creating flowers, and are opening their leaves to the sun.

My father had a star magnolia outside the windows of his last office, what he called "the shop." The magnolia was planted on a rather steep hillside in Stone County, Missouri. You can imagine how difficult it was to water that shrub adequately. First there was run-off because it hadn't been set into the hillside properly,and second, the ground absorbed the water and it drained off immediately. I didn't understand these things at the time, and I thought this little plant was destined to be just three feet tall.

More than twenty years later, I bought a star magnolia, a tip of the hat to my Dad's choice of shrubs. It's planted just outside the window to MY office. This "shrub" has grown to be 18-20 feet tall and the blooms were awesome this year! As you can see from the picture, the entire plant was densely covered with blooms.

The CPA's assistant came to visit a couple of weeks ago when the magnolia was at its peak. I had the windows open, and a gentle breeze was coming in past the magnolia. The scent was amazing! Our heads swiveled in unison to sniff the air! *G*

Unfortunately, the blooms on our star magnolia last barely a week, less if the temperatures are extreme. So they have given way to the daffodils and tulips and other flowering shrubs.

We have one pod of very early tulips that I believe are the "Darwin" variety. Usually tulips die a quick death in the clay of my gardens, but these have lasted for easily fifteen years. For some reason, the chipmunks who live in that garden leave them alone. They seem to have the same protective scent or taste that daffodils have, and pests leave them alone.

I love the bright color. It's a shock to the senses so early in spring!

I've had a full day, today. I can recall as a child that I thought Sunday was a lazy day, but it's been a long time since I've frittered away a Sunday.

The CPA's assistant, who is also a CPA, is going to visit us tomorrow to help me with some accounting problems. I've been trying to clear things off my desk, and make a list of all that I need to have her oversee. I still have a stack of filing (don't I always), but I managed to clear the important things off my list, and I can get to the filing and a few less important things tomorrow morning.

My next big block of work was centered on the herb garden. It seems that when I have the time to work in the gardens the weather is foul, and when the weather is gorgeous, I have too much work that must be completed inside! However, we managed to get one of those rare spring days when the weather was beautiful, and I could get out to enjoy the gardens.

I started by pruning back the oregano, which took the largest part of my gardening time. I have six or eight mounds of oregano, enough to supply a small town, and I followed the current thinking and let the superstructure of the plants remain in place over the winter. The oregano is leafing out. If I had waited much longer to prune, I wouldn't have been able to avoid taking some of the new growth. I took a picture before I started. I'll try to get one of the pruned plants, and one a week later. You won't be able to tell it's been pruned by next weekend.

I cleaned out part of the chat walkway today. I left a few volunteer Shasta daisies, and some lamb's ears and thyme, but I pulled up the garlic chives that have spread. If you don't get those chives before they establish themselves, you have to dig to the other side of the world to get them out!

As I was working a bird sitting above my head started calling. I have NO idea what kind of bird I was listening to. For all my musical training, I find myself unable to read the call charts in the bird books, or describe to someone what the call sounded like. What was interesting about this particular call was that half-way through a bird across the grove picked up the call and imitated it. I don't know if the birds were looking for mates, or if they were trying to establish territory, but the timing of the repeat, and the pitch of the repeat were perfect!

I planted three Italian Flat-leaved parsleys earlier this week, and a bunny or a deer had a fine meal one night! There are still some leaves, and I'm fairly sure that the plants will come back. However, when I plant the spinach this week, I'll surround it with circles of hardware cloth!

It was a joy to be out today. I don't work as fast or as long as I once did, but I probably enjoy my time in the gardens even more.

As I sit here at my computer, I can see the star magnolia just outside the window, and it has just begun to open. All it took was a little consistent warmth. The daffodils along the east side of the house are doing well, and I can see oriental poppy greens at the turn of the sidewalk. The short, scruffy Darwin tulips are open, too.

The scilla or squill that I wrote about earlier is a mass of tiny blue flowers against a green background, and the iris and day lilies are coming along nicely.

The only off note in the news is that the forsythia blooms look spotty. Perhaps I need to give it a little more time. I know that it blooms after the magnolia has opened, so perhaps I'm just seeing the early color, and the rest of the bloom is yet to come. This is a Lynwood Gold variety which has not been pruned, so it has the traditional arch to the canes.

Sunday, I'll have to go out to check the shrub rose to see if there are any signs of new growth since we pruned so hard, and I want to check the peonies to see if there are any signs of starts coming through the dirt.

I love this part of the year. There's so much to watch for!

As I've run errands the past few days, I've been where plants have been for sale, and I simply couldn't resist making a few purchases. Elegante Mother can't pass up a pansy in the spring, so we had 29 plants waiting for some dirt.

Yesterday, while we were out, I picked up potting soil so I'd be ready when I had a few minutes, to get some of those plants into the dirt. We have a large coir-edged basket at the front of the house, and I filled it with gerbera daisies, a purple hyacinth, and purple petunias. I may change that planting during the summer, but I needed to see some color at the front of the house.

I alternated yellow and purple pansies in a wrought iron basket lined with coir, too.

I had two lavenders, two rosemarys and three Italian flat-leafed parsleys to plant. I had just enough time to get the parsley into the herb bed last night before I HAD to start dinner. As it was, I probably should have waited for this morning to plant them, but I was on a roll! *G* It's going to rain later today, and should rain through Saturday morning, so I won't have a lot of chance to work outside for a couple of days.

Dear Husband suggested that I look into the Haz-Mat suits made of Tyvek for weeding where I suspect I'll find poison ivy. That's not a bad idea at all! I don't have my half sleeves made yet to cover below my wrists when I'm in the gardens. Maybe that will be my rainy day chore on Saturday morning.

It was in the upper sixties today. It might have even hit 70. As I went out to call in Edward Scissorhands, I noticed that the daffodils along the east wall of the house have begun to bloom, and I can see the heads of the lily plants poking out of the earth.

Somewhere back in my archives there is an entry or twelve on Scilla, a tiny blue flowered bulb that blooms early in the season. Last week I noticed a sea of thin green leaves around the base of one of the trees in the grove, and today the flowers had opened. Here's a good picture of scilla thanks to the University of Illinois.

I went back through my archives, and was interested to see that the squill bloomed much earlier in some years than others. This must have been a tough winter, with all the snow and cold.

And, we have at least one Rufous-Sided Towhee! Welcome back little bird!

Okay, this morning I saw the first of the goldfinches to return, and this weekend I got my first case of poison ivy for this year. That makes it official. Spring has sprung!

You know....the WARM, SUNNY, DRY weekend that lets us know that it's not going to be winter forever. I won't be so rash as to say that spring has finally arrived, but the weather this week was exceptional, and I spent part of each day in the gardens, clearing off the spent plants and even pulling up crabgrass and poison ivy stems.

When your nose is within a foot of the ground you see all sort of things that you might otherwise miss. I realized that the dead stems of the purple fountain grass were covering a pod of daffodils and tulips, so I started there on Saturday morning, digging up the dead annual. It was covering some of my favorite daffodils, the Ice Follies, which are usually the first to bloom. This year they will loose the race to the traditional daffodils that are planted along the front of the house.

I saw fever few, sweet woodruff, crocus, the tips of Dutch iris leaves, a volunteer vinca that I should exterminate, and tons of iris. I have one pod of iris that is next to a downspout and I can see that I'll have to move them this year. There are four other HUGE pods of iris that will have to be shifted this year. I meant to get to them last year, and it just didn't get done. If I wait any longer, they'll die off for lack of good soil and overcrowding.

I didn't get everything trimmed, but I made a good start. I can tell that I'm not a kid any more. I can't work for twelve hours on my hands and knees and still get up and walk away. I need to be more careful with mulch to keep weeding down.

Dear Husband, super guy that he is, took a little time away from varnishing the boat to prune the old shrub rose for me. Following information from Bogie, he cut it back severely. This rose blooms on new canes, so we are encouraging it to put up new canes, while we get rid of the brambles. I hope it makes it. This was one of the plants growing on the grounds when we bought the lot 19 years ago.

Each day that is dry, I hope to put a little time into the gardens so that I don't have to devote entire weekends to weeding. I'm SO glad we had warm weather. It felt as though I'd been given a treat after a difficult week, and it was lovely to have some time outside. And, YES.....I wore a hat! *G*

Since the day before Easter the inside of our house has been filled with beautiful blossoms, but the outside is sadly lacking. We've had three little crocus appear near the front door, and we have about three or four inches of daffodil greens showing around the yard, and the leaves for one early blooming tulip (the name of which escapes me at the moment). I'm guessing that it will be a month before we see much of anything. We'll have to be content with magnolia and redbud and lilac buds swelling.

My knee has improved, but I haven't tested it to see if I can kneel on it. I'm desperate to get out into the gardens and clean things up. Wouldn't you know that the one day in the 50s that is supposed to be dry is Wednesday, the day I'll be chained to the office for an audit! How UNFAIR!!!

Well....soon. I'm sure I'll be outside soon.

It amazes me to step out my back door and see catnip, oregano and feverfew greening up. THIS IS JANUARY!! The plants are amazingly hardy in our cold weather, but truth be told, the weather has been incredibly warm for the season. We've had snow, and we've had a few days of deep cold, but we seem to be going through an unusually early warm spell

The wildlife is happy not to have to deal with brutal snow. It's easier for them to get to the seed that falls to the ground, rather than trying to dig through layers of snow to find the dropped seed. I leave a piece of plywood at the base of the feeder to catch the spill. Right now there's about half an inch of hulls littered over the board and ground. I've seen cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves, blackbirds, a horde of sparrows, juncos and chickadees. I'm not sure we have nuthatches this year. Perhaps they are there, but have moved further away from the house as the trees have died and been removed. We've been enjoying the deer at bedtime. I've been putting out corn while they were short on forrage.

I shouldn't be surprised to see the catnip and oregano greening up. They are both members of the mint family, and mint is incredible hardy. I've sequestered chocolate mint, and pineapple mint in large plastic containers that look like clay pots. I know better than to plan a mint where it might spread! I have so much oregano that I gave away bunches of it to the ladies at exercise last summer. Oregano, any one?? *G*

I've laughingly filed this under "In the Garden," because that's where these will end up. I wanted to get a picture of the sprinkling of nuts from one tree. Our lot line is covered with these husks, each of which hold a rock hard black walnut. My Dad would have loved them! So do the squirrels! *G*

I meant to get out to work on the gardens at the entrance to the house this morning. We have had a phenomenal growing season, despite the fact that storms have been few and far between, and it's quite a jumble of incredible plants and more incredible weeds.

Unfortunately, we are still in the grasp of a major heat wave. I think I heard that we were at least 20 degrees above normal yesterday, and the heat has been here for several days. We're supposed to get rain early in the coming week, followed by more realistic temperatures....in the upper sixties. So, I'm sure that I will be doing a LOT of gardening in the next three weeks. By the end of the month it's time to put the gardens to bed for the winter.

I suspect the family of chipmunks that has made it's home in my mulch pile is going to be TICKED!! I'll be using part of that pile on the front garden, around the new redbud, and more of it on the fern bed and herb garden. There goes their new condo! I bet I'll find black walnuts buried in the mulch.

Well, I've stalled as much as I can. I have to go to the grocery store. Normally, it wouldn't be an issue, but this is Sunday. The entire world will be there by now. Have a good day, all! I'm off and running!

If you haven't already divided your tall bearded iris by now, it's time to get it done. I live in USDA Zone 5, and my iris need the last of the warm season to get settled in to their new homes

Dig up the clump and separate the rhizomes by slicing them apart with a sharp knife. Disinfect the knife between cuts by dipping it into a 10% bleach solution (one part bleach, 9 parts water). Keep the rhizomes that are at least three inches long, have good roots and a fan of leaves. Cut the leaves back to about eight inches. Throw away any rhizomes that are shrunken, have holes or mushy parts. Dispose of the unwanted material in landfill rather than composting it, to avoid spreading disease.

Those rhizomes you choose to keep and replant should be briefly disinfected in the bleach solution and then left to air dry for a day. When you replant the iris, be sure that the top of the rhizome is just at the surface of the soil.

My iris tend to rise up out of the soil over the winter. I think the solution is to water well and press down around the rhizome to be sure there are no air pockets when you replant. If a rhizome still looks like it's riding a little high on the ground, I might side dress it with compost before winter sets in. Be sure not to bury the rhizomes in the compost.

I have been so busy this week, that I haven't had the chance to get out into my gardens. From the kitchen I could see that there were cherry tomatoes ripening, and we're having salad for dinner tonight, so I made the trek out to harvest a few of them.

