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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.