It's amazing how one day of sunshine and mild weather can make all the difference. Yesterday (Sunday 7 April) felt more like "Easter" than last Sunday, which was actually Easter. I finally dug out that failing azalea from the Front Border and replaced it with a 'Wine and Roses' weigela and planted a 'Spilled Wine' weigela (a new shorter, more prostrate variety) in front of it. Both are in shades of pink/mauve/purple so should look good together. To make room, I also moved a small hydrangea down along the border, where it will get more sun and hopefully start to show some blooms. It's now in the spot where the Siberian iris were lifted; I've decided to move those across the path to fill in a gap left when I removed two big nasty thorny barberries from the end of the hedge. What a relief to have those gone! I felt bad digging them out and destroying them, but they were terrible to work around, especially after R trimmed the hedge and cut the barberries to form the end of the hedge. Those clippings were murder, no matter how carefully we raked them up.
My Romaine lettuce seeds are germinated, as are the okra seeds. I potted on the second flat of coleus; only a few are showing any color yet, but I'm still hopeful.
My lily bulbs of various kinds are just now appearing above the soil. I'm going to put in supports for them NOW instead of waiting for the tall stems to start leaning over.
And speaking of supports....I scored a big one! My friend is clearing out her house/garage in prep to move and she had two boxes (50 each) of wire lawn sign supports. Those upside down squared U-shaped wire thingys that you can slide signs onto, mostly for election type signs, but also construction and yard care companies use them. They make excellent plant supports and are just generally very handy around the garden. the wire is heavy enough to stand up to handling, but flexible enough to be bent into shape. You can also get lighter weight H-shaped wire supports for signs and although they can be helpful in a pinch, they aren't as good as the U-shaped ones (also, can be dangerous with those uprights sticking up).
This morning I'm heading up to the hen run to start working on setting that second post (Finally!). If I can just determine the post length and get it cut, that will be a big step forward. It's been so sloppy wet and muddy I haven't been able to do anything with this vital project.
And while I'm up there I "mightaswell" get those water iris back into the pond in the Folly Wall garden.
We'll be experiencing the solar eclipse this afternoon around 2-4:30 pm. We're not in the path of totality, but pretty near, so should be a good show. I baked "eclipse cookies" yesterday: basic sugar cookies, but I made a roll of dough with cocoa powder to make it dark, then wrapped that roll in a sheet of plain white dough. Refrigerated, then cut them into circles: dark center with light rim. Kind of cute!
Totally unmotivated. It's cold. It's wet. It's windy. The entire property is soggy. My big gardening accomplishment yesterday was finally getting the Front Border tidied and pulling a small patch of winter cress in the South Border. By the end of that half hour, my fingers were numb, my feet were wet despite boots, and I felt like I'd never be warm again. Today looks like a reprise of the same. At least there's a bit of sun. I've got a ton of laundry to get out, first load is churning away even as we speak. I miss my old washing machine. That bugger could turn out a clean load in about 30 minutes, start to finish, and you could toss in whatever at any time throughout the cycle. This "improved" scybalum I have now takes FOREVER to do a load and the lid locks after the wash cycle. It won't fill while the lid is up. Who comes up with these things? I long for my mom's old wringer washer that we filled with a hose and emptied into the floor drain. In a pinch or on a good day, we could even roll it outside and do the laundry on the back porch.
On a brighter note, I've got more flats of seeds started in the kitchen. Lettuce, okra, chinese cabbage, sage, and oregano. Those last three are iffy. The seeds are from 2020 and I don't know how vital they are. Today I'm making up flats for my annual flowers: marigolds, zinnias, cosmos and amaranth (Love Lies Bleeding...creepy name, creepy flower, but I saw it in a "jungle" garden and it's creepiness worked beautifully). I'm holding off on starting the castor beans, morning glories and calendula (may just direct sow those last two), and the sunflowers; I think those will go in next week.