Some rotten little rodent, or bunny or deer is taking one bite out of the bigger tomatoes. I doubt seriously that we will have more than the three we have managed to collect so far because they are just too tempting. Maybe I can find a strip of hardware cloth to wrap around the tomato cage. That might protect them from the livestock.

As I walked back through the herb garden, I brushed the basil, and its scent filled the air. I stopped to pinch off the tops of the plants, to try to keep them bushy, and to delay the flowering. Basil tastes better before it's energy goes into flowering and making seeds.

We've had light showers the past two days. The water has helped everything, but we need still more. We seem to be in a pocket of drought that has hung over us for at least three years. I know that friends in the East and in Kansas are worried about flooding, and can't wait for things to dry up. Send that water this way!

If it's not raining early tomorrow morning, I may have the chance to get into the gardens again. We can hope. The worst of the week will be over tomorrow morning, and working in the gardens would be a lovely way to wind down the week.

Soon it will be time to make "Farmer's Tomato Pie." I'm just waiting for the home grown, or local tomatoes to ripen. Yummmmmm!

It's summer, what can I say??

I had a lovely time in the garden on Sunday. Usually I go out early in the day, between 5:00 and 9:00, but I overslept last Sunday. I went out at 10:00 and worked for three hours. By the time 1:00 rolled around, I was more than ready to quit, but I'd had a very satisfying morning.

I went out this morning to take pictures to make it easier for you to understand what I'm writing about, and discovered the battery on my camera was dead. I prefer early morning for herb garden pictures because you aren't distracted by shadows and the colors are gentler. It just wasn't to be. Maybe I can get the pictures later today.

I finished cutting back the chives, and I'm halfway through the oregano. I clipped off the top of the basil to keep it from flowering, and brought the leaves in to make pesto, and I harvested the first of the cherry tomatoes.

I also cleaned out the east walkway inside the garden. If you wet the chat down first, it's not a bad job. I left one of the poppies and two other groups of volunteer plants that are growing in the walk, at least for now..

Since I never remember to take before and after pictures, I left the west walkway until I could get a picture. There's still some work to be finished from this Spring's renovation, but it's minimal. Eventually, I hope to add more chat to the walkway, and we might even consider laying the bricks that are supposed to cover the chat.

Once I've finished the weeding, I need to mulch the herb garden. It will help to keep moisture in and may save a plant or two if I fail to water regularly.

The chipmunk that lives at the back door decided he didn't like the rudbeckia that I had planted above his home. He burrowed around two sides of it, and it was in pretty bad shape, so I moved it into the herb garden. I have two lavenders to plant, as well.

I suppose when you look at the list of things I've been doing the word "WORK" floats through your mind. Well, it IS work, but the grounds look so nice once it's done that it seems like a worthwhile way to fill my time.

I have spent the past few months trying to get gardens cleaned up from winter, and getting the new plants into the ground. Then, we reach a point where peonies, iris, poppies and lilacs are in bloom, and we sit back and enjoy the view. At that point, there's another flurry of cutting back and cleaning up. I've been waiting for the daffodil leaves to ripen so that I can pull them out. We're just about there.

At the same time, everything in the herb garden has been growing like crazy. I SHOULD be cutting back chives and harvesting sage and oregano, but we're having a lovely rainy Saturday. Cutting back will have to wait until tomorrow or Monday. I plan to share some of the harvest with my friends at exercise.

I wanted to show you a picture of the overgrown herbs before we get to the mid-summer trim:

The chives and oregano are so wooly that you can't even see there's a center box in the garden just beyond them. St. Francis is in that center bed, and you can just see his head and shoulders. This year all that oregano will be shared, rather than going to waste. YEA!!

I plan to throw in a little catnip, too. NO, I won't mix the two together! *G*

I rolled out of the sack before six this morning so that I could deadhead the peonies before I had to go to exercise. The driveway garden looks better for a little trimming back. I carried rings of hardware cloth down to the driveway garden because bunnies have been at work. The wonderful orangey-red lily that I planted as a focal point in the long driveway garden was stripped of it's leaves and flowers, and the stems have been pulled from the ground. I set rings around the rudbeckia, because the bunnies were testing the flavor of the leaves. I didn't want to drive past and find them eaten to the ground!

When I got back from exercise I pulled the hose out from the area where it nests and watered the herb garden, the ferns and rudbeckia, the plants waiting to be planted, and the containers along the sidewalk. Watering is the perfect time to take stock of what needs to be done.

I haven't quite gotten everything planted yet, even though it's almost mid-June. I'd like to get the last of the plants into the ground and then start trimming back or harvesting some of my herbs. The chives all need to be severely cut back, and the oregano should be harvested. There are areas in the center box of the garden that need to be dug up, to remove weeds and get more things planted. I'd like to see if nasturtiums will grow starting this late in the season, and I'd like to get a little more dill planted..

Three of the tomato plants need either to be staked or caged. The construction debris in that section of the garden still needs to be removed, and I'll have to weed the walkway once the poppies stop blooming. I hope the guys will help me add more chat to the walkway.

It's time to pull out the spent blooms of the ox-eye daisy, and I need to unearth several iris that are having some kind of problem with rotten stems. I think I can save the corms if I do it soon. And, I have several iris to divide and share.

There are ALWAYS things to do when you are a homeowner, and a gardener. These lists are reminders to me that I need to get these things done, and a way to look back over the years to see how little things change. I bet I have at least one, or more likely MANY entries just like this for each year I've blogged. Sorry for the repetition. *G*

It was a good start to the week.

Each year I have volunteers in my garden. The chipmunks have seen to it that I have a steady crop of dill to be found in a number of the beds. One year Cleome took over half the sidewalk garden. Despite that, I'm thinking about sowing Cleome when I move the Dutch Iris this year.

Out in the herb garden, I've grown a number of things in the center of the center box. Some of those things are herbal, and some are just for color. The annual poppies have decided that it's their turn to volunteer.

If you can see the picture above, there are Ox-eye daisies (which have volunteered now for about 16 years), and the red poppies. The salvia is a perennial. I was thinking the other day that we almost have Red, White and Blue going on, if you overlook the purple-ish cast of the salvia.

The walkway of the garden is supposed to be covered with a very white "chat" or tailings, or screenings. It's a very tiny limestone particle. We had intended to settle brick into the chat to make a brick walkway, but we haven't gotten there yet. I like the look of the volunteers in the chat, but it's been so disturbed with the rebuilding, that I may have to dig things up, lay down more chat, and maybe even lay the bricks. Right now, in addition to a few weeds, we have garlic chives, fever few, lamb's ears, the poppies, ox-eye daisies and thyme on the walk.

I'm frequently of a mind to let volunteers grow. God's surprises can make for interesting gardens. I purchased a pack of wildflower seeds, intending to have DH rototill an area for me, where I could strew the seed. I don't think we're going to get to it, so I might strew the seed on the edge of the property where we don't mow. I wonder if we will see visitors and volunteers for years to come, or whether we will be simply providing appetizers for the chipmunks?

"Bloom where you are planted!" Is this the lesson of the day, or is my mind just absorbed with the gardens? *G*

At least we HOPE wet weather will becoming this way. We're supposed to have scattered showers over the weekend, and it should be overcast for the best part of a week.

My immediate goal is to work in the gardens at the sidewalk. Quilting Bee is tonight, and I'd like for the entryway to look nice as the ladies come in.

I think we have a quiet weekend ahead. I want to putter some more in the gardens, weather permitting, but I don't have any hard and fast plans. I might even check the paper to see if there is anything I want to see at the movies!

I hope you all have a great weekend.

We've been absorbed with counting the egrets and herons we see as we drive to exercise or to the grocery store. We're well into their season now, and we've seen groups of them congregating where they "fish" for food. Normally, both the herons and egrets are very solitary birds while hunting, but they must have a social side we've never seen before.

Elegante Mother pointed out a new bird at the feeder. We both thought it was a woodpecker, but it turns out it was a Northern Flicker. I checked Sibley and read the description out, and this bird fit it to a T. They have an interesting little black bib, and are larger than most of the woodpeckers we see here. I hope this flicker will become a resident. He/She is a fascinating bird to watch!

I hope to get in another long day in the gardens tomorrow. I have to make a short trip to the bank, and to the nursery tomorrow morning, but the rest of the day I can focus on the gardens. I planted several containers today, rather than pitching out the extra plants. I still have a few more plants that had been intended for containers, and Dear Husband says that I should plunk them in the garden, where ever I have the room. It could make for interesting gardens.

I hope to weed for two hours very early in the morning, run my errands, and then come home and put more plants into the ground. Things look amazingly good so far, but there's still a lot of work to be done. The 10:00 news just reminded me that we are on cicada alert, but the ground was cool last night, so that might delay their visit. Apparently, the ground needs to be 60 degrees or warmer for the cicadas to make their appearance. I hope that they stay dormant until I get all these plants into the ground! *G*

We did a little mowing, and Dear Husband spent most of his time readying the Arr!! for the trip to Lake Michigan. Boys and their toys. He's just like a kid! He'll be gone all day, and I'll be in the gardens.

I've been holding off using the air conditioning. I figured it was just May, that I didn't need it, but they are talking about some really warm weather coming up. We'll have to see how things turn out. Perhaps, with all the windows open, we'll be able to bear the heat.

Here's hoping for a cool evening, a good night's sleep, and a safe and productive day tomorrow!

I have had the most satisfying day!

We went to bed at 9:00 last night. I fought the urge to watch a little more TV or read another few chapters in my book. I hit the sack and slept soundly until about 5:45 or so. I was ready to wake, as the light was changing, and felt, at last, that I had gotten a decent night's sleep.
I left DH sleeping soundly, and had a cup of tea and some toast, before going to the office to work for an hour.

By 8:00 a.m. I was out in the gardens. I had planned to tidy up the driveway garden. It's the first garden you see as you enter our grounds. The peonies bloom there (or will very shortly), and there are some iris, perennial salvia, day lilies, bleeding heart, hosta and a lot of purple coneflower in that bed. I wanted to trim the edges of the bed, get one area ready for some rudbeckia, and pull a little grass that thinks it should live there. Instead, that work has been delayed until early tomorrow morning. Today, I worked on the north side of the house.

I have two areas of ferns on the north side of the house. The biggest bed really gets too much sun, and it's surrounded by brick on two sides, so it's probably too hot, too. But, the ferns have come back year after year. They have been spreading out into the lawn. I decided to dig the volunteers out of the lawn and replant them into one end of the bed that looked a little bare. Then I weeded most of the bed, and moved a timber over to create a finished edge to the bed.

I watered the ferns, and the herb garden, and then mulched around the ferns and watered them again. Then, I cleaned out a tiny garden box to the right of the back garage door. I'm going to try rudbekia there. It may like the heat.

And, I took a break!

When I went back out, I moved a chunk of English thyme, planted two silver thymes, a lemon basil, an Angelica (something new to try this year), and planted six tomato plants. I like the miniature yellow pear-shaped tomatoes for salads, and the Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes. I planted a good-sized Early Girl bush tomato, and a Better Boy (I think..).

By 2:00 there was nothing more important than my date with the shower! I'm feeling (and looking) more human now, and I'm VERY satisfied with the work I finished. (Pictures soon, just for Janet! *G*)

3 Homestead Purple Verbena
4 dark ruby petunias
1/2 a packet of Rose Queen Cleome seeds
1 purple calibracoa
6 sweet basil
1 purple ruffles basil
2 curly leaved parsleys
2 flat leaved Italian parsleys
2 upright rosemaries
1 tricolor sage
1 cilantro
4 lemon verbena
1 large fever few

As usual, I have loads left to plant, including tomato plants. May 15th is the last frost date for this area (Zone 5, Chicago suburbs), so I could have planted them today, but I held off for two days to let a storm system go through. It seems that all around us are getting rain, but we've just had a sprinkle or two.

I need to have Elegante Mother choose more pots to plant. As usual, she bought more plants than needed. Perhaps I can send a planted container to one of my sisters, when EM goes to visit at the end of the month.

I still need to find a Bridal Wreath shrub (spirea), annual purple fountain grass, Goldsturm rudbekia, Victoria Blue salvia, Bluebeard shrubs/perennials, and more Russian sage. I haven't planned what I want to add to the little garden across the driveway, yet. And, I'm waiting for Dear Husband to move the dingy so that I can plant the south raised box of the veggie bed.

Ya know....I'm glad I live where the snow flies part of the year. I don't think I could keep this up year round!

