Look What I Did!

I’m looking into hiring a garden consultant to walk around my yard with me and talk about future plans. As part of the prep, I did a whole yard layout. I like it! I think if you click on it, it will embiggin and you can read the labels, if interested.

This pretty much represents what is there already. There is a red blob in the front where I’m thinking of putting a rain garden.

My Garden is Keeping Me Sane

Well, I guess that’s relative, huh? But I can zone out to a task in the garden, with or without listening to music or a book, better than TV or reading (with my eyes) or exercise or anything else doable these days. The task doesn’t have to be much. It’s the micro-examination of each piece of the yard, noting small changes. And, the step back and overview of what should come next.

My plan is to spend a few years (5 or so?) focusing on garden projects and intensive maintenance. By then, I want to have my yard in a place where it is more easily maintained. I plan to spend my declining years sipping cocktails in a beautiful yard that I can mostly just enjoy. I’ve never spent anywhere near as much time out there as I am right now. Everyday, new ideas and new projects surface.

Allegheny pachysandra emerges bright green and by fall
 flattens out to mottled and interesting foliage.

This past (migrainey) week has been spent on gentle projects. I’ve refrained from trips to buy more stuff, and didn’t tackle any of the bigger, more vigorous projects. But looking closely one day, I saw how the Allegheny pachysandra (not to be confused with common garden-center pachy) was spreading into the alumroot. I spent a very enjoyable hour or so digging the alum root and moving it to a new area. I planted the pachysandra a very long time ago, but it got overwhelmed with English ivy and myrtle, and it’s only really surfaced and spread since the fence went up two years ago and I got rid of the ivy. I’ll be content to have the pachysandra continue to spread, without further work, rather than have to defend the alumroot each year. The alumroot in the right conditions will form decent sized clumps, and I have enough bare ground waiting for just such a thing.

Here you can see the surface runners of the
Green-and-Gold

I am filling in bare ground inside the fence, in a shady area that drops off steeply to the neighbor’s yard. I saw an opportunity to be frugal and avoid trips by relocating some other cool plants. I may have pointed out my green-and-gold before, a plant also planted “years ago” that continues to thrive and spread to new places in the yard. It sometimes out-competes more delicate ephemeral wildflowers, so I am removing it from some places, while allowing it to spread in others. So some of that got relocated to a large, mostly bare, spot on the side.

Golden Alexanders is one of my wildflower triumphs. At one point, I got ambitious and tried to start wildflowers from seed. Many perennial wildflowers are very hard to start from seeds, and viable seed for the hard-to-start is hard to come by, because there is not much demand. A source no longer available, the New England Wildflower Society, used to have a seed sale each January. It took two years of learning to successfully buy from there - it was a brief sale without a lot of supply, done via US postal service. Finally, I got seeds for a bunch of varieties. Most didn’t come to much, but it turns out Alexanders are relatively easy. And once established, they seed themselves. Now I have a thriving colony, outside the fence along my stone wall. They seed themselves into the grass there, and I dug a bunch out and put them right away into the nearly blank canvas along the fence.

Golden Alexanders have lacy yellow flowers in spring,
and nice heart-shaped leaves all year.

Now, it’s time to step back and let things in that area just evolve for a while. There was a spicebush and a hosta that predated and survived the fence construction, and I’ve put some ferns in there. Except for some weeding and watering, I’ll just observe that area for now and see how things settle in.

My formerly blank canvas along the fence

Spring is Springing Hard

I've got some seeds planted, and fruits of previous years are springing up everywhere. I've done many small chores, not big ones.

Trout lily

Apple blossom

Wild tulips

Red azaleas outside the kitchen

Carolina silverbell

Purple tulip season with white rhododendron

This will be a pagoda dogwood

Native geranium

The rare and wonderful trillium

Anenomes and bluebells

Seedlings

Aftermath

The gas company has been and gone. A couple of days before they came, I dug out the lilies from the section where I thought they would dig, and put them in big pots I had ready. I also dug out the hellebores from the bed at the house where the new gas meter would go.

The hellebores

As it turns out, they couldn't find the "emergency" shut-off valve buried in my yard, and they dug a series of holes. All of them were in the area I had already taken the plants. At one point, they had three different four-foot deep holes.

Where the lilies used to be

They also came in the house to remove the pipes and old meter. They had to cut through drywall to get stuff out, and they had a carpenter to finally repair the drywall and paint. I had set up the area to minimize how much they would need to move through the house and touch any of my stuff. I heard the carpenter coughing while he did the work, so I ended up mostly keeping the basement off limits afterwards for at least a week.

I was able to put the lilies back almost right away, the next day. I had some bags of soil amendments, and any weeds in the middle of lily patch had been eliminated by the digging. The lilies seem to be thriving, (most of them) so no real harm done. The proof will be in June when they should be blooming.

I put some hellebores into a different place along the house. The bed by the meter needs work (better soil) before I plant anything, and I think I need a bush there because the meter is pretty big.

Needs work.

It’s Different Every Day

It is such a gift to be able to see the progress of spring every single day. At this time of year, every day brings something new. And here I am, forced at home, able to observe deeply, keenly, every detail every day. This is the time of year the garden is terrific - for a couple of months. But I really love the discoveries of minute observing. Here is some recent progress:

Steps to the street. No garden investment pays off

better than daffodils.

Grape hyacinth - planted 20 years ago. Also a good investment.

Broccoli and onions. First try for onions.

It’s purple tulip time! These are only 2 years old - not sure how long they will last.

Shadbush, also known as service berry. I went nuts planting this all over the property - twenty years ago.
This was two feet tall when I started.

The humble but lovely violets

Very special Virginia Bluebells. They disappear completely in the summer. They are moved around the yard by ants.

Not so special (because of the way they spread) Golden Groundsel.

I never planted this - so it’s 23+ years old!

Blueberries getting ready to bloom

More purple tulips

The ferns are generally later to emerge

The shadbush petals decorate the walk

I cut this grey dogwood down to nothing, and it’s sprouting well

Out of season Christmas cactus

Hibiscus that wintered indoors has had sporadic blooms -
This greeted me this morning.