Today I'm going to try an experiment with catmint cuttings. I have fair success getting catmint cuttings to root in water, but I have some fibrous blocks of something that looks sort of like fiberglass batting and I want to try rooting some cuttings in that. I was given a whole wodge of these little yellow blocks several years ago and they've sat in the greenhouse doing nothing. The instructions say to soak them, squeeze out excess, insert the cuttings, put everything into something that will retain moisture, and hey, presto...rooted cuttings. We'll see.
Mud is my world. Mud is my name. Mud is my universe.
Got the preformed pond in the Folly Wall garden emptied, lifted, re-set and leveled. I'm always surprised by how much a bucket of water weighs ( 1 gallon = 8.3 pounds, so a partially filled 5-gallon bucket weight about 25 pounds). There was a lot of sludge on the bottom, which went onto the rather poor soil of the Storybook Garden. I was so caked with mud by the time I was done I had to peel off boots, gloves, and outer layer before I could get in the house.
I wanted to rebuild the stone raised bed wall, but it was too too muddy. We've been getting a lot of rain over the past few days and it's slowing down my gardening. Yesterday (2 April) was so wet I don't think I went outside except to feed the hens and refill the bird feeder. I've got a bucket of aconites that still need to go into the ground; I may try to do that whenever we get a break in the downpours. (No clearing in sight until Saturday; I've got laundry piling up.)
More cleanup in the Jungle Cliff area; I lifted out about a dozen young Korean (Kousa) dogwoods and potted them up for sale/rehoming. I've still got a lot of these young dogwoods (puppywoods?) in pots from the last big self-seeding year. I've decided to incorporate a lot of them into the Pine Gap planting. I've also got a lot of dead wood/damage in the northwest corner of the property, a wild spot I haven't really touched yet. I left that area alone for wildlife but I see now that we've got some major wind damage and it looks really bad. This may be the newest of the gardened areas coming into being.
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In the greenhouse, everything is doing well. I have to remind myself to water those flats and pots; in all this rain, it's easy to forget that it's bone dry in there. I potted on the hardy hydrangea seedlings. Very surprised by how well those old seeds germinated. I have no idea what colors I'll get but anything will be welcome; they are destined for the newer Tropical Garden above the grape arbor.
I really need to pot on the second batch of coleus; these are from my own saved seeds and I'm eager to see what they will look like. I'm hoping for some unusual colors/leaf forms because a few of the parent plants were purchased "fancy" types.
My pelargonium seedlings are growing like mad. I never expected it was this easy to grow geraniums from seed. if it continues to go well, this may turn into an annual thing. Same with the petunias; some of the seedlings are still smaller than I'd like, but at least 6 are a good size already and I expect they'll really take off once they get into the greenhouse when the temps are higher and more stable (we're still dipping into the high 30s/low 40sF overnight).
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Carrots are up and OK. I'd have liked to see more germination, but I'll take whatever I get. I've got a second sowing that should germinate all right with all this wet weather. Peas have finally started to emerge; no sign yet of parsnips but those are always very very slow to get going. First green shoots on the onion sets under their protective cover.
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Realized I completely forgot to tidy the Front Border. The miscanthus is still standing and I've got Siberian iris to replant and several new shrubs purchased last fall to put in. That's moved to the top of the to-do list, along with getting the second post set for the hen run repair.
In the Folly Wall Garden, the north raised bed is supposed to look like a fallen in foundation with water collected in it. I got (free) a big pre-formed plastic pond, sort of kidney shaped, that is just the thing for the space. It's been in place for a few years now, filled with water iris. I thought I got it level when I first set it, but over time it's settled more on one side than the other and that looks bad. This is the big drawback to the pre-formed ponds. Pond liner conforms perfectly to whatever hole you put it in, but the stiffer preformed plastic has a mind of its own. The north-facing wall of that raised bed has never looked good either; I put it together in haste, with whatever stones I had to hand and then the deer have knocked it around, stepping on to it to drink from the pond.