Yes....I have poison ivy in my garden. Woe is me. This morning I rose and donned clothing that I wouldn't mind throwing away: long socks, long pants, a long-sleeved mock turtleneck, and an old bandanna. I carried another bandanna with me to cover the lower half of my face, in case the ivy juice became airborne as I pulled out the roots. I wore two pairs of latex gloves.

At first I thought this was going to be easy. I should have known better. The root making its way across the ground was roughly half the diameter of my little finger. I should have watered before I weeded. I might possibly have gotten ALL of the root that way. As it it, I think I left some small suckers. The poison ivy had twined itself around and through a pod of Dutch Iris that I've been meaning to replant.

I got most of the root, except any that grew through the roots of the iris. After they've bloomed, I'll dig up the iris and re-plant them, checking for poison ivy roots as I separate them. For some time to come, I'll have to be careful when kneeling and planting and cleaning up in that area. The irritant (urushiol) from the poison ivy is likely to taint the ground and plants for some time. Luckily, I've gotten into the habit of wearing gloves when I work in the gardens, but I'll still need to be careful.

I had a great morning. I got two thirds of the outer bed at the front of the house cleared out of old plants. I was able to see what made it through the winter and what needs to be replaced. The Russian sage is coming back nicely, and I pruned away the dead wood. The two French lavenders didn't make it, but I was surprised to see that there were starts of Homestead Purple Verbena, which is usually an annual in this area.

I hope to do a little early morning gardening before we go to brunch for Mother's Day. And, there may be time in the afternoon, too. It's time to put plants into the ground! YEA!!!

I received a call last night from the nursery, to let me know that the Homestead Purple Verbena was in, and I had twenty-four hours to pick it up. Doesn't that seem like a rather short time frame?

At any rate, I wanted to return a clematis and pick up the verbena. I stopped at the checkout, and explained that the tag in the pot of clematis said "Nelly Moser," but it was labeled differently on the outside of the pot. I wanted to make an exchange. They told me to leave the pot at checkout and look for the "Nelly Moser" that I wanted. Of course, they were out.

So, I started working my way through the nursery toward the annual section. Along the way four little pots of basil, and two more of lemon verbena grabbed my arm as I went by. I rounded the corner at the veggies, coming into the stretch, when two pots of tomatoes jumped out in front of my cart. I HAD to rescue them.

While I was there, I thought I might pick up a morning glory that was already two feet tall, but they were out of that, too. This beautiful cardinal vine tempted me instead.

I FINALLY got to the annual information desk, and asked for the verbena. Neither of us could count. I'd ordered nine and came home with seven. BUT....while I was waiting, I found the morning glory I wanted! *G*

Some days ya just have to go with the flow. I've got a LOT of planting to do, and I'll have to make at least one more trip to the nursery. Do you believe that I walked out of there without any dill seed!??

I spent a large part of my day renovating a small portion of the NE wing of the herb garden. I've had a section of lamb's ears in this part of the garden for years. I don't know if lamb's ears can strictly be considered an herb or not, but I like the pale gray-green color contrasting the darker leaves of the thyme. Lamb's ears has a way of escaping and moving to other parts of the garden. It seems to really like the chat walkway, and I like how it looks there. I probably need to cut back some of the growth in the walk, but today I focused on the lamb's ears in the bed.

Unfortunately, it has become infested with crab grass. I started work, and realized that the soil was so dry that I was never going to get all of the roots. Dear Husband said, "Either you water, or you wait." He's really good at cutting to the chase. I didn't want to wait, so I hooked up the hose. I watered that section of the bed, and while it percolated through the soil, DH and I dropped a car off to be worked on tomorrow.

When I returned, the soil was ready! I used a shovel and lifted huge chunks of the garden out onto black plastic trays from the nursery. When I had grass and plants, and dirt removed, I ran my hands through what was left, to be sure that I wasn't leaving a nest of roots behind. Then, I separated the grass from the soil, put the soil back, and replanted the lamb's ears.

There are several areas in the thyme to the right of that area that will need to be replanted. I'm going to transplant one section later this week, and may find a few more crab grass roots to remove.

I think I may put lemon-scented geraniums in that spot, or perhaps lemon verbena. A good part of that arm of the herb garden is devoted to lemon scented plants.

The really healthy plant at the bottom of the herb bed is a perennial salvia. Just past it, in a terra cotta furnace flue, is Scottish spearmint. There are two small lavenders. (If they don't do well this summer, they'll be transplanted.) There's a miniature rose just past that, in a ring of hardware cloth. I uncovered the rose today and found very tender growth on it. I protected it from the sun (and will have to continue to protect it for a while till it hardens up), and left the ring to protect it from hungry bunnies. The lamb's ears are just past the rose. You can see the clematis at the arbor, just north of the bed.

I know, I know.....too much detail. I had a wonderful time in the garden. I quit before I was overwhelmed. I left enough time to clean things up and return my tools to the garage. Dear Husband cooked dinner tonight, so I got to come in and loaf. It was a fabulous day, and I'm SO pleased to have gotten a start on the gardens!

The past few years my clematis has been suffering. It's a wonderful jackmanii that is covered with deep purple blooms in the spring. Its leaves were loosing their dark glossy green color. I did some research on-line and decided that it needed chelated iron. I found a source and gave it a dose and the leaves looked better the following year.

We repeated that scenario, but this time the plant began to look really sickly. I read further and found that there was something contagious going on. I decided that I was going to give it one more shot before planting something else in that spot. I cut the canes to the ground and disposed of them. I pretty much figured that would kill the plant off, but I was very surprised to see it growing this spring.

I started my day in the gardens by creating guidelines for the clematis, to help it up and over the arbor. I used hemp twine, anchored on either side of the plant, and wrapped around one of the upper horizontal bars. I used one more length of twine to keep the plant upright, until it grabs onto the vertical lines on its own.

I have high hopes for this plant. If it makes it, I'll post a picture when it blooms.

At long last, I've had the chance to spend my weekend in the gardens. It got off to a slow start on Saturday. Dear Husband rebuild the sieve that fits over the wheelbarrow so that I could empty the sidewalk containers and sieve the soil. In some of the largest pots I use a layer of plastic shipping peanuts to lighten the load, so I need to catch the plastic as I break up the soil and remove spent plants.

The sieving and refilling of the pots took longer than I had anticipated. I moved the pots onto the sidewalk near the front door and Elegante Mother played with the collection of plants that we bought earlier in the week, working out combinations which pleased her. Rather than planting all the pots in an identical range of color, each pot has it's own personality. I know that's unusual, but it's what makes EM happy.

I think we filled seven pots with annuals. Elegante Mother was playing with plants the way she might sweep watercolor over paper. This container is a wrought iron basket lined with coir.

Supertunia Priscilla (lavender), Colorburst Melon Calibrachoa, "Peter’s Wonder" Coleus,
“Lemon Symphony” Osteospermum hybrid, Madeira Violet Argyranthemum. and
Red Snapdragons.

“Gay’s Delight” Coleus (Lime green with red-violet stems), “Happy Violet” Exotic Geranium, Dracaena marginata “magenta," and “Merlin’s Magic” Coleus fill a gray-green container.

Elegante Mother used the same coleus in this pot, with a different, lighter look:

"Gay’s Delight" Coleus, "Colorburst Chocolate" Calibrachoa (deep rose), "Needlepoint" Coleus (cut leaf with lime green, cream and scarlet), Ipomoea “Blackie," (dark sweet potato vine) and
“Snowstorm White” Bacopa.

And one more that I like for it's simplicity, and for the interesting pot:

I think I used Bacopa, with a dark red petunia, and a lighter coleus. I can probably look up the plant names if you need them.

So, the containers have been planted for the season. I have a couple more pots that are basically research. I've planted two small poinsettias that have carried over from Christmas, and another pot that has overgrown calla lily greens. I don't know if they will make it, but it was worth a try.

Dirt. I actually had dirt under my fingernails! (goofy grin).

If you are not familiar with the early spring perrenial called "Squill," please go to this link for a picture of what's growing in my garden.

http://www.twofrog.com/images/squill28.jpg

Google Images has a number of pictures of squill, but this one is the closest to what has volunteered in my yard. It's spread nicely over the past 15 years, and continues to move it's way across the grove floor. The chipmunks have moved some of it to my sidewalk garden, the herb garden and the grass on the north side of the house. The leaves are a bit darker and "strappier" than grass, so you can see the contrast.

Squill is well worth adding to your gardens for contrast with crocus, and the blue would be lovely mixed in with daffodils.

Speaking of chipmunks.....the little rodents are up and around and making themselves known. I saw two of them doing the "Oh NO I WON'T....Oh yes you will" dance earlier this week. You know, they must keep their babies in the burrows until they are almost full grown. I don't think I've ever seen a baby chimpmunk!

Chimpmunks and mosquitoes....two things I could really do without!

The forsythia is in bloom!

And the star magnolia buds are swelling, but it looks like a lot of the buds were killed off in the three weeks of below-freezing weather we had in February. Too bad, it's really a beautiful shrub.

Bogie responded to my comment about trying to get some bulbs planted last minute. I've had this terrible cold for a week or more now, but yesterday it was FIFTY DEGREES here! Normally by now our ground would be frozen hard, and I'd have to save the bulbs by planting them in containers, but I could hear the garden calling to me.

There's just something about early bulbs blooming in Spring that is so comforting, and I HATE to waste things. Those bulbs had been talking to me for the past two or three months, asking when I was going to make time for them. So, despite my cold, I bundled up, and headed out.

First, I fed the birds. Then, I collected the wheelbarrow, a shovel, my tool bucket and the new trowels the kids gave me for Christmas.

I have a narrow spot, the width of the garden, between two pods of iris that was perfect for these bulbs. I started shoveling the soil into the wheelbarrow. Then I heard this sound. The shovel was hitting something. NO.....it couldn't be!

A number of years ago, too many exactly for me to remember, I decided I would outwit the chipmunks, and planted tulips in a wire cage. Unfortunately, the tulips were short-lived, but the wire cage was still there, in great shape.

What should have been a twenty minute chore, ended up being more like 75 minutes. I couldn't dig the cage out, because part of it was sitting under iris that need to be relocated. The iris are more important to me than the bulbs.

So, I decided to cut the top off the cage, plant the new bulbs there for this winter, and then dig everything up next summer after the iris have bloomed. I went inside for the wire cutters and wire by wire clipped open about two thirds of the lid. I've promised myself that I will go back and dig the cage out next summer, so that no one will get hurt on the remains of the cage.

I got most of the bulbs planted. I even replanted some crocus that I inadvertently dug up. I think I killed off a tulip or two that was planted just past the end of the wire cage. I'm going to have to pull together Spring pictures into an album, so that I can remember what I've planted, where.

One of my favorite signs in Elegante Mother's collection of garden decorations, is a little medallion that says, "I don't remember planting that there!"

It was good to get out, despite the fact that it took longer than I had hoped. It was good to get the bulbs in. I still have my cold, but it doesn't seem to be any worse than it was yesterday, so the exercise and the chance to play in the garden may have helped. YEA!! Now I can stop feeling guilty about the bulbs!

I had a list of chores that needed to be done outside to put the lawns and gardens to bed for this year. Usually I start working on them earlier, but weather and other obligations have kept me from getting to them. Last week, we had a stretch of three days with temps in the sixties. You can bet I made use of that time to trim things back and weed. I pulled spent plants, and got rid of a few unwanted plants.

Today's work was more along the lines of cleanup. I needed Dear Husband's help, but it turned out that he had his own list of projects, so I carried on without him until lunchtime. Then I asked my resident StepSon to give me a hand. I got an early start, and the guys helped me the last hour or so of my time outside. By 2:30 I was MORE than ready to come in.

I tidied up the mulch pile, moving part of it off the grass. (DH moved the pile with the snow plow. I wouldn't call a snow plow a precision tool. Some of the mulch ended up on the grass, which bothered me, but not DH.) I mulched the day lilies in the herb garden, and the sidewalk garden. I mulched the clematis, and put rings around the two roses that are in ground. I raked the north yard, and then mowed part of it. I moved mulch to the southeast corner of the house and set in stepping stones to make a path to the gas meter for the meter reader, and I raked birch leaves out of the junipers.

SS moved compost for me, and covered the peonies, roses and iris with compost. (My iris are trying to grow over each other. Some are completely out of the ground, so we covered them for the winter). He raked up everything that I cut out of the driveway garden last week, and took it to the north end of our lot, and finished the raking I had started on the front lawn.

