Quick burst of energy

I'd finally convinced myself that it was okay to leave the big garden chores for the spring when I'd have an abundance of energy. But as I had bought some plants on sale about a month (!) ago and bought some mums today, I really had to get some planting done. And in the process, I needed to thin out the Black-eyed Susans, and pull out the junk trees growing under the azaleas, and dig out some grass in the front to make room for some new plants...

It only took about an hour and I feel like I got a lot done. I'll see if I can manage to plant the last new perennials tomorrow after my 20-mile run. And maybe in the process I'll get some more things done like I did today.

Dahlias from the garden

The sedum saga continues

I am watching a bird out of my back window. It's perched on a sedum plant chowing down. It is either eating what's eating my sedum (in which case, yay!) or it is eating my sedum. If that's the case, birds eat perennials?

Hollyhock rust

The hollyhocks I bought earlier this year are getting big. No signs of flowers, but I didn't expect them to flower in the first year.

Unfortunately, I noticed today that a number of the leaves have orange spots on them. Okay, a lot of orange spots and a lot of holes. The mosquitos have obviously prevented me from doing my personal garden tours in awhile. Thanks to Google, I discovered that it is a disease called hollyhock rust.

According to finegardening.com, I should remove any infected leaves now before the rust spores continue to spread, and/or use a fungicide. I prefer to steer clear of chemicals in my garden, but it looks like most of the leaves have some orange on them. What to do?

I did read on some garden forums that sprinkling corn meal around the base of the plants should prevent the disease from spreading. So it looks like I'll be removing most of the leaves and getting some corn meal at the store tomorrow. Maybe I can make muffins too, while I'm at it.

To do list this weekend

My running schedule this weekend is really light and it won't be too hot, so it is time to dig in and get some stuff done:

* Mow & trim lawn
* Prune butterfly bush
* Cut back echinacea and other plants on their way out
* Weed
* Extend backyard flower beds
* Use my Groupon at Primex to get plants for next years' bloom (they're having a buy one, get one 50% off - yahoo!); plant them
* Water

There are seasons...

I've come to realize that I go through cycles with the garden. In winter, I'm manic about looking at pictures, planning where to put plants, and desperate to see any signs of life. In spring, I'm a workhorse, and find any excuse to be outside doing something, anything. I do my best garden work then. In summer, it's too hot, humid and buggy. I'm too tired to do anything but glance out my window in disgust, or in longing of what could be. In fall, I put the garden to bed, looking forward to next spring, and wishing I hadn't wasted time in the summer being lazy.

Summer blues

It's that time of the season when the only thing that seems to be in bloom are the Black-eyed Susans. What was glorious only a month ago is now dying, dry, and colorless. It's too early for fall plants; it's too hot to weed. The manic energy I had in the spring is completely gone.

I bought a Groupon to a local garden center this week and am looking up plants that might fill in some of the dead spaces for next year. Of course, I'm likely going to have to spend time expanding my flower beds, as they're too small and squished. That means more work in the humidity.

First world problems!

Zinnia

I really regret not planting zinnias this year. I love cutting them and bringing them inside - they always bring a smile to my face.

Baking soda can kill weeds?

I had no idea that baking soda was this useful. Apparently it can kill weeds, kill crabgrass, and prevent powdery mildew. I'm stocking up!

In bloom

Astilbe - Despite everyone telling me these are shade plants, this one does just fine in full sun.



Echinacea purpurea "Green Envy"



Echinacea, Callirhoe involucrata (winecups), Easter lily



Stokesia laevis "Klaus Jelitto" (Stoke's aster)

Dahlia

I somehow missed this dahlia tuber last fall when digging them out to overwinter. Thanks to our mild winter, it survived to give me a lovely surprise this spring.

First veggie crop of the summer

My neighbor and I are fortunate enough to share two veggie garden plots a couple of blocks away at a community garden. We planted pretty early and our efforts were rewarded this weekend with a nice harvest of food:

Winecups

Callirhoe involucrata, winecups. They're so abundant that it's hard to walk up the front steps without stepping on them.

Just ordered these alcea perennials (aka perennial hollyhocks) from White Flower Farm. I really hope they last for years and years.

Again with the sedum

Something is eating my sedum again. Last year, the plants made it through the summer pretty unscathed, but this year big chunks are already missing from the leaves.

I have seen ants, teeny tiny black bugs (smaller than a pinhead) and ladybugs on them. I know we have slugs here and there.

