Busy

Spring is definitely here in Wisconsin, which means I spend nearly every nice day working outside in the yard. Last year my big project was the landscaping of our natural fence. This year my big project is our vegetable garden and the beginning of landscaping around our back patio (I say beginning because this is going to involve tearing out a lot of grass -- that's a lot of work!).

In late March I started by ripping out a bunch of grass next to our patio and porch. This area gets a lot of sun and faces south. It also looked to me to be the perfect size and location for a set of raised beds, for vegetable gardening. I ripped up the grass and flipped it over so that it would die and start to rot. PHEW! I was tired after this (but not as sore as I thought I would be. woo! Also, note how brown the grass is, and the bare dirt to the left by the white rock.).

This stayed like this for about 6 weeks, though I would go out there occasionally and smooth out areas or tear up big chunks of sod. Meanwhile, I started my seeds.

In the beginning of May, we bought our lumber to build the raised beds. We built 3 separate beds: 4'x8', 4'x5', and 3'x6', using 2"x8" pieces of wood (which really means 1.5" x 7.25". weird).

Last weekend we bought the dirt to fill 2 of the beds, and Connor helped me smooth it out. He had a lot of fun with that. We tore up the rotted grass and put that in the bottom of the beds. Oh, and see the plants growing up now where the white rock is? That's our raspberry patch.

I transferred our strawberries to the 3'x 6' bed, and the 4'x 5' one now has broccoli, sweet red peppers, jalepeños, serrano peppers, and lettuce. The rear bed will be getting the roma tomatoes and tomatillos sometime this week. The grass is also much greener now, no?

I also bought a new half-moon edger and have been working on cleaning up the edges of the flower bed. In this photo I'm working my way towards the peach tree. For now, I'll just clean up the edge, but eventually, a bunch of that grass around it is going to be gone. You can see the bird bath the family gave me for Mother's Day too. Most of the iris are in full bloom and those peonies are going to be next. Things are looking really good.

Seedlings

I've been dreaming and planning my gardening projects for this summer. One of those projects is ripping out some grass and building 3 raised beds for our veggies and strawberries. The grass was torn out 3 weeks ago, the lumber has yet to be purchased.

I live in Zone 5, and stuff usually doesn't get put out in the garden until Memorial Day. This year I am ahead of the game and have started my seeds:

Don't they look cute? We've got roma tomatoes there in the front, broccoli on the left in the back, red sunflowers there on the right in the back (yes, I know sunflowers can get sown directly in the ground. Every time I do that, the squirrels dig up the seeds), and watermelons there in the front, in the paper egg carton. I'll be thinning these out and putting them in bigger pots probably next week. I bought some heirloom tomato seeds today, and I hope to find tomatillo seeds soon. Barring that, I hope to find tomatillo plants come late May.

BTW -- anyone know anything about urban beekeeping?

Floral Friday

There are more new flowers blooming, some of which surprised me!

First, though, we finally have a monarch caterpillar! Unfortunately, the day after I took this photo, it was gone. Hopefully off to find different milkweed and not eaten.

My lavender is blooming. I just planted these in spring (5 plants), and honestly, I wasn't expecting blooms this season. Don't know if I'll get enough to dry, but it sure smells good now. The boys brush the plants every time they walk by because they smell so good.

I think this is some sort of hibiscus (? really I have no clue). It's winter hardy; I bought it last year from the little variety store down the street. It is loaded with buds, these two bloomed first, and each bloom is about 8" across (seriously, these things are big).

The coreopsis has been blooming for a while, I just forgot to take a photo of it.

Those darn asters still haven't bloomed.

Floral Friday

Now that August is upon us, there isn't much new blooming in the yard. About the only plant that hasn't bloomed yet is the aster.

This is the other milkweed plant I have -- a friend called it a swamp milkweed. It's way taller than me, so I had to hold this bloom down to take a photo. I like how feathery it looks.

The limelight hydrangea we planted amongst the new landscaping started blooming! The flowers start out light green, and gradually turn whiter and whiter.