Dear Husband moved the timbers I wrote about, that looked like pick-up sticks in my herb garden. He set them atop the raised veggie bed so that water would drain off them during the winter. DH caulked the soffit at the living room cathedral window. He had to tear it out earlier this year to remove the bees that had nested, and was just getting around to caulking the replacement. While he was there, he decided to caulk the center panes of the window.

I had forgotten that my favorite painter was visiting this morning to do some touch-ups. Before he left, I asked him how warm it needed to be outside to paint trim. He said that today actually was warm enough, but that it was supposed to be warmer toward the end of the week. You all probably know that it's best to paint between 10 and 2:00 this time of year. Dear Husband and I agreed that we could put off the last of the trim painting until later this week, so the scaffold remains under my living room window. I hope that warmer weather doesn't necessarily mean wet weather or that scaffolding will never be down in time for Elegante Mother's Open House!

Dear Husband and I were running out of steam when it came to the last of the chores. He and SS moved the piles of leaves I'd gathered to the compost pile. I set rigid insulation on the floor of the garage and DH helped me move some of the plants into the garage to be wintered over. Then, I swept off the sidewalk, and fed the birds.

Elegante Mother put a beef roast in the crockpot this morning. I contributed roasted potatoes seasoned with Lipton's dry onion soup mix, and steamed broccoli with white cheese sauce. It was a surpisingly easy meal, and tasted good.

Are you tired, yet? I certainly was. I need a new body. Every time I sit still for a bit something hurts! I spent some time in the office this evening, and I'll need to put in more time tomorrow I have a punch list of things to be done inside tomorrow, but that's another post. *S*

I have an amazing star magnolia outside my office window. I thought they were small, shrubby plants, but this one is more than twenty feet tall, despite having been hit when a neighboring tree fell on it.

What's drawing my attention today is the color of the leaves. As the weather turned cooler, the leaves went from green to a warm gold. This tree would do a Tuscan courtyard proud! Today, it is much colder than it's been. I believe we were below freezing last night, and the leaves on the magnolia have taken on a faint burgundy cast over the gold. What a treasure this plant is: beautiful blooms to start the growing season, glossy green during the summer, and then glorious color before leaf drop. I spend my late winter days watching the swell of the bloom pods, waiting for the first to open. I couldn't have asked for a better companion outside my window!

Susan, I need some particulars about where you garden to be able to make suggestions about shade loving plants. I need to know what zone you are in. Instead of announcing the town where you live, you can tell me what state, and upper or lower half, and I should be able to determine the zone for you. OR... go to this site and clock your cursor where you live to determine the zone number.

There's a wonderful little book called "Taylor's Guide to Perennials for Shade," published by Houghton Mifflin, which I would recommend to you. It will give you basic tips for preparing your soil, and when to move plants into and out of your garden. There is also a companion book on ground covers that would be very helpful.

The following list of plants are hardy to USDA Zones 5 or 4, unless noted. Taylor's guide shows a picture of, and describes all these, and as many more plants that I won't mention here. You need to choose by height, season, and also by type of shade. Most of these plants will grow in partial shade. If you need information for DEEP shade, let me know, and I'll see if I kept the websites that might help.

Bugleweed
Lady's Mantle (I have one, and it sends out runners to make more.)
Anemone (Zones 4-6 depending on the variety)
Columbine (Spring bloomer)
Goatsbeard (a shrubby perennial that grows 4-6 feet. I want one!)
Astilbe
False Rockcress (a mat-forming plant for edgings)
Siberian Bugloss
Bellflower (dozens of varieties and sizes)
Leadwort (zone 6)
Lily of the Valley (This spreads nicely, and smells wonderful)
Bleeding Heart
Dutchmen's Breeches
Foxglove
Shooting Star
Leopard's Bane
Sweet woodruff (I've used these under taller plants)
Hellebore (I've never grown these....the Lenten Rose)
Cranesbill
Coral bells (I love the "Purple Palace" variety)
Hosta (Francee is my favorite....a creamy stripe down the center of the leaf)
Blue lily turf (The book says this is zone 6, but I grow it in zone 5.)
Blue Lobelia
Lupine
Creeping Phlox (beautiful at the edge of a garden or base of a tree)
False Dragon Head (This is a good tall plant for the background of a garden)
Chinese Lantern Plant (Very invasive. Grow it in a pot for dried arrangements)
Jacob's Ladder
Solomon's Seal
Primrose
Stonecrop (Sedum) I have "Autumn Joy" and one other
Snow Trillium
Violets (which will spread all over the place, if you let them)

I hope this list gives you a jumping off point, Susan.

Do you recall that about ten days ago I wrote a note to a nearby gardener to congratulate him on what lovely gardens he had? Well, today Elegante Mother and I got to walk through those gardens.

My gardening friend called when he received my note. He invited us to come see them first hand, so this morning I called to be sure that it was convenient. The day has been gorgeous, one of those beautiful, warm days with intense blue skies, and it was perfect for strolling through the gardens. We went to visit at 1:30, and were there for 90 minutes.

My note to my Gardening Friend (GF) came about because I had watched him create a shade garden under some pine trees over the last decade or more. I wasn't prepared to find that in addition to that splendid garden, he also had 90 varieties of roses, two kinds of raspberries (BIG beds), rhubarb, and tomatoes. And about a million other plants.

I didn't know that you could grow holly here! Or bamboo!

I saw plants I recognized, and plants I'd never seen. I saw plants that looked familiar, but the names wouldn't come to me. I discovered that there is a variety of lily in the valley that blooms pink, and found out that I'm not the only one who has trouble with beetles eating the leaves of the hollyhocks!

GF is 84. This is the first year that he's hired a lawn service, and had them edge the garden for him. I was astonished at the amount of land he has under cultivation that was 99% weed free. It seems we like the same plants and shrubs, but he's much more focused on his gardening than I am.

I asked if he gardened every day, and he shrugged a shoulder and said he got out when he felt up to it. He must put in 8 hours a day 7 days a week! His gardens are fabulous! We've been invited back to see them at their peak.

I can't begin to tell you the names of all the plants, but the variety was incredible, and GF mixes shrubs nicely with perennials and annuals.

I didn't expect to have such a pleasant afternoon as a result of writing that note, but I sure did!

It was a glorious day for yard work. It's been chilly for this time of year, but mostly clear. I've been looking out the north windows in the kitchen, looking over the herb garden. There's a little pocket yard there and it looks like it hasn't been mowed for two months or so. *G* It's amazing what a little rain can do for grass!

We expect to have scattered showers from tonight thru Monday, so I started my day by assembling a brand new weed eater, and trimming around the herb garden and the North yard. In about half an hour, I'm going to try to mow the rest of the grass. It was too wet this morning to even consider mowing. If I wait to mow until next week, the grass will be too wet and ten feet high!

Dear Husband has purchased cedar timbers to re-frame part of the herb garden. It's an ongoing chore. He replaced about five of them two years ago, and six more are disintegrating and have to be replaced. I'm not sure when he hopes to do the work, but I vote for this fall! I saw dozens of things I could work on, near him, while he worked in the garden. It would be really pleasant to share a few afternoons outside.

About two weeks ago I worked like a demon, cutting back offending volunteer trees and shrubs at the front and south side of the house. I want to make a pathway for the meter readers through the front garden, so things aren't trampled. I need to get stepping stones to finish the job. I pruned back the junipers and shrubs, and cleared a path. Now I want to set stones as a walk way, and then heavily mulch around them. This is the perfect weather to get it all done.

The need to weed is abating. I'm looking at the gardens and thinking about structure and spring blooms, and spreading compost and mulch. We'll let the season ease out with mums, Victoria Blue salvia, Homestead Purple verbena, rudbeckia and Bluebeard, and work on design for next year. Oh....and it's time to rip out the poison ivy in the front garden! Little kids will think I'm the Halloween mummy if they see me dressed up to ivy hunt!

I love to collect dried plants for fall decorations. I've been keeping my eye on several plants that are growing along the edge of the road, or the bean fields. I need to wait a bit to go harvest them.

There's a stand of milk weed at the edge of the field to the east of us. Once the pods split open, the plant can be cut and dried. They provide wonderful interest for a dried arrangement. My mother and I have spray painted milk weed pods gold to use in Christmas arrangements and package decorations, but they are beautiful in their natural colors.

Teasle is an invasive weed that gows in great clumps in our area. It has a wonderful, prickly head at the top of a tall stalk. You can make very dramatic arrangements with them. If you can harvest enough, you could bundle them together, rather the way you would make a bundle of corn stalks. (Check out the teasle in the basket at this site.) But, you have to be sure to use heavy leather gloves when you work with them, because sharp spines cover their stems.

There's a plant that we used to call "Indian Tobacco," when I was a child. It's real name is "Curly Dock." When it dries, it has a deep brown, seedy look, that contrasts the form of the other weeds, and adds more color to the arrangement.

I tend to suppliment what I find along the road with dried botannicals from places like Michael's and Hobby Lobby. One of my favorites is the dried lily pod.
You can see a wreath that uses the dark brown pods at this site.

It's almost time to harvest. I have several five gallon buckets in the garage, and as I harvest, I'll stand the plants in the buckets to finish drying. Before Thanksgiving, I'll create bouquets, tie them with twine, and then add raffia or a wide ribbon. Mother Nature sure gives us some lovely decorations.

I think it's safe to say that Fall is upon us. We haven't had the scent of burning leaves, or the crispness of an early morning yet, but you can see the changes just starting in the plants.

Our road has fields of soybeans on either side of it to the east. About a week ago, I noticed the very first signs of change of color in the field. It was subtle, but yesterday it had become more pronounced. Those particular fields must have had enough rain to make it through the summer. The plants were vigorous, so I think this is most likely not a response to drought, but rather, the end of the growing cycle. The field is mottled with dark green, and shades of lemon yellow to tan sprinkled throughout.

We have a tree that lines several of our streets. I don't know what tree it is, but it looks like it could be related to aspens. These trees are beginning to drop their leaves. Last week the dead leaves were dancing across the road as the wind from the coming cool front moved in. Tomorrow, they'll be glued to the ground from the rain.

We have black walnut trees that line the eastern edge of the property. The walnuts have begun to drop. I suppose you really need to wear a helmet to walk near them! *G* The leaves have been on the ground for several weeks. They are the first sign of impending weather changes, to me.

It's raining today. Should I count that as another sign? We haven't had the burning drought we had last year, but I suspect we are behind in precipitation. EVERYTHING says "AAAAhhhhhhhh" when we get the least bit of rain.

I'm ready for cooler weather, but I can't help wondering where the entire year has gone. Elegante Mother is correct when she says that the older you get, the faster the time flies.

I used a watering wand in the herb garden tonight. It's time consuming to do the job right, but it gives me the time to see things up close.

The volunteer day lilies are blooming. When I looked out the window this evening five small birds were resting on one of the stalks, waiting for their turn at the bird feeder.

In early May, I severely trimmed one half of my sage plants. I wasn't sure that I wanted to prune them that early, so I stopped halfway through. It's been interesting to see the results. The unpruned half is quite large, and bloomed early in June. The leaves are a rather sickly yellowish green, with spots that could be insect damage. The pruned half is more compact (and pleasing to the eye), the leaves are healthy, and the color is the true sage green. SO...a note for my garden journal: prune the sage!

I have one cherry tomato plant and one miniature yellow pear tomato plant in the herb garden. I've had the first fruit of each, and I'm eager for the rest to ripen. There's nothing like a homegrown tomato!

At the north end of the herb garden I've planted several lavender plants. Imagine my surprise when garlic appeared next to them. I thought I had harvested all the garlic last year, but I have a good stand of it. The garlic has gone to bloom. It won't be long before I can try, once more, to dig it out.

The yarrow blooms have all begun to turn brown. I never remember to deadhead to keep the plant blooming through the summer. The clematis that climbs the trellis just behind the yarrow may be dying. I've talked with the county extension master gardener without getting a definitive answer on what's happening. From what I've read, this could be a fungus, and the solution is to cut the infected canes at the ground. Unfortunately, I think all of the canes are infected. I'll cut them back to the ground this fall, but I don't expect to see new growth next spring. Too bad....it's been a lovely plant.

The mat of thyme is growing back nicely. The lemon balm is very fragrant, as is the scented geranium. The new apricot-colored small rose is not doing as well as I had hoped. The Scottish spearmint needs to have the flowers pinched off, to reshape the plant. The silver and gold thyme at the south end of that section have grown nicely this year.

The winter savory is beautiful! The plants are nicely shaped and healthy. I'm SO glad Nan questioned my instructions to dig it up last year! Thank you, sis!
The oregano got leggy, and I let her have her way with it again this year. This time she surprised me by trimming it back less than last year! *G* I know....I'm never satisfied! If you haven't seen my sister's blog entries about her garden efforts this year, be sure to go visit and see what she's been up to.

