I've been using the blasts of energy that the sun gives me to tend my neglected garden. An over-enthusiastic spring cleanup by the nice guys from Chalet left some of perennial beds bare so I've been adding new friends. The delphiniums were a disaster but the Dinner Plate dahlias are coming up fine. Here are some pics.
This patch was nothing but grass and weeds last year, but through some miscommunication, the lawn guys dumped a load of top soil on it so I decided to make lemonade. Or rather, spaghetti, since I'm just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks or blooms. I put in some peonies and purple flox (off-camera) and here you can see the purple and orange coneflowers and even some tomato plants because I had no other place for them. But my favorite part are those big feathery ferns that keep popping up. What gorgeous weeds!
Prince's garden. We pluck a few greens for his salad every day.
The last of the fragrant peonies. A handful of soft petals fell off right after I took this pic.
The fairy garden! Look at these miniature Coral Bells! In the lower left is a miniature Firecracker Plant, or Cuphea ignea.
We revived the old fairy garden that we placed on the north side of the old maple where there's already moss and tiny shamrock weeds. Mia found a little chunk of glass that the fairies left for us, cleaned it up and made it an art piece next to the new playground slide.
It cracks me up to watch chipmunks trying to balance on the ends of the skinny serviceberry branches while they steal the ripening berries. Now the squirrels are in on the act so I'll need to skip my plans for a pie. Not enough fruit, anyway, but...
Looks like there's plenty of cherries coming! The early blossoms disappeared last year because, according to the Chalet guy, blah blah blah, I don't remember, rain or fungus or bugs or something. I don't care, this year we've got pie!
New copper boxes on the front porch rail. Good old lantana and new varieties of petunia: tiny yellow and white striped Superbells Lemon Slice! and the blackest petunia I've ever seen! Love it!
My poor roses. I refuse to feed them out of some kind of tough love/survival of the fittest mean streak, but they keep putting out blooms and anemic leaves and making me feel guilty.
Now this is the garden survivor I love: the weedy spiderwort. I brought a single pot of these when we moved from the bank ten years ago and they have spread and spread in varying shades of purple, pink and white. They fill up the bare space in the alley with their long spear leaves and bloom like crazy every morning. Keep on truckin', Spidey!
3 comments:
Your cherries look good. I've heard that you can hang shiny CDs in the branches and it will keep the birds from stealing your cherries. We have nets on ours otherwise the birds would get them all.
Another good perennial would be Bleeding Hearts. They bloom early and spread and can help fill out a garden.
I love the peek at your yard. You have a passion for flowers despite your claims of toughlove.
The fairy garden is so cute. I can see why this is a thing. And also why it's not a thing in a yard filled with boys.
I just read that some the color of some flowers (your spidey?) are sensitive to pH and thus will be one color in acidic soil and another in basic (like pink/blue, but I don't remember which leads to what or even if it's the same for all flowers. Enjoy summer!
LOVE Bleeding Heart, Karen. That was one of the MIAs I had to replace after the spring cleanup. Now we have a white and a pink.
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