Nobody enjoys weeding, do they? Actually, I've realized that I do. I really enjoy weeding, or should I say "de-weeding" my garden.
I've pretty much had it with mulberries this year.
The cracks in my driveway apparently contain about the most fertile soil I have in my yard.
With everything that's been going on here with wildlife (early mantis hatchings, kitten antics) plus all of the regular garden work, I've neglected to keep you up-to-date on the finch nest that is on our front porch.
In the struggle to keep our gardens growing the way we want them, there are many "enemies" of our cause. Insects. Hail. Deer. Disease. Drought. Weeds. Wind. Wabbits -- er, I mean Rabbits.
Tiny toe and Tiny whitey are just over 6 weeks old now, and they're fast! Little bundles of go-go-go! Last week I said all they did was chase each other and wrestle. They still do that, but with a lot more energy.
A plant that I discovered a couple of years ago has become one of my favorites: Pineapple Sage (or Salvia elegans).
The next thing I did Saturday afternoon was dismantle my temporary greenhouse. I knew this was going to be somewhat of a difficult job, but I was getting tired of looking at it.
This is the first weekend in a while that it isn't raining, so time to get gardening! After days and days of weeding (about the only thing that you can do when it's raining all the time) I was itching to get out there and do something different. What did I choose to do first?
In my garden I use various groundcovers as filler plants. They don't really cover large portions of ground, but they fill in around stairs, next to the rocks of the "stream", and anywhere else I want a low-growing, easy spot of texture and color.
For some reason I left my camera on the kitchen counter yesterday. Today when I went to grab it, I noticed that there was something strange about the mantis jar (read about the mantis jar here).
After only a day and a half of sunshine, the clouds returned yesterday afternoon, and the rain started up again as soon as it got dark. So today there's nothing to do but watch the garden through rain-spotted windows.
Chasing and wrestling. That's about all the kittens do now -- chase and attack each other. They're not completely stable on their feet, so it leads to some hilarious situations.
We got a nice surprise today: the weather forecast called for mostly cloudy this morning turning partly cloudy later, but the clouds seem to have moved off already, so it's been sunny since sunrise! (There actually was a sunrise this morning!)
It's that time of the year when I get mixed feelings about the several mulberry trees that are growing on the property line of our yard. For most of the year I don't think about them too much, except to prune the low-hanging branches. But the berries are now starting to ripen!
Another grey, wet morning, as the rain defeats my weekend gardening plans again. Over the past week it's rained on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and now Sunday. Looks like more rain forecast for tomorrow too.
I'd like to take a look at some interesting things that I've seen over the last couple of days. They don't really lend themselves to full posts, but they turn into an interesting collection. First up, mock orange.
The other day I posted about all of the pink and purple flowers that are currently blooming in my garden. Well here's one that's definitely NOT pink:
Yesterday I posted an update on the kittens, so today I thought I'd give you a look at the progress a few different plants have made with some "before" and "after" shots.
I think it's time for another update on Super-whitey's kittens. They're just over 4 weeks old now.
I'm pretty bad with neglecting my vegetable garden at various times of the year. You've seen what it looked like at the start of the Spring, and even though I've been getting some seeds in the ground, I've let the weeds take over somewhat:
I spend so much time in the backyard gardens, I tend to forget the front yard. It needs "a bit" of tidying. The main problem is this bed under the maple:
On this Mother's Day morning, I thought I'd just take a quick look at what's blooming in my garden right now.
So it's Saturday morning, 6:30 AM, sunny but cold (45F) and windy. How should I start my weekend of gardening? By planting some sticks!
I've mentioned before that I'm not a big rose gardener, but I do have a few varieties of roses in my garden. They're doing pretty well overall -- the blooms are beautiful, and the plants look healthy:
The other day when I transplanted some coreopsis seedlings, I saw that they all had heavy leaf damage:
If you're like me at all, the garden isn't a garden unless it's full of birds. Well, not "full" because you need some room for plants, but there must be birds around. They add an extra sense of life to a garden, they eat insects, they sing for us, and amuse us with their antics (sometimes). There's also the excitement of seeing a species that you don't recognize, perhaps something that is only seen in your area while migrating, or is very hard to catch a glimpse of.
It's good to get away from your own garden once in a while and see other people's plants. Different people have different perspectives, like different colors, have been gardening for different amounts of time, have different growing conditions, and so on. The end result: different gardens.
A non-rainy weekend day is a bit of a challenge for me in the garden. On weekdays I usually have very limited time for gardening, so the list of possible tasks is pretty short: some weeding, plant something, prune something else. I also can typically only tackle one or two jobs a day on weekdays. Weekends are another story.
After a pretty dry start to Spring in St. Louis, the rain has started coming more regularly. Thursday and Friday we had strong, gusty winds all day long, then Friday night a line of scary, severe storms came through the area -- as they did across most of the central part of the country. The worst parts of the storms missed our neighborhood but we did get a large amount of rain. This morning started out fresh and sunny though.
I'll have to admit that shrubs are not something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I really don't think "hey, what this bed needs is a nice shrub!". My buying strategy for shrubs is the same as for most of my other plants too: if it looks like a cool plant, get it! Decide what to do with it later.
My posts about:
© Blogger template Shush by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009
Back to TOP