The chives are healthy, as usual, the basil seems to be going great guns. The Italian parsley tried to set blooms, and I trimmed the bloom stalks back. The rosemary plants are still tiny. I don't know why. The dill needs to be ripped out. It's going to seed, and we don't need any more volunteers. The purple coneflower is thick, and lovely. I hope the stand of yellow coneflower in the front gardens will be as vigorous.

And that's the herb garden news that's fit to print.

...to the quality of work I was doing in May and June that the gardens have survived so well with so little attention since June 10th. Before I hurt my knee the gardens had never looked better. In all fairness, the gardens are at their best in May and early June, but the weeding, mulching, fertilizing, and planting of new plants was coming along very nicely. My sister, Nan, helped that plan along by getting the last of the plants that I had purchased in May into the ground for me. The perennials have a nice start, and thanks to heavy mulch, there isn't a horrible amount of weeding to be done.

Today, was the first time I have been able to get into the gardens to weed. I worked around the edges of the garden at the front side walk, pulling out crab grass, trimming back iris and coreopsis, and pulling elm tree seedlings. I tried kneeling on my left knee with my right leg extended to the side, but that was uncomfortable, so I tested my weight on the outside edge of my right knee cap. With a foam kneeler, some Advil, and very judicious movement of my weight, it worked. I weeded for an hour or so in the morning, and another thirty minutes this evening.

I wear latex gloves when I weed. I took a plastic grocery bag out and used it as a barrier over my arm to pull a poison ivy plant that had taken hold in my favorite iris. I'll have to be cautious for the rest of the year, because it's likely that the iris leaves have traces of the oil from the poison ivy.

It seems that we are expecting rain off and on this week. The lawn has been grinning at us and waving. Soon we'll loose small children in it. Dear Husband has used his spare time this week to cut down the trees that fell over last week, so the mowing has gone wanting. I asked my stepson to fill in with an hour of mowing today, and I used the walk behind mower to trim the north lawn around the herb garden. I still need to use the string trimmer, but things are looking MUCH neater. It's satisfying to see these chores done.

We live on top of the mother lode of CLAY!

It's a lovely dark soil when it's moist, but when the heat of midsummer comes along, it becomes a grayish cement!

I was moaning about the clay across the front of the house, and complaining that I needed to amend the soil so I could plant the perennials this week. A good friend told me that his mother swears by "Clay Breaker," and I said, "What's that?"

Well....there are several varieties of this product, and it seems they are all produced and sold in either England or Australia. I checked at Google and the first two pages of listings were all from those two countries. Luckily, one of the entries talked about how to improve clay soil. Rather than searching for the clay breaking products, it told how to use sand, organic matter and lime or gypsum to improve the soil.

Dear Husband and Second Son spread sand, gypsum and compost for me last week. We had a good rain over the weekend, which made the soil easier to work. The next step is to incorporate all this into the top 8-12 inches of soil.

Sharp sand will improve the drainage and aeration characteristics of the soil, and encourage strong root formation. A good "grit" sand will have a reasonable amount of tiny pebbles in the 3-6mm range. These are sometimes called a "concreting" or "Horticultural" sand. It is NOT the soft, fine sand that builders use.

Organic matter also aids drainage and aeration, but it will also add to the fertility of the soil. Well-rotted compost, spent mushroom compost or well-rotted leaf litter are excellent choices. You do not want to use green organic matter, or partially rotted compost as it will feed from the soil to aid decomposition, rather than feeding the soil.

Both lime and gypsum (calcium sulfate) work to aggregate the clay particles in clay, to make it more permeable. Gypsum accomplishes this without raising the soil pH.

My information, and a great deal more, can be found at this site: Improving Clay Soil FAQ.

If you've been battling clay soil in your gardens, this site has loads of information about easy ways to improve the soil. When it comes down to it, grit sand and well-rotted compost in large quantities are the cheapest way to improve the soil. Good luck!

I'm NOT a failure. I discovered today that I have NOT been a failure for the past SEVENTEEN YEARS!

When we first moved here, and I started the gardens, I tried to grow morning glories, so that they would grow up over wild shrubs and give us more color during the summer. I scarred or cracked the shell of the seed. I soaked them overnight. I tried strewing seed in November so that they would start naturally in the spring. Nothing I did seemed to work.

I assumed that I had done something wrong. Not once in all that time have I been able to get morning glories to grow in my gardens.

Well, this year, I bought two pots of them, already started. One was a smaller plant, the other was a 6 or 8" pot that had several plants started. I took them out to the east driveway garden and planted them. Both had something to climb, and lots of mulch around them. I watered them every other day.

Today, as I drove by on the way to the garage, I looked over at the garden and something was missing. The supports were all there. The mulch was there.....
But, where there SHOULD have been two healthy growing morning glories.....NOTHING!

Some wretched furry creature has eaten seventeen years of morning glories right to the ground! Some miserable varmint had himself a great salad last night! There's NOTHING left....of about six plants.

I need to think about this. I wonder if there's anyway to get around the darned critter? At least now I know that I am not a failure as a gardener!

Well, the landscaper showed up this morning and took out the stump of the viburnum.

I was at the salon, and my mother called to say that the landscapers had arrived and were busy taking out the stump. They were originally supposed to have done it last Tuesday. It was rescheduled to Friday. No one showed up.
I talked with the landscaper's wife and told her that I didn't want them to work on the stump unless I was around. So much for communication.

So, when I got home, they were about two-thirds of the way done. I watched as they took out the rest. Unfortunately, I had to point out an arm of it they had missed, and you know that if I was able to see that one arm, there are others just below the surface that I missed.

I plan to add LOT of compost to the area, working it into the soil. Once the area has been cleared, I'll plant new perennials and then mulch everything. Can you envision Bluebeard, Russian Sage, Sunrise Coneflower, and Homestead Purple Verbena leading from the brick walls out to the edge of the garden?

The last thing the landscaper did before he and his crew left was to plant the new redbud. We agreed on how far forward of the house the tree should go. We have the species that has just one trunk, rather than the kind that grows multiple trunks. It's just a baby tree. It will be a long time before it fills out and shades the area again.

I've wanted a redbud for a very long time. Cop Car tried to help me out by transplanting several of the seedlings from her lawn, but we lost them over the winter. We'll have to hope that this one lasts.

..should be the word of the day.

This morning, around 6:30, the herb garden looked mysterious and very verdant, much as I think a secret garden might look. The shadows, dissipating as the light grew, outlined the leaves, and heightened the darker colors in the garden. The lighter lamb's ears glowed against the darker background.

Its cold and rainy in Chicagoland. We are not likely to see any sunshine today. But, the view out our windows is amazing. Everything has been responding to the cool, wet Spring weather. The chives are almost ready to bloom. The herb garden has gone from slowly waking up to looking almost mature in the past week.

The green leaves of the day lilies seem to be jumping out of the ground in their haste to grow. We won't see blooms until June, but the greens are full and tall. Almost everything has come back in the herb garden except two pods of thyme that I'll have to replace. I've never seen it die back like this, and I can only assume the mild winter, coupled with the drought, finally did it in.

Two of the iris are open! "Infinite Grace" and "Rare Wine" are the two along the brick wall of the garage that are the first to open. Most of the rest of the iris are showing buds, even the one which I know will be last to bloom.

The stump of the viburnum has STILL not been pulled. I think I am going to ask them to wait until next week, because I feel that it is important I be here when they pull the stump, and then plant the redbud. I've been told that the root system is as deep and wide as the tree or shrub was tall, so there's a whopper of a root to pull out. I'm concerned about the extent of the damage to the existing garden, and I don't see how they can avoid damaging the lawn, after all this rain.

Dear Husband gave the lawn it's first rough cut about a week or ten days ago. He's going to need to hire a fleet of mowers, the way the grass is growing! We can hear the grass calling to him at night....and the dandelions have a nasty laugh, rather like Peter Lorre in the "Maltese Falcon." (Heh heh heh)

To recap, the gardens are astonishing this year, there's a lot of work left to do, and DH gets to mow. Don't you LOVE SPRING??

...just weeding in the rain....

(sung to the music of "I'm Singing in the Rain.")

Yup....that's what I was doing earlier today. Dear Husband was going to work on the engine of his boat, but some work done at the yacht yard stymied his plans. I had finished with morning errands and chores, and was on my way down to the driveway bed when I found him collecting the dried material I had pulled from that bed last week. I had planned to hook up the John Deere mower and trailer to make short shrift of that cleanup job, but I was delighted to have the unsolicited help.

As he passed me on the way to dump the weeds and cuttings, DH said that he was going to go inside. There was a sprinkle or two of rain, and I said I'd be in in a bit. That bit lasted almost two hours before I was rained out.

DH gave me a hand marking off a line along the west side of the driveway garden. We put in two stakes and ran a line, so that I could see where I needed to spade away encroaching grass. I managed to hand weed the upper third of the west side of the garden. This next patch will be the easiest. It's part of an attempt at "lasagna gardening," which cleared an invasion of grass and soapwort out of the garden two years ago. I've left the bed lying fallow all this time, when I COULD have planted it last year. I hope to get it planted in the next two weeks with perennials, and then mulched with wood chips from our own cuttings and downed branches (another project to finish).

I was telling my sister that I'd had been thinking about how a landscaper would have done the work differently. As I was lifting out the chunks of grass and dirt, and shaking the soil from the roots, I was thinking that they would have used a shovel to lift the clumps of grass, toss them into a trailer and dispose of them. Then, they'd bring a load of compost or garden soil mixed with compost to fill in the area that had been excavated. It would have taken them a third of the time. What in the world was I doing on my hands and knees, shaking dirt out of grass roots??? I wish these epiphanies came BEFORE I started a job like this!

The gentle rain that had been expected, saved me from too much gardening the slow way. I headed in about 2:00 when the rain became cold enough to give me the chills. We're still playing catch-up on precipitation, so I won't complain, although I'd have liked to have finished the job. The rain was God's way of reminding me not to overdo!

It was gorgeous today!

Last night we had frost warnings for new plants, and today the temps slowly raised into the lower sixties. We were away from home all morning, so I headed out to the driveway garden in the afternoon. You can walk past a garden and make note of changes that need to be made, but you don't realize the depth of the work until you get down and begin working the soil.

The driveway garden has never been edged, so I've had a constant battle with grass trying to creep into the bed. Beyond that, when I first planted the garden, I thought something called "Bouncing Bet" or "Soapwort" sounded like a lovely plant to add to my collection. If someone tries to sell you one of those plants, RUN THE OTHER WAY! It's one of the most invasive species I've ever planted. I find it creeping through out the lawn, and making its way up the driveway!

I am a bear of little brain, and a creature of habit. Each year I have walked down to that garden, and started at the northern-most end of the bed, on the driveway side. And, each year, I have run out of cool weather and steam while still on the driveway side. THIS year, I've managed to get work done on the west side of that bed, and I've done it while the soil is still damp enough to work. There is NOTHING harder to do than pull grass from dry clay.

I sprayed several patches of soapwort with Round-up. I tend to be an organic gardener, but I'm going to kill off that damned stuff yet! I used a spade to begin loosening patches of grass, and I pulled down dead stalks from last year's flowers, and deadheaded daffodils.

I dragged Dear Husband out with me for another half an hour of work after dinner. He collected branches from the lawn and took them to the mulch pile. We have a chipper shredder, and I'll have to get busy soon to make the mulch that will cover this bed. Beyond that, if we didn't pick up the twigs and branches, he'd mow over them and dull the mower blades. While he collected branches, I raked the southern end of the bed, and collected all the weeds and grass that I pulled out this morning.

I have some serious renovation to do on this bed. The center section is ready to replant. This time I plan to plant masses of Perovskia (Russian Sage), and Rudbekia. I'm debating whether I want to put something slightly taller in the center of the bed as a focal point. Today, I realized that I'll need to rework the southern end of the bed, too. Purple coneflower spread and edged out the Obedient Plant, and now weeds have edged out the coneflower, except along the edges of the bed. Dear husband will have to help me remove some volunteer shrubs, and then I'll divide and replant the Hostas near the Bleeding Heart that caught my eye today.

It's a start, and a good one. Let's hope for more cool weather with occasional showers to keep the soil workable.

The pear trees are in full bloom. We've had a week of warmer than normal weather, so the daffodils have almost run their course. Usually we would have their blooms into May. The forsythia is shifting from bloom to green, and the star magnolia blooms are gone.