We are off to the State Fair this morning, so I will find out how my photos did and post a report later. I already know how my sewing and knitting entries did, but I'm making you wait so that I can report it all at once with pictures.

Floral Friday

Here is what is blooming in the yard this week, plus my potted plants that I over-wintered have started up too!

Echinacea. I planted this in front of the firewood pile, so it kinda hides it in the summer, but since they die down to the ground in winter, the wood is quite accessible then.

The scarlett meidiland roses started blooming. So tiny and pretty! Each bloom is about 1" big.

This is Calvin's Irish moss. He is quite the gardener.

More bee balm.

The hibiscus is in full bloom! My mom's neighbors threw this out last summer, and she salvaged it. I over-wintered it, and thought I killed it when it dropped almost all its leaves. It survived!

Here's the plumbago. I over-wintered this one too. Next year I will prune it in late winter. I didn't do anything to it this year, and it's kinda all misshapen.

Floral Friday

All the mulch is spread, and now it's just a matter of keeping everything watered. Here's what is blooming in the yard this week:

Scarlett bee balm.

I think this is some sort of sunflower. I need to move it a bit, so it's not overshadowed by my neighbor's tree.

One of the hydrangea bushes started blooming. The flowers start out like this....

....and over the course of a few days, turn to this.

The hollyhock is in full bloom too. Hopefully this will reseed pretty well, I love them!

Floral Friday

Oh my goodness, my garden is sucking the life energy out of me. Ok, it's not that bad, but boy there is still a lot of work to do after getting all these plants in. I've been weeding, raking and smoothing out mounds of dirt, and tomorrow 10 yards of mulch are getting dumped on my driveway. Yeah, we'll be busy.

Anyway, here's what's blooming now:
Every year when we go strawberry picking, Calvin also picks out some plants to put in the yard. Last year he chose these balloon flowers, and 2 of them came back great (the third 1 looks awful).

I got this from a friend thinning out her garden, and she called this a butterfly weed. It's not very big, maybe 8" tall at most.

This milkweed plant is blooming, but we have no caterpillars on any of the plants this year. :(

More stella d'oro lilies. I like how they look against the diablo ninebark in the background.

I think I'm going to be scarce over the summer. State Fair entries are due on Wednesday (I'm not going to get everything done), judging is on Friday, and Calvin was asked to join a boys' gymnastics team. They put him in level 5, so now we have 9 hours of gymnastics a week (plus 1.5 hours of travel time each time!). He loves it, and I'll get lots of knitting done.

Floral Friday

We are back from our camping trip. The weather was gorgeous, the beach was fun, the mosquitoes were awful. The boys look like they have chicken pox!

Not much new blooming in the garden this week:
The spiderworts started blooming in the front. These get more shade, so don't get as gigantic as my purple ones in the back. I like the light blue color.

This is some foxglove that I got from a friend 2 years ago (oops, it's not. Suzee says it's Penstemon). The bees love it, and yesterday, Calvin counted and said there were 57 of them working on the flowers.

The stella d'oro lilies have started blooming also. I always think they look so nice and cheery.

Landscaping

I used the panoramic setting on the camera, it kinda distorts things, but you can see more. (click on the photos to make them bigger)

Here are the results of our hard work this past week. Over the course of 4 days we planted 4 dogwoods, 4 vibernum, 8 arborvitae, 1 limelight hydrangea, 3 weigela, 1 service berry, 1 river birch, 3 grey owl junipers, 6 diablo ninebark, 3 blue spruce, and 3 staghorn sumac. I also moved 3 roses, dug up and divided various iris and daffodils, moved 2 oriental poppies, and cut the grass. It looks great!