My first guess is that the black bugs are aphids. Ladybugs eat aphids, which might explain why I've seen the pretty red bugs around lately. Apparently there are even black sedum aphids (see here). I have aphids on my daylilies, though, and they leave dead brown spots where they've been eating. What's happening now is more like bites are being taken out of the leaves. So my second guess is slugs. Jerks.

My plan of attack (shh! don't tell the pests!) is threefold:

First, I was going to chop the sedum this weekend anyway to prevent them from blooming too early. To attack the aphids, I'm also going to squirt them with some dish soap + water. Finally, I'll make a slug beer trap and leave it out around the plant to see if I catch any of the slimy guys. Wish me luck.

Ouch

I've been working in the yard for about two hours this morning. Already I've smashed into the porch trellis with my arm, creating a nice bruise; almost took my head off walking into a hanging basket; and just bashed my elbow on the back door handle. I'm not sure how I've managed to live in this world without any major broken bones or accidents - I obviously have no sense of space and where I fit in.

Any guesses as to how many more injuries I'll incur today?

A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet

I am not a rose person. I have never enjoyed getting them in flower bouquets. I thought they were cheesy when my high school boyfriend got them for me every.single.day. And as a gardener, I've always shied away from them because I was afraid they were too high maintenance.

I was right.

When we bought our house, there was a large rose bush that was entangled in an arbor. I ignored it, it bloomed twice each summer, and I thought I'd been wrong about how difficult roses were to maintain.

On a whim a couple of years ago, I bought another rose, Rosa 'Secret'. It has one of the most intensely fragrant scents I've ever smelled in any flower, let alone roses. It's a hybrid tea rose and wouldn't get too large for our small city garden. I planted it in full sun and left it alone to do its thing, thinking it'd be as easy to maintain as the one by the arbor.

But oh god! This rose! If it didn't smell so good, I'd have trashed the thing years ago. Every year it seems that the day its leaves form fully it is immediately plagued with black spot. I think it also has rust. I just removed about a hundred aphids via hose. The stems look like they're about to wither and die.

I don't really want to use chemicals. A neighbor with beautiful roses suggested a systemic granular product, but it seems those protect against bugs and not disease. For now, I'll just cut off the diseased leaves (i.e., all of them) and let it look naked.

My poor ghetto rose. You're ugly on the outside but really sweet if people get close to you:

Big dahlias, little yard

It's tough having big dreams for a small yard. I'm really restricted by what I can do. I was reminded of that again today as I was trying to plant some dahlia tubers and gladiolus and ranunculus bulbs. Nowhere left to put them!

Last year, I sort of tossed my dahlia tubers into a hole and hoped they would grow. Boy did they! They were massive plants - they would have been at least 5 feet tall if I'd staked them properly. They were prolific bloomers and provided many vases with beautiful cut flowers. This year, I tried to be cognizant of their needs. You know what that means - they won't grow! I divided some of them to give to my neighbor and hope I didn't destroy them. I just pulled them apart instead of doing what the experts in this video recommend:



Oops.

I think they're hardier than they get credit for, though. I dug up all of my tubers in the fall and overwintered them in the basement. But what did I spy already a foot tall in the front yard? A dahlia. I'm guessing that I missed a piece of a tuber last fall and the mild winter didn't turn it to mush. Should be interesting to see what it does.

Tomorrow's To Do list:
* Stake the new eastern redbud before it falls over
* Buy the remainder of the fence finials and put them on the fence posts
* Turn over some more land at the off-site veggie garden; plant pea seedlings and peppers
* Coat the potting bench with polyurethane
* If time allows, move the St. John's Wort bush and Kerria japonica to the side yard hill

2.0

Restarting my blog as a place for more than just my garden photos, but to offer thoughts and commentary on keeping a small, urban garden.

Behind on my photos

Last week. The smell of this lilac bush perfumes the air all around the house, and down the street.

Behind on my photos

About 2 weeks ago. Zizia and spiderwort.

Behind on my photos

About 2 weeks ago. The color is so saturated!

Behind in my photos

About 3 weeks ago

Spring is here!

I have spring fever already - the usual time it sets in for me. I'll be reading gardening magazines, catalogs, and websites until I start to see the first glimpses of perennials poking through the dirt in early spring.

Currently trying to figure out how to add a privacy fence. I want to use shrubs instead of an actual fence, but not sure what kind. Looking at arborvitae thuja selections. I don't know if it'll look too weird having a row of random evergreens in the middle of what usually looks like an open-ish meadow, though.

Anemone

Sedum, turtleheads, aster, black-eyed Susan

Obedient plant accenting the hibiscus

Despite getting eaten all summer, my sedum is blooming.

Agastache, salvia, rudbeckia

Hibiscus

Each flower is twice the size of my hand