Most of the plants that I moved into the garage for the winter have made it. I thought the shrub rose had died, but it finally began to leaf out this week. The Peace Rose, in the ground, made it through the winter, despite the fact that I didn't give it the traditional protection for our winters.

The Darwin tulips have come and gone. The yellow Appledorns decided it was too hot to stick around. I have six or eight pods of tulips that I planted a year and a half ago. I was surprised to see that the chipmunks hadn't gotten to them yet. One that has opened reminds me of a pink Oriental poppy. It has pink petals with black inside at the base of the flower.

I need to renovate the garden across the east face of the house. Dear Husband cut down the viburnum that used to spread over half the wall. Elegante Mother was complaining that she couldn't see out the windows any longer, but the kicker was that the raccoons were using the viburnum as a ladder to the roof.

I will either have to have someone come and professionally remove the stump, or we will have to work around it. I want to plant a specimen tree forward from the stump about six feet, and then fill in behind and to the sides with perennials.
I want to look at weeping cherries, or something that has a weeping shape, so that we don't risk offering the raccoons another ladder.

I have to dig up the Japanese Iris and replant them. There's a ring of green leaves, and a bare center, where the plant has died out. Poison ivy is trying to encroach, so I sprayed it today. There's a Lady's Mantle that will miss the shade of the Viburnum. The face of the house, and Elegante Mother's rooms will be warmer this summer without it's shade.

The viburnum at the end of the driveway is in bloom. It has a lovely pale pink blossom with darker pink buds, and a lovely scent. Between the hyacinths, the pear tree and the viburnum, the air is fragrant.

I sprinkled cinnamon around the roses today. A friend on the herb list told me that cinnamon is an anti-fungal and will help keep black spot at bay. I figured it was worth a try, and have started early enough this season to give it a chance to work.

I pruned back the winter savory today, and discovered that a sage plant in a wonderful terracotta planter made it though the winter. I'll have to put it on my list for regular watering. The rosemary in that same pot died, but that didn't surprise me. I have dreadful luck wintering over rosemary.

This week, I plan to cut back a tree and some honeysuckle that has encroached on my raised vegetable beds. I want spinach and lettuce and more room for tomatoes!

Now, do you see why the gardens are getting to be a bit much??

Today was the first day of 2006 for hands and knees weeding!

I pulled out about 90% of the volunteer vinca to give the emerging lilies a better chance to get a healthy start. I gave one of the ornamental grasses a haircut, pulled most of the verbena, and clipped back the chrysanthemums at the sidewalk. I'm addicted to Homestead Purple Verbena, but it isn't perennial in zone 5, so I have to replant it each year.

I brought the bucket of gardening tools upstairs, as well as an unusual device for gathering clippings. It's a tube of plastic with a bottom, and has a spring that spirals from the bottom to the top. When you aren't using it, it flattens down, and there are loops and toggles so that you can store the container in about a four inch wide space. When I need it, I undo the toggles and it springs up to about the size of a garbage can. I seriously overfilled it with grass stems, but the load was light enough not to do any damage.

I used the Christmas wreaths to protect a Peace rose for the remainder of the winter. I removed the wreaths and pruned the canes back. If we get back down to freezing, I'll have to put a bucket over the rose to protect it.

So.....I've had my first two hours of gardening. YEAH!!!!!!!!!!

As you well know, it's November. We've had another mild, warm October, so my gardens still have things growing, when in past years, it would be chilly, damp, perhaps even frosty out there, and the growing season would be over.

I got to play in the herb garden today.

It seems to me that I read something recently that suggested that some plants winter over better if you wait to cut them back in the spring. I've made it a practice to put the gardens to bed for the winter by cutting everything back and raking up any rose debris. I have a number of plants that get wintered over in the garage in large pots. The one rose that's left in my garden will be trimmed back, mounded with dirt to protect the graft, encircled with a cage and covered with shredded leaves.

I need to surf to see what I can find about waiting to cut the plants back. It seems to me that chrysanthemums were included in that list, and maybe iris, but I can't remember the others. I want to check on daylilies, clematis, ornamental grasses and several herbs.

I wanted you to see the ornamental grass that grows at the corner of the house. It's been there for years, and is the most modest of plants until about the third week of August, and then it just explodes, covering the sidewalk and anything near it.

We had a little visitor who was hiding in it. It never occurred to me that it might provide a highway for small animals who need cover as they travel through the area. I'll have to watch to see if Ed sits and watches the grass.

I have to do some work on my raised veggie beds, so I'm not growing full sized tomatoes this year, but I have a cherrry tomato plant, and two miniature pear tomato plants growing in the herb beds. They've been producing regularly, and this is one day's harvest.

In the middle of winter, I long for the scent of summer tomatoes. I love the warm, ripe texture of a summer tomato. There is no taste quite like it. The next best thing is the taste of a cherry tomato....that burst of flavor that pops in your mouth as you bite into them.

These cherry tomatoes are Sweet 100, but next year I'm going to look for a variety that has more acid, and is marginally larger. Yum! I can hardly wait!

I've been pondering for some time the amount of time it takes to maintain all the gardens at Chez Buffy. In particular, the herb garden has been on my mind. I've worried that I should consider closing it down because it's a good sized drain on my summer hours.

My youngest sister came to visit for two days and joined me in the gardens on Friday morning. I had several chores that needed my attention and the purpose of her visit, in part, was to give me a hand. It was also a chance for us to chat and catch up before the school year claims all her time.

I posted that we finally got rain last week. This week, on Tuesday afternoon and into the evening we had wonderful, gentle rain that soaked in. It wasn't all that we needed, but it was a step in the right direction.

Wednesday dawned cool and clear. It was beautiful in the morning, and I managed to get in an hour's work before a nurse came to visit Elegante Mother. I was trying to tidy things up before she arrived. She was early! I got caught in my gardening gear, looking ratty, and had to make the best of it.

This morning I was out at 5:15 in the morning, setting up the hose to water the gardens at the front door. Before I went back into the house, I decided to fill the bird feeder and birdbath.

Wednesday, the boys came to us later than usual. I had an audit, and went to pick them up about noon. After lunch, I helped them get started on the project for the day. I had to run three errands before I could join them.

As I gave them the last of the instructions, I realized that a thunderstorm was flying toward us from the north. We covered the lawn mower and they headed inside. I thought I could out run the storm and get my errands done. HA!

We had three or four isolated thunderstorms that afternoon. In each, we had 10-20 minutes of hard rain before it cleared off. You could hear the ground go Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

I don't know how many days it had been since we had measurable rain, but those brief showers weren't enough. We're still in drought, and will be for a while. Sunday, the weathermen are predicting that we will hit 100 degrees or more. We can only hope that the cooler weather next week will bring us some relief.

MY WEEDS ARE WILTING!

Does that give you an idea how bad things are here?

We're running sprinklers on the gardens at the front door and hand watering the herb garden and containers, but everything else is being left to the whim of the weather. I have some tall weeds at the edge of the grove to the north of the house, and yesterday I realized that the weeds are wilting. I have never seen weeds wilt before.

On the news tonight, they announced that we are in the worst drought since 1988. In the period from March 16 to July 16, the Chicago area has received 9.09 inches of precipitation less than the norm. I suspect that our little area is further in the hole than that. We are just north of a freeway, and there is something about those ribbons of cement that detours the rain clouds.

I'm going to look up the instructions for rain dances, and encourage all my friends to pray for RAIN! Please! I need a week of gloomy, gray, drippy days. I promise I won't complain.

I'm yet living. All the usual suspects here are doing well, despite the horrible heat and humidity.

We have reached the point this summer where I'll have my ten and fifteen year old nephews each Wednesday. I can't begin to tell you how much help they are.

PLEASE, God....Please! Couldn't we just have an inch or two of rain this week....and next??

It is SO dry here that we need to worry about the jerks who will shoot off fireworks during the week of the Fourth of July. Everything will go up like tinder.

Remember the picture of the meadow? Scroll down and take a look at it, because I just spent an hour pulling most of those daisies out of the garden.

I've probably waited too long. I can see seeds on the sidewalk, so no doubt the daisies will be back again next Spring. I've also ripped out the volunteer Dame's rocket, and cut back some of the iris stalks.

The ground is sere. We have had the threat of isolated thunderstorms, but no rain has materialized. I have to water the container garden daily, and I may need to consider watering twice a day. The raccoons are sucking the bird bath dry.

Before I can start dividing the iris, I'll have to run the sprinkler. The ground is so dry that trying to lift the plants now would harm them. It's so dry that I'm not getting the roots of the daisies, so I'll have to go back and root them out once I've watered.

It's interesting how much cooler the garden feels now that it's not overcrowded. Now the lilies and Peace rose aren't fighting for some sun, and the miniature day lilies will be more visible. I planted Homestead purple verbena, and I hope that we'll see a carpet of purple again this year. I'll add purple fountain grass for height and drama.

Back to the garden to finish up, and move all the dead plants!

Dear God, if it's not too much trouble, Sir, could we have a little rain, please??

I am SO proud of myself. Each year I buy plants, and I loose some of them because I don't get them planted within a reasonable period. This year, as in past years, I fell prey to that "I HAVE to have one (or three) of those" compulsion, and I filled up what passes for a trunk in our SUV.

I unloaded the plants, and some of them went directly into containers for my mother, and others were left in the garage, temporarily, or so I thought. They were there at least a week before I moved them outside so they wouldn't die of lack of sunshine.

As the ladies of my quilting bee left on Friday night, I heard one of them say that it was like walking through a meadow. A friend took this picture of the flowers at the sidewalk a week ago. The ox-eye daisies are all volunteers. I grew them in the center box of the herb garden on the north side of the house, and the chipmunks felt they�d look better at the front door. Each year they come up in new places. I rip them out, and they come back. A friend was horrified to hear me say that I planned to rip them out when I divided the iris. I couldn�t convince her that we�d have a full crop again next year.

Leucanthemum��.ox-eye daisy�.about15-18 inches tall�.very hardy, deals well with dry, clay soil. Buy one packet of seed and you, too, can have a meadow, forever!

I was driving home last Thursday, and came around the corner onto the street where we live. There are subdividion signs on either side of that corner, and the landscapers had decorated them with banks of yellow tulips.

It has been incredibly windy for the past few days, and the tulips on the north side of the street had been totally stripped of their blooms. Those on the south side had a six foot block sign protecting them from the wind, and were still blooming.

As we traveled to Iowa and back, we saw similar examples of the wind's power. I'm ready for that part where "April sighed, and said goodbye, and along came pretty little May!"

I suppose that telling you I was on my hands and knees for more than five hours yesterday may create an unfortunate image in your mind, but it brought me a lot of satisfaction. It was a glorious day, and I spent that time weeding!

In just two weeks our Red Hat Society ladies will be coming for a brunch. I've started making lists mentally of what has to be done before they troop up the sidewalk. Of course, part of that has to be the preparation of the gardens.

The apple trees, and pear trees have been beautiful this year, covered with masses of blossoms. We had quite a heat spell early in April, but the last 10 days of the month it's been unusually cool. The tulips are gorgeous, and the lilacs have been holding their bloom unusually long.

Today, the wind is whipping the fruit trees, and we have petal snow.

I noticed, as we returned home today that the lilies of the valley under the birch trees have materialized! I think they must be easily six to eight inches tall, and there was no sign of them a few days ago.

It's time for violets and lilacs!

Our yard is full of violets. There are places where it's only violets! We have traditional purple violets, and white ones and pale blue ones. There's one stretch of what is laughingly called "lawn" that I'll have to ask DH not to mow until the violets are gone.

The viburnum growing where the drive meets the road is in bloom, and the scent is heavenly! The cold/cool weather has prolonged the tulip season. I'll have to make note of where they are so I don't kill anything off when I reorganize the gardens this summer. We still have a few daffodils, and the clematis is trying to work it's way up the arbor. I'll have to go out to set up the twine that encourages it on it's way to the top.

I forgot to check my winter sown seeds, and the heat got them all one fine day. I've just about decided where I want tomatoes and lettuces to go....and I'd better get that lettuce in NOW!

YEA, SPRING!!!!

Or, she's getting ready to. We've had unusually warm weather for April. I'm sure the Cubs are thrilled to be playing in warm weather, but the results for some of our plants could be disastrous.

I see that tulips I planted last fall are up and ready to bloom, but today we are supposed to slip into the 50s as a cold front passes, and by the end of the week, we'll be flirting with freezing weather at night. I hope the tulips can deal with it. They never last long here, so I'd like to have at least ONE season of bloom.

