more work today

I cleared more weeds, gathered up last years' leaf mulch (and respread it on the empty garden beds), and hauled three buckets of compost up to the front. Fed the daylilies (again, they didn't get much the first time around)

cleared up some and scattered compost over the black-and-blue salvia- no sign of emergence yet but I do see one gladiola spear coming up! and the lamb's ears on that side look particularly nice this spring

Out front I've more or less cleaned up the front perennial and flowerbed (I had to spread the work over two days). Divided a few allium clumps to spread out- I hope I haven't done this at the wrong time and ruined their chance of bloom. They stood up to the disturbance pretty well, haven't wilted much

these two are next to a tulip

Behind them you can see the fat shoots of peonies arising!

I also moved a few young columbines- they look pretty small yet!

To extend the row of older plants- it gives something to look at in the back of the bed when not much is growing yet, and then later when they're done flowering and died back, the plants in front hide the gap

I can tell now what things I do actually matter in the garden- my raised beds that didn't get composted and mulched properly in fall, the ground was hard, not all loose and soft and dark like other springs. I didn't come out and heavily mulch or cover plants against the cold (except the black-and-blue salvia and the lemon balm) and now I can see the usual mulch and leaf cover was enough for most of them. But I lost a few brunnera- here's one that did well regardless

There's only two mums showing new growth so far in the bed, and of the wild geraniums (cranesbill), one has revived, the other nothing growing. If I've lost it, that makes me sad.

Two or three of the clary sage also died, but I have enough left it's okay

My 'espresso' wild geranium in the back near the garden seems okay though

and next to it the hyssop in a container is doing great! 

I can also tell that scattering hair clippings and irish spring soap shavings was keeping the deer from eating too much of my euonymus and hostas. Because in fall I did none of that, and this winter the deer ate back so much of those shrubs against the house they look awful. I'm going to have to trim them back to reshape, and have started scattering deterrents again.

more pics later

second sideyard

Starting cleaning up a bit more over here, too. Pulled weeds, mock strawberry and old mulch away from the lungwort. I think I could divide this one next season! It's grown so much.

Did the same around the little clump of spiderwort, and found something that puzzled me

what is this plant, growing near its base? I feel like I really ought to recognize it. Maybe pokeweed.

The ostrich ferns further downhill in shade aren't showing above ground yet, but some here against the house in the sun are, and I found fiddleheads of sensitive fern just starting to push up.

It feels good to get out and work in the yard again, to get dirt under my fingernails. I'm still feeling sad at not having enough energy to go further and plant the whole garden, though. 

One lovage has come up- did the second one die this winter. Which would be okay, I never use all the plant anyway, but I like having two.

bright yellow

I'm actually happy with my forsythia this year! Surprised how much it grew- I know the deer eat the ends of the twigs but now it's tall enough to avoid most of that damage, I think. Bloom is best ever! I can see it from the house, so bright and airy. It makes me want to plant more of them.

Another pleased note is the small row of volunteer euonymus I dug and transplanted years ago. In spite of the deer, these two are finally getting some height too.

It looks pretty messy and bare back there, still- I haven't yet cleaned up the stems of monarda (new growth showing at their bases) but some of the ground covers are greening up- I found a few bits of woodruff showing itself

Nearby the patch of purple lysimachia, which hasn't filled in much noticeably yet (here's one of the dozen or more individual plants)-

and I thought this was the same plant that's coming up in a few places in the lawn- but not sure now

I'm still liking the creeping jenny- here's how it was last season

and now filling in more- but have to be careful to keep it from spreading too far- it could be invasive I've read (if it got into the neighbor's yard and then further into the woodland behind)

Also to note nearby, the younger St. john's wort I grew from seed

and planted out last year, is looking better this time. Since I cut it back it's filled in and not as leggy

a bit of work

Spreading the compost. Yesterday I used two buckets-worth (well, not quite full, they each had three shovelfuls) and fed the rhubarb and all plants on the first sideyard- black and blue salvias, lamb's ears, gladiolas, daylilies, joe pye weed, milkweed. Some of those are still hidden belowground. Pulled more of the vinca away from the salvia and daylilies. They're flowering now- little pale lavender-purple stars. I do find them pretty, but don't want them everywhere and it spreads so.