I've since acquired a few really nice big flat stones so I decided to fix things. I tore out the wall and excavated the dirt away from the pond, which is high on that side. I was hoping against hope that i could dig out enough dirt from beneath that side of the pond that it would settle of its own weight into a more level position. Dint happen. So I lifted out all the water iris and set them aside. Today I'll have to empty the pond, remove it, do some digging, then re-set it.
This isn't entirely a bad thing: over the years, it's accumulated a lot of debris on the bottom that really should come out and the water iris need to be divided and re-homed.
Once I've got it re-set level, I'll replant and refill from my water barrel and then let the rain do the rest. Then back fill and rebuild the raised bed north wall (not a big job, the section to be rebuilt is only about 7 feet long, about 3 feet tall).
This is the plan. Whether I'll get to it today is the question. We had a heavy thunderstorm roll through last night, not a lot of rain but a lot of sturm und drang. My dad always said the first big thunder wakes up the trees, and I've yet to see that not happen.
Got the Jungle Cliff tidied up, edged the border where it runs down to the lawn. Weeded and reset the small flagstone area at the base of the Jungle Cliff/deck steps. It was overgrown with Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia), ajuga, and Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum), plus some dandelions. Never one to pass up free plants ( 
) I dug all that out and set it aside. Once I had everything dug out, I had to reset the flagstones (they are in fine gravel), and haul in a couple buckets of gravel to fill up the cracks. Looks much better now.
I took down the containers that held my big Christmas/Winter display of juniper branches, holly, etc. Those empty containers have been looking forlorn for a couple of months now. I put away the big box, but filled the two long window boxes with, you guessed it, the Creeping Jenny, Star of Bethlehem, and Ajuga... plus a couple small clumps of Tradescantia (??). Watered that well and set it up on the flight of four wooden steps that I use as my "stage" for such displays, between the garage doors. Next fall, I'm going to pot up some daffodils to use in that display.
Also cleaned up the garage door area; there were some flattened cardboard boxes schedule for recycling, etc. and it just looked messy.
Refreshed the pea gravel in the little dry stream bed that runs the entire length of the Jungle Cliff. It starts under the top of the long flight of deck steps and then wends its way down under the steps and off to the side to end in a little pond filled with water iris. I have to say that idea was a good one. it would be spectacular if I ever install a recirculating pump and actually put water in it (I put down pond liner under the dry stream just in case), but even as a "virtual" streambed, it looks good. I've got it edged with big stones and I tried to make it look as natural as possible. The edges are planted with miniature hostas, miniature ferns and other small shade lovers which like it under the deck steps, where they get just enough sunlight to thrive. I'm encouraging moss on the stones as well. At night a string of very tiny solar-powered "rice lights" (each bulb no bigger than a grain of rice) randomly wanders along the course of the dry stream to mark it out.
Got around to repairing the metal edging around the circular bed in the center of the veg. It's that corrugated tin that they sell for strawberry towers. I have no idea where I got it, but it's been in there forever. Last fall I had to rip up a section and move it aside so I could dig out some nasty weeds/grass. It's finally re-set; got the circular bed tidied up as well. That holds some of my rhubarb, plus chives and some ornamental things. Right now it's bursting with yellow tulips almost ready to bloom.
Got my white plastic garden bench scrubbed. It sits against the shed wall, facing north, so very gray with mildew. I think I'll repaint it. Surprised me that it did not seem to be getting any whiter until it sat for a couple of hours in the sun to dry. I used Tile and Grout cleaner, Ajax powder, and a scrub brush; I guess the chlorine bleach in the cleaners needed time to work. I think it needs moved to another location; never gets used there.
Finally, as the sun was going down on a very windy, chilly day, I got the remaining pavers set in the little landing at the top of the Folly Wall garden steps. I went as far as i could go, but I still need to find a few more chunks of paving to fill in some gaps. For now, it's filled level with fine gravel and I'm content. Bits and pieces of flagstone, old concrete paving, etc. always are turning up somewhere; I'll set those in as I find them. That's the benefit of just "dry setting" paving in fine gravel instead of mortaring it in permanently.