Chipmunks are the bane of my warm weather existence. They taunt my cat and eat the tulip bulbs. They filch my crocus bulbs and deposit them for future meals. The following two pictures are of crocus that have been deftly removed from my gardens and replanted along a path next to our property. I was out walking and the blooms caught my eye.

I guess at heart, the chippies are exterior decorators. They wanted to share my gardens with others, the little buggers!

I've had the chance to be out in my garden once this year, but tomorrow.....ah, tomorrow.....I'm going to have the entire morning out there.

I still have some clean up to do from last fall. I cleaned out about half of the garden at the sidewalk last week. I want to finish that work, so that the daffodils and tulips will be able to look their best this spring.

I was checking out the herb garden this afternoon. I need to cut back chives, feverfew, oregano and yarrow. There are two chrysanthemums in that garden that need to be pruned, along with the winter savory, the sage, and a clematis that climbs an arbor at the end of the garden.

I'm trying something new this year in the way of seed starting.

...in the gardens.

Today, one of my nieces gave me an afternoon of help out doors. Last weekend, when I should have been out doing yard work, I was inside. So this week, I've been playing catch up. I've planted four of the six dozen tulips, and now I'm running out of space. If I can find two matching containers that are not terra cotta, I may try planting the last two dozen in pots to be set out on the sidewalk next spring.

My niece raked the small lawn at the front of our house while I cut back the peonies, removed their supports and covered the stalks with compost. The compost helps to insulate them over the winter, and gives them a slow release feed that makes the peonies glorious in the Spring.

My attempt at lasagna gardening last year was quite a success. I managed to reclaim a long stretch of garden that had been over taken by grass. I added two more small sections of lasagna garden today, and hope to do one more small area before we quit for the winter. Normally, a "Lasagna" garden is created by putting down layers of wet newspaper and then layering "browns" and "greens" over it. "Browns" are dried leaves, shredded paper, straw or leaves. "Greens" are hotter materials like manure, kitchen scraps, or grass clippings. You need to make a stack six inches or higher to get an effective compost pile. I cheated. I laid down a heavier layer of paper, and then we put ready made compost over it, to hold it in place. That will deprive the grass of light, and kill it off! YEAH!!

Then, my niece moved a bale of hay to the covered area at the front door, and we decorated it with a potted mum, pumpkins and gourds. We cleaned up the leaves that had blown in, and either cut back or removed spent plants. I have to make room in the garage for several plants that will be wintered over, but things look much tidier now.

There are a number of plants in the gardens that edge either side of the sidewalk that are still going strong. I refuse to kill off something that has that kind of heart, so I can expect to be out in freezing weather cleaning up the rest of the gardens. I hope that they don't all die the day before Thanksgiving!

It was chilly this morning, but I was comfortable as I ran errands in a heavy sweater jacket. Then the wind picked up, and as we worked we could feel the temperature drop. By the time I went in for the day, my fingers and toes were really feeling the cold. Dear Husband and I collected two tarps of leaves for the compost pile and called it a day. My niece and her boys joined us for dinner, and it was nice to end the day in their company.

I still have 50 crocus to plant. It will be worth it, when they bloom next spring!

This is a view of the garden at our front door. The sidewalk is brick, and the verbena and ornamental grass must love the heat it retains, because this year they are trying to meet in the middle.

It won't be long before this will all be taken by frost, and I'll have to cut it back for the winter. The mats of verbena will last the longest. Lilies have already gone.

In the center of the picture, if you look closely, there are dahlias. We have Victoria Blue salvia, chrysanthemums, lavender, several kinds of ornamental grass, a Palace Purple huchera, one poor dying rose, LOADS of iris, coreopsis, vinca, day lilies and several other things I've planted that I can't identify! This garden is at it's best in late May, but it's not too shabby this Fall.

Closer to the door, there are a dozen pots of plants. I've encouraged my mother to take over the container gardening, so that she can keep her hand in as a gardener. I have a pot of herbs, and she has filled the rest with Million bells, snapdragons, coleus, sweet potato vines, small mums, petunias, straw flowers, geraniums and a dozen other plants.

Variety is the spice of life! We may not be elegantely coordinated, but we certainly enjoy the variety.

It's a gray rainy day, today. I've had the pleasure of working at my sewing machine. I've answered e-mail and lazed through the day.

I was standing at the kitchen sink, and I could see the pile of cedar mulch waiting for me. I noticed it looked a little worse for wear.

As I watched two chipmunks and a grey squirrel made their way over the pile, and burrowed in, apparently leaving stashes for the winter.

Won't THEY be surprised when they come back.

Hmmmmmm....maybe I will be too, once that mulch is spread! *G*

We feed the birds all year long. My mother enjoys watching the birds and animals that come to our feeders, and it's a simple enough thing for us to do. Filling the feeders is part of my early morning list of chores, and I enjoy the quick visit out of doors before I start my day.

I've been watching the fruits of my efforts. We have a clutch of tiny goldfinches who like the chipped sunflower hearts that I put into a dark green silo feeder. The brilliant goldy/yellow of the bird's feathers shows up elegantly against the green feeder. The little birds jostle for position as they wait their turn at the feeder, and when they have finished, they fly over and cling to the brick on the side of the house.

This morning, I watched a male downy woodpecker put himself into position to eat from the feeder. That's no mean feat, because the perches are meant for small birds, but a woodpecker can go just about anywhere he wishes!

Black capped chickadees have made their appearance. Can fall be far away?

My chore for today was weeding. While we were away last week, my gardens exploded! I don't know how they did it, since everything was so dry, but they simply doubled in size.....the weeds too!

Sunday, I'll have to continue the job I started. Actually, I'll have to weed or do maintenence on a daily basis for the forseeable future; there's just too much yard for one person.

The best part of today was walking through the herb garden, to determine what needs to be done. Everything needs a haircut......maybe even a buzz cut! The basil is just coming to the point where I need to do a serious harvest. If I top the plant, I should get a bushier plant, and I might be able to delay its flowering. Most culinary herbs need to be harvested before they flower to have the best flavor.

One of the first things I posted when I started blogging was a recipe for Farmer's Tomato pie. This is a rustic pie made from fresh tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, and topped with torn basil leaves. It tastes like summer, melting in your mouth. The recipe is posted here on May 16, 2003, in case this link doesn't work. Give it a try....it makes a wonderful simple supper.

My lawn thinks it's a hay field! It's masquerading as a harvestable crop, and it rained today. I can hear it growing out there!

I've mentioned in a previous entry that I was filling in as the lawn mower of record for DH and managed to do something to the mowing deck. It absolutely SHUDDERS when I try to engage the blades. So, we contacted the dealer to make arrangements for them to come get it for repairs.

It seems that I am not the only person who has run into things, because we had to wait approximately TWO WEEKS for them to pick it up. And, now that they have it in their clutches (no pun intended), I don't expect to see it for a week or more at the very earliest. I think I'm in the wrong business. They charged $40 for pick up and delivery, and another $30 to just look at the darned thing.

The dealer was upfront about the delay, so we bit the bullet and bought a self-propelled walk-behind mower. Unfortunately, we will have to walk behind this thing daily to keep the grass to a level the mower can deal with.

Last Saturday, two of my younger nephews came for the day and gave me some help with the yard. The youngest one, who is ten, helped me dead-head the peonies, and water the container garden. Then he walked part of the lawn, picking up downed branches so that his older brother could mow. Their father took pity on them and brought his mower over to give them a hand.

It is never possible for me to adequately explain how grateful I am to have help in the yard. The boys saved me from disaster. I have a bad back, and I suspect that I don't have enough strength to make the pull start on the mower work. I would have obsessed about that growing grass if they hadn't come to help. Now, we have it down to a level I can manage.

Dear Husband has a summer cold. He came down with a doozey today. So, tomorrow night, when he gets home from work, I'll have him crank up the mower for me, and I'll go mow for an hour or so.

Ah....the joys of summer.

Dear Husband took off for the lake this morning, and I pulled myself together, had a cup of tea, answered a bit of mail, and then headed for the herb garden. So many things have required my attention elsewhere, that the herb garden is the last to be planted. I'm fully a month late getting the herbs into the ground.

We had a quiet Memorial Day. I was rained out of the gardens yesterday, so I needed to get the herb garden cleaned and ready for some herbs that have been sitting in the garage for more than a week. I needed to weed the chat pathway, and parts of the beds, too. I started at the South end and got about an hour's work in before the first downpour hit.

I stopped and had some breakfast while it rained, and then headed back out as soon as the storm had passed. I got in about thirty minutes or so, and was caught in the next downpour. I left everything, and came in for another short stay. BY the end of my final session I managed to get somewhere between a third and a half of the garden weeded.

I still have the rest of the herb garden to do, herbs to plant, herbs to harvest, tomatoes and zucchini to plant, and weed eating to do around the edges of the lawn and gardens. I think this is a labor of love, and a project that is going to be done a little at a time. It's SOooooooo much more satisfying to stay until the job is complete!

Our little area of the world has been in a drought for the past two years. We went almost through the month of April before we had rain the last day or so. By the 15th they were saying it was the driest April on record. One long day of rain gave it the appearance of being almost normal in rainfall. Statistics lie!

On the other hand, May has been soggy in comparison. Each time I plan to get into my gardens, Mother Nature lets loose. We have water standing in the swale near the road and the sump pumps have been working for several days.
Worms and the perennials I've planted have been happy campers, but soon the iris and lavender are going to be dying off from all the rain.

At least I'm not schlepping hoses around and paying a humongous water bill!

My Iris are just astounding this year. A friend told me that if I put some alfalfa around them in the fall, they would bloom heavier this Spring, and she was right!
I bought a bag of alfalfa pellets and scattered them around the corms. I was probably a bit heavy-handed, but the plants seem to have done well. It doesn't seem to matter which form of alfalfa you use, but the pellets were the tidiest for our gardens.

I plan to take pictures of the gardens with my trusty disposable camera this week. When the pictures have been developed, I'll post a few here. At least you'll be able to see the big picture.

I have one deep purple iris that has done poorly for the past three years. Last year I had one bloom stalk on the plant and the dog snapped it off when he tumbled into the plant. This year, I think there may be six bloom stalks, and I can't wait to have them open! Some of my newer iris are blooming this year, too. Usually I have good luck with blooms the first full season, but I moved these, and then they were heaved out of the ground with the freeze and thaw.

It looks like garnet, or burgundy is my favorite color for iris, but we have yellow, bronze, purple, and blue varieties getting ready to open. One of the most beautiful pale varieties is a delicate ruffled peach called "Infinite Grace."

I was going to dig up and dispose of a pale lavender iris this year, but I may save a few pieces of it and plant it where it will contrast those stronger colors.

Yup, I'm iris happy. Come visit me this time of year, when my gardens are at their best!

When was the last time someone gave you the favor of time? It's a rare gift these days, and all the more precious because so few of us have time to spare.

Today, my oldest sister gave me the favor of an entire day. Yesterday, she helped Dear Husband put the boat in the water. It was her first trip on the Arr!! and it was a major success! She enjoyed the trip up the river, the experience of going through a lock, and motoring to the mooring. She ate the wonderful catered meal, and was so relaxed, she fell asleep on the deck!

When they came back from the lake, she called her husband and announced that she was staying overnight, and would be home late today.

We had quite a rain yesterday, and the Arr!! has now disappeared down my drive. I plan to weed and plant, weed and plant.

I have five Homestead purple verbena, five pots of ornamental grass, three butterfly bushes, five dahlias and five Joe Pye Weed to plant.

It's time to do the container gardens, and I have WEEDS to pull. There's quite a stand of Snow on the Mountain to be ripped out, and I need to kill off the soapwort that has invaded the center of my garden.

Lots to do! I hope you all have a GREAT weekend!

Do you find that dozens of ideas for your blog pop into your head when you are doing something that keeps you from writing them down? I thought I had the solution to that with a hand held tape recorder. I could use it in the office, or in the car. But there are times when your hands are full, or you're in the middle of shaping hamburgers, or in the shower, when that won't work for you.

So, we're relying on my incredibly inept memory today. Let's see....

I can't resist. I need to bable about my gardens.

Dear Husband let me sleep in today. In good weather, usually I do that service for him on weekends, but somehow we swapped roles. I think it must have been about a quarter after seven when I rolled out of bed and dressed. I made the bed, unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded it, started some laundry, folded laundry and moved it to our bedroom, bleached the counters, watered the houseplants, feed the birds, had some toast and read the funnies and then ironed the curtains for the garage and hung them.

By then, Defer's eyes were beginning to roll with the need to go out for a quick visit with the grass, and I was ready to get to my gardens. There was too much to do to accomplish all of it in one morning, so I started with the gardens that edge the sidewalk to the front door.

