Garden

Yard Joy

siunkelan9 Comments

This morning I braved the sub-60s temperatures to get some work done on the side garden.

I planted my hydrangea:

Also in here now are a couple of liberated Mexican Petunias, which the Hubs takes a great deal of pleasure pointing out, are fence jumpers. The neighbors must have an old one, because over near the back fence there are a bunch of volunteers. I’m happy I don’t have to spend money on new plants! If they survive, they should overrun this garden in a few years.

Here’s what’s going on in the herb garden:

I know, not too much! I have not really dedicated a lot of time to this yet. And since it is just below the new AC unit, I am waiting til that is 100% done before I get in here and tame the lot. I had originally planned to make this a bigger semi-circle, and might just do that. I’m hoping the paving bricks I am using for edging go on sale again this year so I can replenish my stock. Last year I got 4/$1. If I can get the same deal I’ll be happy. I’d be able to do the vege gardens as well as this one and whatever else strikes my fancy.

I planted some nasturtium seeds in the side garden. We have had them completely overrun large spaces, climb fences, and also do a whole lot of nada. It’ll be interesting to see what happens here.

Here is where we are so far:

I have some edging, we need to build the pump box and do the gravel, and the rest of the mulching. I had planned to lay cardboard to slow the weeds down, but since I have tiny petunias and seeds, I scrapped that idea. I will do a double layer around the pump to give that area a fighting chance to settle itself.

Once this fence falls down, we will have to replace it, we are thinking of adding a people-gate so we don’t have to walk the entire yard to get back there from this side! I hope it doesn’t fall anytime soon because I really don’t want to waste money on a stupid ugly fence.

I’d prefer to do something like this:

But I’d have to get HOA approval and I think it might break their brains!

So here’s hoping that ugly old fence stands its ground for a long while.

My original garden is humming right along:

I’ve got some daylilies blooming, the azeala finally woke up, blanket flowers are growing, stuff that was supposed to die is coming back, it’s all gonna be spectacular in a couple years! I only got 4 daffodils – or rather leaves – from the dozen I planted. That kinda sucks.

As things start to get crowded, I’ll move them out. I like the idea of an English garden, but I prefer the maintenance of something a little more orderly.

I clearly need more yard art!

Like this:

I’ll bet the Hubs would really enjoy coming home to a yard full of flamingos!

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9 thoughts on “Yard Joy”

  2. I can’t believe how early your growing season is compared to ours. We are still sitting inside watching snow showers and our ground is (finally) frozen, albeit not to any great depth this year because it was a very mild winter. Looks great! I don’t envy the work though. 😉

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      • Yes, work is my go-to verb. That said, about two years ago I started scaling my gardens back. I made the tough decision to let the various veggie gardens go because the work to harvest ratio was nonsense. We are feeding two people here, not a family of six. I don’t need to plant rows of green beans (that will feed an army and need to be harvested in the same week) or five different kinds of peppers and tomatoes. Squash and cukes are always a major bug and space control issue and almost every herb I’ve ever planted ends up becoming invasive and spreading hither and yon. Don’t even get me started on the shrub, forsythia and lilac trimming, pruning and spring/fall clean-up. My DH does the lawn (because, zero-turn riding lawnmower), but everything else is my jurisdiction and it’s becoming too much. I have massive hosta and daylilies that need splitting and moving (again) and with no space left to put them, I just toss them into the dead zone around the pond and hope they’ll all die. They never do. Our biggest issue here is invasive stuff and almost everything is invasive, so I spend far more time trying to combat that then actually doing the stuff I really want to do. Besides, I hate hot, humid weather so the last thing I want to be doing is standing outside with a hose and hoe. After five decades of intensive gardening I’d much rather shop at a farmer’s market every week than do that nonsense myself.

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      • That all sounds like a LOT of work. I always get sucked into the Hubs’ grand schemes… “let’s compost!” Then I do all the heavy lifting. “Let’s have a big garden!” and I do all the maintenance. Fortunately, we have a micro-yard, so he cannot get carried away!
        I might cry that you want daylilies to die – unless they are the tall grabby orange ones, I hate those!
        Nothing terrible about feeding the people who live in the house and not having to put up 5 years worth of green beans all at once!!

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  4. “Let’s have a big garden!” and I do all the maintenance.

    Yup. I grew up on a farm. A real farm. Every spring when my father plowed the family garden, my mother cried. Because every year it got a little bigger. Just like his tractors did. To her credit, she somehow managed to get four useless, good for nothing kids to help her harvest most of whatever Dad planted on that 1.5+ acres we called “the family garden.” Yes, we had a roadside stand. But it was HER who spent the majority of almost every summer night snipping, paring, canning and freezing the bounty from that ginormous garden. Sadly, my mother developed early-onset Alzheimer’s, so I never got the chance (as an adult) to ask her if she liked doing all that work. I’d venture to guess that routine lost it’s luster somewhere along the line. 😉

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    • It sounds rather like an idyllic childhood! Not the work part, but the family part. I’d venture to guess you know the answer to your potential questions… “I did at first, but it got to be a lot. But you kids helping out was a gift to me.” Or some other mom-speak!
      I’m sorry about your mom, that’s a hard way to lose someone.

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      • My mother would never say we were much help with anything, and we probably weren’t. She was a workhorse. She basically raised her two siblings, then married a doctor thinking she’d dodged a bullet and would live the country club life of luxury. Guess again. My dad was a wannabe farmer. Think: Green Acres. So yeah, she ended up losing the country club membership and living on a beef cattle farm in the middle of No-whereville. She was a trooper AND a drill sergeant. Nothing soft and cuddly about her. I sometimes wonder if Alzheimer’s was her one-way ticket out.

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