May 25, 2007

• ~Green Thumb, Black Thumb~ ( a wild cut when trimming ...could mean no thumb)    No, no injuries today. I was just trying to find a witty title that alluded to gardening in some fashion.      Well, it made ya look didn't it? ;o)     I gardened **ok more weeding than gardening happened**  a bit more today. Not as much as I like because we had to run an errand early that necessitated getting up at 6a.m.   Side bar:   This gal is in no way, shape or fashion a morning person. Never have been, I have tried to rewire myself countless times and it just isn't going to happen. I am a night owl through-n-through. My most productive hours are from noon until 8, which puts me off sync with the rest of the waking world by about 4 hours. Rising at the early hour of 6 a.m. is nigh on sacrilegious to me. Arising at the aforementioned hour after only sleeping about 5 hours meant I needed an hour and a half  nap to be able make it through the day meaning I didn't get out into the yard until after 2, and it was hot, and my groove was off...and well...yeah**    End sidebar    The errand ran later than we anticipated so we didn't get home until after  11. Dang it. Well, even though I didn't get as much weeding done as I was hoping to, I did  get some transplanting done. In Fall I let the plants stay in the garden to protect the soil and keep some textural interest. I also am not into cleaning out the gardens in the Fall like other well motivated gardeners. Its spelled  L A Z Y    Hey ... at least I admit it.    Anyway, because I let the annuals stay in the garden they often will self seed. To me, that is reason enough to leave the frost-killed plants in place. I love to find these "volunteer" plants and move them to help fill in empty spots. Today I relocated a dozen or so marigold seedlings, 5 or 6 Columbines, and a couple of Hosta babies. I also removed a big patch of Black Eyed Susans that were trying to strangle out my white Clematis and Heather.      Someone please slap me if I DO NOT dead head the Black Eyed Susans before they drop their seed. I have had these danged things spread ALL OVER because last year I didn't dead head them when they were finished. Interesting in that the other day I was reading an archived post on Anna's Xanga where she commented about Black Eyed Susans being weeds. I thought to myself , rather haughtily, in fact I think I might have snorted out loud while thinking "How could Black Eyed Susans be weeds? They are the state flower of Maryland! They are gorgeous wild flowers! I love them! I have a ton!"       Oh good freaking NIGHT. If you have, or ever plan to plant Black Eyed Susans DEAD HEAD THEM AFTER THEY BLOOM. Do NOT let the heads fall to the ground unless it is in a place where you want them to completely fill the area. They spread like mad via seed and form an almost impenetrable mat of roots that seriously will take over your bed if you aren't vigilant. Today via a HUGE amount of effort, and a lot of foul words being spoken over them, I removed a 3'x3' section. The kicker is I need to do the same thing in 3 or 4 more spots. Some I will transplant to totally empty areas or for fill, or share, some may go into the trash. Lesson learned. While they are lovely flowers, you nigh on have to stand over them with a blowtorch to keep 'em under control.     YES Virginia, Katt will dead head them sum-na-guns. **holds up fingers in Girl Scout Pledge**.    Anna please accept my apology for dissin' your view on Black Eyed Susans. And forgive the snort. Even though you didn't hear it. I hope.       Another discovery today that was the climbing roses that were planted to either side of the old porch had died. It could be due to the fact that they were overgrown, but its more likely they succumbed to "wet feet" from standing in water over the winter. That is the biggest problem we have with over-wintering plants in our area. We have a lot of rain, so the ground will freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw repeatedly. Many plants just do not like this and protest this fact by curling up their rooty lil toes and dying.  Myeh. I have lost 5 foot tall rosemaries, untold roses and lavenders, among other things, all from wet feet OR the constant freeze/thaw on the leaves and stems.    Good thing Home Depot has bagged roses for about $5. It doesn't hurt nearly as much as when I lost $150 in Jackson and Perkins Roses. *sigh* I am not investing in the higher priced roses again until I can make a well-drained, well-protected, totally rose geared bed. The rose in the photo above is in my herb bed under my kitchen window. Its a climbing/trailing rose that has just exploded this year. I have to get a trellis up for it to be tied to. Right now it is spread out over a 10 foot wide 5 foot deep area. That's a bit much. But as  you can see the blooms are lovely, big, 4 inch blooms in the style of an old-fashioned English rose. The flowers smell fantastic too, and seem to be really disease and insect resistant. I would love to find a yellow climbing rose that is this hardy to replace the roses on either side of my rose porch.     Yesterday I spoke about cleaning out my peony bed. I need to get a couple more uprights so I can rope them and keep them from flopping when they bloom.  Here is a panoramic set of images that I snapped earlier to quickly stitch together in Photoshop.       This is on the oldest side of the house and it dates to about 1774. That little porch there on the left replaced a wrap around porch that was once on the house. OY! WHY was it taken off? We are going to replace the wrap around porch...eventually. The row of plants from the center of the image to the right is 30-35' long and light and dark rose peonies. Soooo pretty! I constantly have people stop and comment on them when they are in bloom. People will even stop in their cars to compliment them. Its funny because, though hard to see in the photo, our front yard is about 3/4 of an acre in size and the house sits pretty far back from the road...at least 200 feet. Under the large  tree in the background you can see the table and chairs I got from Freecycle earlier this week. The piles of leaves in the grass were all under the peonies and are headed into the veggie beds. The BIG pile o' crap in the middle-left of the image is all from the bed to the right of the porch, and it is comprised mostly of thistle. Thankfully it hasn't flowered yet so it will all go into the new compost pile I am going to start tomorrow. The junk in the yard behind the peonies are the branches I cut from the magnolia tree that is in the middle-back of the image.    Here are two more photos of the magnolia. I wish I had photographed it before I trimmed it, but forgot. Dang it. The tree used to be almost 4 stories tall, but it died in the middle. We cut it back, hard, and have been giving it a chance to grow back. It was full all of the way to the bottom, actually laying on the ground. I trimmed it hard two years ago and again this year.                      I can't BEGIN to tell you how much better this tree looks. Before I under cut it, taking out 1/3 of the tree, it looked like a big ole weedy bush. Now it is approaching the look of the old-fashioned noble magnolia it was. I am eager to see how it blooms next Spring. This year it bloomed, and it turned to freezing that night and killed 95% of the blooms. Sux.   That glider rocker under the magnolia is from the 60s. You can barely tell here but it is in desperate need of sanding and painting. Tomorrow I may just get Brenna started on sanding and priming it.   It can count as "shop" for her, right?   Til tomorrow...                                                                                                      ~Kathie

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