6.26 backyard toad

I've been tackling the garden in the backyard. One would think this garden would be farther forward than the rest, but the rest of the gardens are essentially raised beds with trucked in sifted garden soil. The back garden began as an oval around the two trees which subsequently died due to trauma to the roots from having heavy equipment moved around. The idea had been to plant shade lovers here and suddenly there was no shade. Of the things planted at that time (not much) only the bleeding hearts kept going.

I put two dwarf apple trees in and have plans for a crab apple at the opposite end of the garden. The ground is full of river pebbles and very difficult to amend. Mostly I'm piling mulch on every year in the hopes of building up an organic layer.

Of the bulbs I put in, only the grape hyacinths have been really happy. The sunflowers that volunteer around the birdfeeder always do well. The blue flags have taken over their corner of the world, and the tulips I planted last fall all came up - we'll see if they do so again. That still leaves me with a bunch of space. Some dianthus are going in this year. We'll see if they sow seed.

I also have a friend who seems to have decided this garden is acceptable. Anyone know where to get a toad home?

5.4 blueberry cream tulips

These are blueberry cream tulips - it says so right on the label.
A very unripe blueberry perhaps.
Again, I'm not unhappy with what I've got it, I'm just a little surprised. in this case, it leaves me wondering if I have soil that's too acid, although, if it's too acidic, why aren't the blueberries doing better?
I may have to blame the blueberry bush question on the clay soil.

6.25 it's wednesday

A day when the week is more than half over once you reach the end of it. I've spent a great deal of time this week at work searching for answers (google is my friend) and only finding a few of them. I came home this evening and played in my garden, but I have no pictures to show you yet. By the time I came in with grubby grubby hands, it was too dark to take pics. My lily beds are coming into serious bud and even a couple of the babies from Cathy are sending up scapes. I will take pictures tomorrow morning, I promise!

6.12 messy box

When I came home yesterday, the last one of my new raised bed boxes looked like this, rather than the neat way it had looked when I left in the morning.

We had a visitor while I was away - my mom got some pictures with the telephoto.

Last year, our neighbor had a visitor (probably the same one?) and later in the summer we had small, silver dollar sized visitors scampering away one afternoon.

We don't think she left me any presents; she gave up in disgust and went off to where people didn't wander around with big-ass telephoto lenses. Papparazzi!

Just for scale - the strings are at one foot intervals.

6.3 babies3 & 4

Today's been a day to be nibbled to death by ducks. We started with K oversleeping, J locked his keys in the house, traffic meant that a 17 minute drive turned into 45, forgot the music lessons...

Staring at my garden helps me relax even if nothing else does. Babies #3 and 4 of the six I got from Cathy.

1.12 Saturday blather

It's been a busy day. Grey, occasionally drizzly, sometimes extremely windy, it seemed a good day to do housework. It's also been a good day to go pick out items for indoor gardening.
I'll spare you the details on the housework, but just say that it went well, even the part where I harassed the kids into doing their share.
The indoor gardening also went well. Insecticidal soap should take care of the critters brought indoors with the pot of mums. New plant stands will allow me to put the pot of mums where it will a. stop cluttering up the kitchen counter and b. get more sunlight, thereby becoming a more robust shade of green. Right now it rather resembles someone who has been rather ill for six weeks - that "interesting pallor" that develops. I also got larger pots for the last year's poinsettias, new pots for the new amaryllis bulbs (after Christmas sale at White Flower Farm) and more potting soil for the African violets who haven't had any for a good while.
That should keep me busy tomorrow.

mums

I don't remember paying attention to how mums grew when I was younger - I don't remember my mother growing mums particularly, or if she did, I didn't watch them grow. Mums are big in the fall here in New York; they are offered for sale everywhere. I have bought a few and plunked them in the ground with mixed success. Sometimes they grow again in the spring, sometimes they freeze overwinter and don't come back..
Since mums are offered in bloom, starting in August or September, I'm always a little surprised at how long it takes the ones in the ground to get around to blooming. I hang over them, urging them to hurry up, they won't get around to blooming before they're frozen. They ignore me. They go on at their own deliberate pace, doing their own thing at their own time. They laugh at frost warnings and ignore colder weather that is killing off my summer annuals.
This beauty attracted my eye originally because the petals are little tubes, where the petals never separate to unfold completely. It's in my back garden and it had a hard life this year.
It sent up stems that reached about 8 to 12 inches high before being set upon by Japanese beetles who gnawed the leaves down to skeletons before I managed to get the beetles under control. Apparently unable to replace the leaves, it made a hasty additional new growth of another 8-12 inches complete with new leaves. Being now topheavy, the first rainstorm knocked it all over, flat on the ground. Trying to tie it up was not succesful, so I left it to its fate. Nothing detered, it made a right angle for each stem and sent up another 6 to8 inches of stem before setting buds. This week, in the middle of rain and slush and snow, the buds are opening up - the only, last, bright spot in the garden.
So... if mums want cold weather for blooming, do the hot houses have to refrigerate them to get them to bloom in August?

Vacation does something to the gardening mojo. I keep on top of the weeds for most of the summer - and then we go on vacation. Weeds instantly sense this and go into hyperactive mode.

I have an allergy to working in the heat and/or humidity, which means this delicate flower doesn't handle east coast summers very well. My only chance to stay on top of the weeds is to keep weeding every day, for about half an hour each morning or evening. When I leave for a week? It takes me another week to work up the moral fiber to get back to weeding. (Yes I know, that means it's been TWO weeks since I did any weeding - your point is?)

I started tackling it about three days ago and the worst of the worst is almost over. Knowing that this was about to happen, I did take steps before I left to minimize the problem, but there's always one corner of the garden that gets left becaues it isn't really that bad and because I've run out of time. Not that bad. Right.