Today cleared out dead leaves (the huge ones from the neighbor's sycamore) from under the holly shrub and mulched with compost just that one spot- the beautyberry, heucherellas and some yellow salvias. Also pulled some weeds against the fence where I've let (what I think is) shiso grow tall the past year or so.

I'm glad to see the beautyberry is spreading- there's smaller shoots coming up on the sunny side of the shrub. I wasn't aware it would spread like this. I don't at all mind getting a bigger clump of it in this corner, and then maybe digging up pieces from the outskirts to transplant to other areas of the yard . . . 

Tired out, ready for a break again!

it's been very cold

the past few days, so I haven't done much outside. Yesterday went out for just half an hour to cut back some dried stems of last years' turtlehead, sedums and nicotiana, cleaning up a few of the perennial beds. I broke the dry stems into shorter bits, mixed with some rough compost, and put as mulch around the strawberries. That wore me out for the rest of the day (yes, still in recovery stage). Took a picture of the wormwood, I do so like its pale blue-green frosty color.

My husband helped me turn the compost pile, which was difficult because the layers almost frozen together. (It's hard for him to find time to do this kind of thing, so I didn't wait for a warmer day). It was a shorter "compost cake" than usual, only up to my thigh, but I still made delighted comments which caused my husband to joke about what if it was an actual cake. He shoveled the wheelbarrow two-thirds full and moved it up near the garden for me. I sifted out the rougher stuff by hand, and will later mix the more finished compost with leaf mulch, start spreading that under perennials and shrubs, one bucketful at a time- it's about all the workload I can handle, still.

Cheers for spring- sweat and muddy shoes and all.

floof!

My daughter really loves fluffy things, so this makes me think of her and smile. Seed puff from last season, on my pink clematis.

New leaves and buds coming up!

spring herbs

A few days ago I posted pictures of my herb bed last summer. Well, here's what is actually green right now. Sorrel! I'd have more of this to eat if it wasn't for the deer.

Next to it, lemon balm still alive under there. Don't know why it cheers me so much each spring to see these things growing again- they do it every year- but yet it does, enough to take pictures and admire.

Sculpit- enough to start eating it again. Just had some the other day, with onions as a side dish to pasta.

I still don't know why my winter savory is not doing well. I didn't even eat any of it this season. Only a few green leaves on the whole plant-

most of it dried up and sad like this, or naked twigs.

Lavender is doing great, though!

I'm not expecting my sage to regrow, sadly- that one also hasn't done great lately. And I'm going to have to restart green onions again. But hope to see the tarragon and lovage come up again.

spring

makes me antsy to get out and do things, build. Forsythia is blooming, time to plant out lettuce but I don't have any seedlings ready. I need to trim the eunoymus, turn the compost pile, clear old leaf litter and replace mulch on the perennial beds, reset some bricks that edge the garden beds where they're leaning wonky, etc. I just don't have the energy yet. I went out yesterday and cleared weeds from one garden bed again, and that wore me out. 

It was the long bed #1, which had chard and strawberries last year (that never fruited). The weeds are so thick in all the garden beds because I didn't mulch properly in the fall. You can tell by how bare the ground is, now that I've pulled out the dead nettle and other stuff. It was nice to see a few bees out foraging on the nettle flowers on a warm day, but I still don't want the stuff all over my garden anymore. Here's the bared strawberry plants. They've spread, but the older plants I originally put in, aren't much bigger than the new plants. And I don't know if any will bear, as I didn't feed them in fall.

A few of the previous years' leaf beet chard rootstock sprouted new leaves. (You can see how far the strawberry runners spread- they weren't planted this close to the rows of chard!)

I cut all those baby leaves off, plus those from one likewise newly-spouted old collard plant in bed 8 with the catmint (it's very small)

and used them in a dish with the cowpeas. Finally I have cooked my cowpeas! I though it odd that after soaking, only some of them had doubled in size. Forgot to take a picture of the final dish. I found (of course) conflicting info online how to cook black-eyed peas: soak or not. I went with a two-hour soak before cooking and don't think it was enough. Had to simmer them longer than the recipe said and they just got barely tender, not creamy. Basically the recipe was: sauté onion, garlic and a bit of minced celery, simmer with the cowpeas in chicken broth and water, add bay leaf and some spices- the main one was thyme which I didn't have so I used summer savory. 

