More Photos of the Side

The Side Is Done

And now... What we've all been waiting for... Is finally here...

Yes, We Have Snakes

But they are harmless, really.
Rather large (about 90 cm, or three feet long).
But harmless.
Really.

Photo evidence of the existence of a three foot long snake living somewhere in the vicinity of our yard (oh, who am I kidding? I know there's a nest of snakes that lives under that very rock, and that is the big momma snake's last discarded skin, right there):

Day Three

Some time before 7:30 this morning a crew of two arrived to lay the flagstone that will finish the path that's being built at the side of our house and garage. It was the official start of day three of the great landscaping caper.



The flagstone is all laid, but only half the path has been filled with limestone dust.

Some Planting Done

Today we did some more planting in the area by the path. We made some discoveries as we were working on it:

• Compost that has spent two full summers cooking is really good stuff!


• Compost that has spent one full summer cooking is pretty good, but it's still a little chunky. (We don't have a sifter to use.)


• Beneath the topsoil, we have something akin to beach sand as our native soil.


• The sun beating down on a south-facing slope is as good as roundup for killing lawn grass.


• Zebra grass and porcupine grass look kind of the same when they are small, but zebra grass comes in dwarf varieties that will not grow 6' tall.

I managed to get some good pictures of the final result (for today) before the rain started. Here they are:





















Compare these pictures to the "before" shots located here.

I had these great plans for what would be alongside the deck. I would do a mass-planting of purple daylilies. Who am I kidding? I don't do mass plantings. I am the mosaic gardener. I am the foliage freak. I do pointillism with colour and texture. So, I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, with three Cricket Dance daylilies, three plantaginea hostas, two harlequin honeysuckle, and a few different specimen plants.

Of course, we are just doing the planting this weekend while we wait for the landscapers to come back and finish next week. Some time after next week it will all be mulched (where the plantings are) or covered with river rock (around the grasses along the fence), and of course there will be actual flagstone on the path.

No Pictures Today

Nope, no pictures today. We've been shopping for plants and then resting because it made us so tired and it's too hot to do planting at 3:00 in the afternoon. So we spent the evening doing planting, except my parents came by and we took about an hour off and by that time it was practically twilight. So no light to take pictures.

I'll try to take some tomorrow. We planted the zebra grass (which is really porcupine grass, but they look the same and "zebra grass" just sounds more romantic than "porcupine grass").

All Over the Map

I am all over the map today. Nothing specific to write about, but lots of little things worth mentioning.

Sunflower

If you have a birdfeeder in your yard, and you fill it with black oil sunflower seeds, then you are familiar with the phenomenon of picking sunflower sprouts. They spring up everywhere. Well, usually I am very good at getting them before they reach their second set of leaves. Today I found out that I must've missed one, way back when. Here is a picture of what happens when you miss a sprout:



Seedpod

Does anyone else ever enthuse over seedpods? I noticed that some of my Moonglow seedpods are starting to dry out and pop open. It's harvest time! And if you think that's weird, I actually took a picture of my favorite seedpod. It's different from the rest. The rest are all wrinkly and leathery looking. This one is soft and plump. It is the only seedpod that formed on my favourite daylily, El Desperado. Here is the picture (it's a bit out of focus, because my camera likes to concentrate on the mulch unless I remember to set it to "macro," which I did not).



Project

Mike and I managed a gardening project together today. We created a dry riverbed out of some extra river rock we had piled up at the side of the house. Here are the before and after pictures:

Before

After

Day Two

Well, it's day two of the great landscaping caper. You can see a lot of progress has been made. All the armour stone has been placed, and the limestone bed has been laid. As you can see in the first photo, they did a great job of cleaning up the road where all the dirt and stone had been sitting.



Although I have some room for new planting in mulch beds, a lot of space that's not actually for the flagstone path will be covered in 3"-5" river rock. The landscaper has suggested ornamental grasses by the fence, growing up out of the river rock. That will give a very natural look to the area.



At one point I was considering cedars by the fence, but the one we planted last year next to the chain link is not doing well. It is too exposed to the wind, and is suffering a slow death by desiccation.

Work in Progress

The landscaping work started today. It will be slow going, since they can't get the flagstone until Monday.

Look here for the "before" pictures.

Here are some pictures of the work in progress:

Confessions of a Foliage Freak

I have a new nickname after shopping for plants this weekend. My husband refers to me affectionately as "Foliage Freak".