Last year I planted several collections of lilies on either side of the sidewalk, near the front door. Several of the lilies in the bed on the north side were killed off, either by ground squirrels, raccoons, or by a heavy footed dog or cat. I planted easily a dozen lilies this morning, and 6 crocosima, and then I started the first weeding of the year. I got MOST of the beds at the front of the house done. I deadheaded the daffodils, and pulled thistles. I plan to paint the thistles with Roundup this year and be done with them, but I'll have to catch the next batch that come up. By then we will be in drier weather, and the Roundup will work more effectively.

It looks like we may have lost two tender rose plants that made it through the winter. I uncovered the roses about a month ago and they looked fine, but since then, they have faded to dead twigs. I'll wait to see if there is any new growth as we get into warmer weather, but things don't look good.

I've ordered my first hydrangea, and I plan to buy a buddlea to join the one I wintered over. We enjoy attracting butterflies and hummingbirds, so my goal is to keep planting things that will draw them in.

I worked for about three, maybe three and a half hours this morning, enjoying the heat of the sun on a chilly day. The sky was a deep blue and cloudless. We expected a storm this evening, but it may have by-passed us.

Tomorrow, if it's not raining, I'll take Mother to the nursery, and pick up the first round of plants. We'll make several visits over the next six weeks. My goal is to get everything that I buy into the ground! No waste this year! Our frost free date is May 15, so for the following thirty days, it's plant, plant, plant!

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in
order.
- John Burroughs

I'd like to be out working in my gardens now, but it's a cool, gray day under threatening skies. And, too, there is still work to be done in the office.

There are times when I drag my feet about my gardening chores. Usually that tends to happen when we are in the high heat of summer and the mosquitoes are out in force. But usually, after a good session playing in the dirt, I'm revigorated. The pleasure of gardens that are once again neat, and of a job well done always soothes my soul, and it's worth the achy muscles.

My father visited his fruit trees and vegetable garden each evening during the growing season. I thought it odd that he wanted to see them each day, until I became a gardener, too. Now I understand that he was seeking to put away the difficulties of the day and bring peace to his mind. Most likely, he was also giving thanks for the joy of having a garden.

Some of you lead such fast paced lives that you don't have the time to garden. I've been there, done that. When you find that pace to difficult to maintain, or when it fails to keep your interest, think about gardening. There's everything to be gained: the delight of growing your own food, or the pleasure of creating a beautiful landscape that reflects your personality.

For me, summer is wasted unless I have the chance to eat a tomato warm off the vines in my own garden. Nothing tastes as good as homegrown tomatoes!
And color has a huge influence on my life. This year I plan to plant verbena along the walks and paint the landscape with a beautiful hue of purple. If scent is important to you, walk through my herb garden, brushing the plants with your finger tips. Inhale. I not only get to perfume the outdoors, I can bring the scent into my home.

Gardens soothe the soul, delight the eye, and bring order to our lives. Go plant some seeds, and if you have children, teach them how to plant seeds. You'll both be better for it.

The heat has killed off the Ice Follies Daffodils today. And the Darwin tulips are just about shot, too. It seems that each year we get a taste of summer just in time to kill off some of the spring plants.

The violets have started to bloom!

Part of our lot was once a horse pasture. There are trees that divide it into sections, making it almost look like it has rooms. The part that is south of the house has areas that are totally covered in violets. There's a patch of trillium that Dear Husband has been told not to mow down, a section of trout lilies that he insists on mowing, and a stretch of May apples growing among the trees on the east edge of the property. Soon we'll see naturalized phlox blooming there, too.

When I first started my gardens I left the violets because I didn't have enough plants to fill the space. Then it became a contest to fill in around them. Now, I rip them out of the gardens with abandon, because I know that we have violets all over the place! Still.....it's a special time when their deep purple, or blue or white flowers open up and cover the ground.

I guessed right. The patch of lovely blue bell-shaped flowers on short plants that have expanded in my grove are Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica ) . This website has pictures of squill: http://plantsdatabase.com/showpicture/16390/

Hopefully, I'll have pictures of my squill for you soon, so you can see it in it's natural habitat.

My office window looks south over the lawn toward the road. The house sits higher than the road, and there's a raised area and then a gentle slope down the lawn. In that raised area we've planted a forsythia bush and a star magnolia.

For some reason, they have been slow to bloom this spring, despite the fact that we had a reasonably gentle winter. But today.....they are both starting to show their glory! I plan to take my trusty disposable camera out to record some of that beauty, so perhaps I'll be able to share it with you before Spring is over.

About ten years ago, Dear Husband turned to me one day and said "I like what you are doing with the gardens, but I'm not going to garden any more." I was dumbfounded! I didn't have a response. I couldn't think of anything to say. (No snide comments from the peanut gallery!)

There wasn't any question of simply shutting down the gardens, so I kept on by myself with an occasional hand from DH moving a full wheelbarrow. Gradually things began to run down. There are too many gardens here for one person to care for, unless that is the only thing she does. To make matters worse, my mother would buy plants and hand them to me and ask me to make room for them in the gardens.

There's been talk of Iris at Bogie's blog. She's blessed to have a mother who shares her plants. This Spring Cop Car will visit and they will plant iris descended from plants in Bogie's grandmother's garden.

I couldn't resist sharing a picture of my iris. I counted last year, and there are more than twenty varieties.

The HUGE white tree/shrub at the house is a viburnum. The landscaper SWORE it would simply fill up the space between the windows. Much to my disgust, we'll have to have it taken out.

About six weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit a Restoration Hardware. I want one of everything! I came across a wonderful product that appeals to me on several levels. It's a bottle of beach glass that has been scented with lavender. Herbs and recyling are a big part of my life.

The herb list I belong to has chatted about "Lasagna Gardening" in the past, and I've always thought it sounded like a great concept. The idea is to layer four to six inches of compost or layers of material over a spot where you want to make a new garden bed. If the area is in your lawn, the layers will kill off the grass and the bed will be ready for planting without having to use harsh chemicals.

Oddly, I found a note about this method in the "Real Simple" magazine, November, 2003. They suggest mowing an area you wish to dedicate as a bed next spring, and then putting down four sheets of newspaper, and a four inch layer of shredded fall leaves or bark mulch. Hose it down and let it sit for the winter.

I think I may try this on a section of my formal garden that has been infested with grass. I plan to put down layers of newspaper, chopped leaves, shredded paper from the office, compost and grass clippings. What better time to renovate a bed than in the winter, when nothing is going on?

If you're interested in this technique, you can read more about it in " Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding!" by Patricia Lanza, et al You can buy the paperback new for $11.17 at Amazon.com. What have you got to loose?

I have a friend in the Fort Worth area who is a superb gardener. She's always researching ways to have healthier soil and stronger plants. We've had many a conversation about the use of compost. She feels that it should be incorporated into the top three inches of so of the soil to make the best use in feeding plants organicallybecause the plants feed mostly in those three inches.

I've read somewhere that double digging is the best way to prepare a new garden, adding compost in as we turn that soil. My friend is trying to persuade me not to disturb the soil, but to add compost on top.

She has also taught me about corn gluten meal, and alfalfa.

It seems that if you put alfalfa on your iris in the fall you'll have huge numbers of blooms in the spring. You can use pellets, meal, or hay to achieve this. I'm going to try it. I'll let you know in the spring how it turned out.

If you've tried this, I'd like to hear from you.

I was visiting Bogie's blog, trying to catch up on some of my reading. Things have been hectic here so I'm several days behind on blogs. I was delighted to discover that she is a gardener. She's farther north than I am, so she's begining to get her gardens ready for winter. I have about a month to go before I start putting the gardens to bed. We'll be having a bridal shower here a week from today, and I want the grounds to look their best, so I've been spending a lot of time weeding, watering, feeding, pruning and generally cleaning up the grounds.

Culinary oddities is another subject I'd like to blog about. My family is particularly fond of a grilled peanut butter sandwich with sweet relish, or what we call "picalilly." A number of people have wrinkled their noses and gone "Eeeeewwwwww" when they heard the combination (Most notably Dear Husband). On the other hand I was reading Pobricito's blog, and I discovered a discussion of pilchards and marmite. There's an awful lot of odd things that human beings are likely to be found eating.

Imagine the guy who discovered that you could eat snails! "Yep....not bad, but they'd be great with some garlic butter!" I figure you had to be hard up to eat snake or octopus or raw fish, too. And spare me tripe or chitlins. Give me apple crisp or cherry cobbler any time!

I haven't talked much about the fact that I am interested in herbs. I have a lovely raised herb garden that DH made for me the year after we built our home. I've always used culinary herbs, and now I'm learning medicinal uses as well. I moderate an herbal group on YahooGroups, and they have been teaching me fascinating things. Red Eagle has given me instructions on how to share pictures with you, so I hope to post some of them in the coming week.

Despite the fact that I have a fifteen pound black cat by the name of Ed.....my gardens are the home of endless chipmunks. Right now, they are making a home beneath my thyme and sage. You'd think with Ed, and the neighborhood cats, and the dog, and an occasional hawk, that my gardens would be safe, but that's far from the truth. One year, the chippies gathered up seed from dill plants that I had allowed to go to seed in the veggie beds, and they transferred them to the flower beds along the front walk. Since then, I have had annual infestations of dill!

This week, we pulled 90% of the volunteer dill from the flower beds and brought it into the kitchen. I stripped off the leaves, and we culled the leaves from the stems. Then I minced the leaves and spread them over two jelly roll pans. I heated the oven to about 110 degrees and let the dill gently dry for several hours. If the dill has been in moist ground it might take 4 to 6 hours to dry it out. I have three bottles of dill stored away now, which will easily keep me for the next year, and I still have fresh dill to put in my salads.

It gives me a great sense of satisfaction to be able to grow and store my own herbs, and Dill is the easiest of those I work with. Look for a recipe using dill in the next post.

Gardening. I spent five hours on my hands and knees today, weeding and planting my herb garden. When I have pictures, I'll nag Red Eagle to show me how to post some of them.

The herb garden is my special garden. My mother has had a hand in most of the other gardens, so this one is mine to design and direct. Last year I joined an on-line herb group and under their influence I dedicated a wing of the garden to lemon scented plants.

Last fall they encouraged me to store the scented geraniums bare rooted, in the garage. I planted them today, and I don't have terribly high hopes that it worked, but the attempt to revive them is interesting. If I don't see some evidence of growth by the end of June, I'll get some new plants.

So...in the lemon garden, I'm growing verbena, grass, balm, savory, thyme and scented geraniums. If I come across a lemon basil, I'll add that later. I also planted a citronella plant. I had some lemon colored marigolds left over from another section of the garden, so I tucked them in, too.

I figure I have about 75-80% of the garden done. I still have to weed part of the chat walkway, and I plan to renovate one five foot wing. The garden is almost ready for the wedding now.

Tomorrow I have to pick up weeds that have been pulled, plant the tomatoes and a shrub, three roses and a couple of buddleia bushes, and that will be the last of my gardening for the week. I've been longing to be out in the gardens all spring, and in the past week, I figure I've put in about 20 hours.

I HOPE the iris will last until Saturday! They are stunning this year.

Okay.....if you've gotten this far you know just how dull I can be.....but I sure enjoyed my day in the gardens. :-)

For the past month, every other word out of my mouth has been "wedding." It's not even MY wedding, and I'm overloaded with chores in preparation. Thank GOD for my sister, who kindly invited my mother to visit her for a week. We've been busy doing fourteen years of Spring cleaning while she was away.

My stepdaughter is getting married in ten days. Her wedding is at noon and the reception is not until 5:00, so we are opening our home to out of town guests for the afternoon. There is NOTHING like having strangers coming to your home to make you look at it critically. I made a three page list of chores to do, have added most of a fourth page, and have slowly been working through them. I got to the gardens yesterday and today.

You know, before you go out and weed and plant your gardens, you really should exercise for a few months! I weeded yesterday for almost three hours and another two hours today, and I can feel muscles I never knew existed! The up side of all this work is that where I've worked it looks beautiful! The iris are just starting to open, and they should make quite a display for the wedding. I've mulched and planted about a third of the new plants, and most of the containers have been filled. I have the rest of the plants to set in, and a lot of mulching to do.

I finally realized today that I could only do so much. If I don't get everything on my list done, that's okay. I don't want to go to the wedding worrying about what people will think of my home, but enough is enough!

By next week, I should be in great shape, but I need my bed.......NOW! I hope you all have a great week. I'll catch you later.