It was not really a hit. It was okay, but nobody really liked it. And the fact that two years' worth of saved dried cowpeas only got me one small meal (I had to cut the recipe in half), was beyond pathetic. My husband said "you were successful! We're eating it!" but I cringed inside.

I do appreciate how lush the cowpeas grew (pic from last season below), and how little they were bothered by pests and disease in my garden- but they just didn't give me enough output. True there'd be more dried peas if I hadn't eaten so much as fresh green beans, but I still think it would have just made a handful of meals, is all.

Well, I'll have to re-evaluate that. In another part of the backyard, my rhubarb is emerging! I really would like to make pie with my own rhubarb and my own strawberries again, but I probably will have to settle for just half of that being home-grown this year.

More pics to come.

today

it was just warm enough to put my boston fern out on the porch for a few hours. I started thinking about the ostrich ferns in the back yard and hoping they come up again- this was my last pic of them the season before. They're not growing huge and spreading yet like I'd hoped.

Maybe a good dose of compost this spring will assist.

colder today

Once again I did a little work outside, even as it was starting to drizzle. Walked up the slope on one side of the house to cut back mess of old salvia stems under a shrub, and deadhead last years' autumn joy sedums. New growth is thick around their base. Also trimmed the small rue plant in that bed. On the other side of the yard I pulled off all the flopped over leaves of gladiolas, and cut out diseased/dead leaves and stems on the lamb's ears. It was messy. Most of that went into a bag to put on the curb- my compost heap bin is overflowing and hasn't been turned/emptied yet. I raked up a small part of the first sideyard (leaves scattered from my mulch out onto the lawn) and put the litter back over the blue hosta spot where wind had swept it bare. And that's all I could do. Out of breath and tired. 

 Here's another picture from the year before: rue seedlings! The few cuttings I had taken and put in pots all died, likewise some I had just stuck in the ground by the milkweeds. I think I'll just have to let seedlings that come up on their own, grow a year before I move them.

That seems to be working better with the hellebores. Once before I had transplanted two-year-old seedlings- and a single one survived. It's blooming now, and looks so nice I tried again. Year before last I had cleared clumps of seedlings out of the bed in the backyard, leaving just a dozen of the larger ones to grow up. Just last week dug a few of those (crowded with more tiny new seedlings again) and moved them to the front bed in that same row under the boxwood. They're twice the size of my first attempt, and have had a week of cooler weather and rain now to settle in.

Here's some others that are- three years old now I think? and have not yet bloomed for me. Ones I got from another gardener, planted in a different area of the yard where the ferns and hostas get eaten by the deer. I'm not sure why they're still smaller. Too much shade? or maybe I didn't feed them enough compost to boost growth.

posting here

keeps my interest from flagging, so here we are. It's colder this week during the day- sunny but just around fifty degrees, so I haven't been putting plants out. Today I weeded one more raised garden bed, clearing up leaves that had blown in around them, and hauled a bucketful to the compost pile. Most of what I yanked up was purple dead nettle- it's thick through all the beds. Regretting that I let it grow so much. I don't make tortillas from scratch anymore, and never found another way I like to eat it . . . This weeding plus a short walk (two blocks) wore me out. Sigh. 

So here's nostalgia pics from the year before my ankle injury. I hope it will look like this again someday! Full of thriving herbs. I'm sure the tarragon (center here), sorrel (back left) and lemon balm will revive- I've seen green leaves under the leaf mulch on the lemon balm. But the deer have eaten my sorrel.

and the green onions didn't come back- I had replanted some in 2022 but they didn't make it. This pic is from the year before

I miss having good leeks. My best ones were never as thick as you get in the grocery store- but they were fresh and always on hand.

The previous years' leeks in two newer beds were skimpy. I realize now I made a mistake when I put up the last three beds- layering with newspaper shreds and chipped cardboard okay, putting in broken sticks nope. Thinking back now I realize all the plants in those three beds had been sub-par. Wood chips on top of the bed for mulch I think works fine, having it mixed into or under the soil it probably steals nitrogen. At least, that's my guess. 