We had to get some daylilies to be ready for the side garden, so we went to Terra Nurseries. It's a forty-minute drive, so we were surprised to meet my parents there. They were heading on to a place nearby called Paterno's (a.k.a. Gardenland). The prices at Paterno's are high, but their plants are healthy and, of course, "to-die-for".










Here is a list of plants I selected at Paterno's. They are pictured above, on our patio waiting to be planted:

1 'Clifford Moore' campion (soft, silky, variegated leaves -- drool)
4 different heucheras: Beauty Colour, Velvet night, Hollywood, and Snow Angel
2 "Harlequin" honeysuckle (variegated leaves -- drool)
4 elfin thyme (tiny little leaves with a crisp texture)
2 "Chocolate Chip" ajuga (such big healthy plants they had)
3 different stonecrop











Paterno's didn't have any purple daylilies for the base of the deck, so we returned to Terra. Although I had been thinking Bela Lugosi (wonderful, wonderful name; reminds me of the Bauhaus song "Bela Lugosi's Dead"), when we looked at Terra they had a plentiful supply of Cricket Dance for a ridiculously low end-of-season price. They had only one Wayside King Royale (which I had to have!), and we also picked up a Chicago Atlas and Royal Mountie for good measure, even though I normally avoid red daylilies.

Unfortunately, the Cricket Dance are not healthy plants. I have to quarantine them because they are infested with thrips. Thrips are pretty easy to get rid of with insecticidal soap, though, so I decided to take the chance. As a general rule I don't buy plants that have not been well looked after.

Those Glossy Gardening Catalogs Remind You of What?!

Well, the tornado passed to the north of us. Barns were razed and trees uprooted in Fergus, but our southern suburbs were spared.

I've been looking at various flower and bulb catalogs lately. I read in another gardening blog that many people refer to these catalogs as "garden pornography." Massively doctored photos and glowing descriptions that make you salivate over the plants depicted. (Anyway, that's as far as I am going with that analogy.)

After ordering from Breck's last year, I have decided to buy my bulbs from the nursery this year. That way I can control when I get them, and if I'm disappointed, I may have some recourse.

A list of blogs by other people who love gardens and gardening:

gardening while intoxicated
gardenhaus
the gallery
backyard nursery

Eventually I will figure out how to put a list of links on this template, or I will redesign this blog with another template that has an area for links. If you can add to the list of garden blogs, please leave me a comment.

Vindication

We are currently under a tornado warning. I just went around the backyard putting stuff away so it wouldn't blow around, then I realized that it wouldn't matter anyway. All of my neighbours' yards are full of junk that will probably blow into my yard if there's a tornado, so why bother?

Seems I made the right decision about putting off the landscaping work. Woke up to a thunderstorm this morning, and now there is a risk of a tornado.

This is a photo I took in June, when I could still see under the elm.

I can't put the buddha statue under there now because the proliferation of new growth obscures everything.

Behind the buddha is one of my favorite plants in the garden (too bad I can't see it any more). It's "Sweet Kate" spiderwort.

It has lovely chartreuse leaves with dark purple flowers. Most spiderwort has leaves that are a sort of bluey-green. I wouldn't like "Sweet Kate" if it weren't for the colour of the leaves.

Just to the left of the buddha, you can see black and white violets that bloomed well in May and June.

Of course in front are some huge hostas (Sieboldiana 'Elegans') that were actually quite tiny last year.

Foliage

Yes, I am a foliage freak.


You can't love hostas and heucheras without being a bit of a foliage junkie. Today's entry is going to be for pictures of foliage.



And not just hostas and heuchera of course. There's all kinds of interesting foliage out there.

What's Still Blooming?

Among the daylilies, only the late bloomers are still getting flowers. Barbara Mitchell looked to be finished, but there is still one bud amidst the pods. My Hope is still going strong, and there are buds remaining on Strawberry Candy and Daring Deception. Unsolved Mystery is still blooming, and Vanilla Fluff and Joan Senior are still in the race with two blooms each. Bonanza, which only got its first flower a few days ago, has lots more buds. Little Business is the busiest bloomer there is, and still has plenty of buds. There's a Moonglow coming up fast with a second set of blooms after looking like it had finished for good at the end of July.

(Read that paragraph out loud really fast and it almost sounds like you are announcing a horse race.)


What Else Is Out There Besides Daylilies?

That is a very good question, so of course I had to go out with my camera and take a look. Here are some of the better pictures.



These are plants that are blooming in the back and front garden. There's phlox, and yellow coneflower, purple butterfly bush, and some small blue flowers that grow on the arbour bench.