We also moved this big rock. I'm guessing it weighs 250-300 pounds. At first I guessed 200#, but David says it's definitely more. To move this, David built a sledge out of some plywood and 2x4. We used a crowbar as a lever, tied a rope around the rock, had a boy on each side pulling, while David pulled in the middle, and I pushed. We put a broomstick handle underneath the sledge to make it roll, and got it from the back corner of the lot (by the telephone pole) all the way over to the side. If the Egyptians could build the pyramids, and the Incans could do Machu Pichu without horses, we were going to move this rock! Ancient History comes in handy sometimes! If only I got a photo, it was pretty cool.

Now we need to weed a bit more, clean up our dirt mounds and order mulch. But first, I'm going camping to relax. Yeah, really.

Floral Friday

Last night we planted the last of the arborvitae, and everything that was delivered on Monday is in the ground! I am very tired and quite sore. Now we need to clean up the dirt mounds and order mulch. Pictures to come later. Here's what is blooming this week:

My friend Deb gave me this miniature rose for my birthday last year. Isn't it pretty?

The bachelor's buttons are hard to photograph. I think they are delicate enough that the camera can't decide where to focus. The bees are always working on these.

I think this is some sort of sage, or something from the sage family. The bees like these flowers a lot too.

The peonies are in full bloom, and when the wind blows, sometimes we get a whiff of them.

The dragonflies are always buzzing around; they seem to like the garden a lot. I think they eat mosquitoes, so I hope they stick around! They are pretty hard to photograph too; I must have tried at least 5 times before I managed to get this one.

I've had my eye on this guy for a while. It is so pretty. I wish I could show you the swarms of dragonflies we have across the street, darting around, eating bugs. It's really neat.

This isn't a flower, but it started out as one. We have a peach! Two peaches, actually. I'm quite surprised, as I didn't think we would get fruit for at least 2-3 years after planting. I don't know if I should do something to prevent a squirrel or bird from getting it. Anyone know?

Plants!

I am going to be MIA this week. Look what came yesterday:
Yeah, that's a lot of plants. And, I've got to move some things around before I can plant certain things. It's going to look great when it's done.

Floral Friday

We had more storms yesterday afternoon and last night. Most of my flowers have been beaten hard with the rain. I got these pix yesterday morning:

This is my favorite iris, a white double-blooming one. It will bloom again in late October. I'm thinking about pairing it with the 'black' iris, somewhere in the garden.

Another lovely iris.

More iris. Can you tell I like iris? These are the last I have.

The peonies have started opening their buds. I love how these look and I'll even cut some to have on the kitchen table, but they make me sneeze a lot. So I'll suffer.

I met with the landscape designer yesterday, and loved the plan, so bought all the plants and they are getting delivered on Monday. I will be VERY busy next week getting everything in the ground! Thankfully school is out as of this afternoon, so I'll have helpers to work with me.

Floral Friday

Time for more flowers! Here is what has bloomed over this week:

This 'black' iris is gorgeous. Calvin is begging to cut it to take it to his teacher.

Instead, I let him cut a bunch of these purple iris. We also have oodles of pale yellow irises like these, and he made a lovely bouquet on Monday.

This one is lovely with the orange accents.

The purple spiderwort have started blooming. I have light blue ones in the front, but they get less sun, so always seem to be a bit 'behind'.

It's hot today, and it feels great. It was fairly cool in the middle of the week (maybe 60), with rain. Now it's about 80-85 today and sunny. The landscape designer came over on Tuesday, took some measurements and photos, and I meet with her next Thursday to see her ideas. Can't wait!

Floral Friday

I've decided I'll use Friday's to show you photos of what is currently blooming in the yard.

This is actually my neighbor's redbud tree. Isn't it pretty? It overhangs the peonies. We have a little one we planted last year. I just love them.

The columbine are blooming on the side of the garage. I can't remember what the blueish flower is behind it.

The first of the many varieties of iris I have are blooming. You'll be seeing a few other colors in the next few weeks.

I don't know what this plant is, but it's so pretty. I got it from my mother's yard. It stays short and spreads pretty easily.

Wild geranium.

Next Tuesday someone is coming over to help me come up with a landscape design for the side and back yards, to form a natural fence. It'll be a lot of work, but I'm excited to start.