The garlics that shared the leek bed last year did just okay. One of my daughter's friends saw my small garlic heads on the counter and laughed: "I've never seen such tiny garlics!" Yeah. And they didn't cure properly, of all the garlics I dug up in fall, two-thirds or more rotted. Want to try growing them again, but I'll have to buy anew in fall- none of mine were worth replanting.

small goals

I am feeling some dismay about the state of my yard and garden. Last summer the front bed looked like this- all full!

Now it's pretty shabby. The deer have eaten back a lot of the shrub on the corner, and I think some of the mums died. I did not go out on the spur of the moment to quickly cover plants from cold this past fall and winter- didn't even really mulch most of the plants. So I expect not everything survived. I suppose the plus is that it shows me what work I was doing needlessly! I need to get out there and clean stuff up, but can still only do a little bit at a time.

One of the few things I did accomplish last fall was digging up some errant ajuga and moving them to form an outside ring surrounding the crabapple base in front yard. Also trimmed back the yellow salvias, which looked like they might start spreading into the lawn. I dug up and moved some autum joy sedums around, and also tore out tons of vinca from the sideyard where the steps are, transplanted milkweed to the other sideyard, and dug and moved joe pye weed into its place against the house on that slope. Because the milkweed never seemed to do great on the first sideyard, but a few were thriving in the other spot. And I wanted to move most of the joe pye from where we planned to put a gate in, thought it would look nice tall against the house there. 

Now it just looks strange and empty where I dug and moved plants, because the fence has not yet got installed. And the deer come up into that space now, are eating the other euonymus shrub plus the small ones I planted in the back, plus what's in the garden . . . 

However the ajuga on first sideyard is filling in between the stepping stones

and other things are still showing their greenery for spring. Yesterday I cleared half another garden bed of weeds, pulled out dead stems above the freshly sprouting catmint, and gathered up piles of sycamore leaves that had blown into the yard, stuck under shrubs all winter. It was enough to get me winded and swell my ankle again.

I think this year I have to just plan on trying to keep the yard tidy and take care of the perennials, that's probably it. They will get a good feed this season as I didn't turn over and spread the compost last season, just gave them some leaf mulch if I recall. 

some green

My coleus are the only plants I'm tending right now that will go out into the ground. The orange/lime ones have done the best this winter:

'Kiwi fern' is also in pretty good shape

 Some of the others- not so much. In the past few years the crazy 'rodeo drive' one was always thriving, but now some of those have the sickly look, and I threw out two pots of it entirely.

The one with purplish stripes (I'm forgetting names right now) and pale 'Limelight' are also puny- I only have one of each. Hope to propagate more when they get a bit bigger.

Thank goodness another favorite, the bright one I pinched years ago- I feel sure I learned the name of this one too, but now can't recall it either

 Didn't notice until now, taking pictures, but I seem to have finally lost the pink 'watermelon' variety. I probably only had one cutting of it in the fall, and I guess it was among those that withered and got thrown out. The one I like so much that it's always lived indoors, is still doing grand, though!

this year

there will probably not be much garden. My ankle still gets swollen if I do too much strenuous work, not to mention the lingering covid exhaustion. I can manage my household chores now, but adding yard work and gardening on top of that is still too much for me. Yesterday I managed to weed three of the garden beds, and that was it. This morning I cleared weeds from the mailbox spot and dead stems of salvia from last season, tidying up a bit around front yard. It needs a lot more work but I can only do a little bit at a time.

I might just do my potted herbs, and a few things that will take off later in spring (beans) or can go straight in the ground, don't need tending as seedlings (root crops). 

Problem is the deer. We still haven't got a fence built to keep them out. Contractors have 'ghosted' us three times now.

I've begun acclimated some of my plants to live outside again- putting the chives, bay laurel and cuban oregano out for a few hours each day, and the boston fern on the front porch when it's warm enough. The figs in the basement could start going out too, but I don't have the energy to haul them in/out and do the stairs twice a day, sigh.

But there are still small things of cheer, with the coming spring. My pot of stevia was looking quite sparse (and I hadn't sweetened my tea all winter), I was feeling sad that only two of the cuttings that took root survived. Then a bunch of new shoots came up from the older plant- 

and grew this much in just a week's time! I've remembered this time to pinch the tops off with the few few uses, to encourage it to grow more bushy instead of tall.