Photography 1, Gardening 0

Actually, they're still not dead!  

They're also still not in the ground, where they belong.  Also, they're really showing what terrible shape they're in.  That's a lot of abuse for poor plants to take.  

I AM the inconsistent gardener.  Fear my inconsistent gardening in my inconsistent garden!!!

The Worst Thing That Can Happen ...

... when you're gardening is that you kill plants.  Not a big deal.  Not the end of the world.

I forgot to bring the scarlet runner beans back inside last night.  They really, really, really didn't flourish in the cold night air.  

So, what am I going to do?  I am going to put the protesting and weak nasturtiums back outside next to them and go to work.  What else can I do?  They've got to go out. If When they die, they die.  Gotta go!

Gardening 1, Photography 0

I put the peas into the plot, along with the stringbeans and the beets.  They're in the earth now.  I don't think that the beets will be up to much, frankly.  I took them out of their pots and there wasn't sign of much going on in there.  Oh, well.  

The nasturtiums and marigolds went out into the chilly winds for the day.  They didn't like it.  The nasturtiums are all lying down.  We're going on holiday soon and everyone has to be in a permanent home by the time we're gone.  That's the way it's going to be.  So, the flowers are going to go into the flowerbeds and the runner beans are going to find a place to be somewhere, somehow and the mint and the basil will go into pots because I'm not stupid enough to put two bits of mint deliberately into one flowerbed.   And it's all going to happen some time soon.  Maybe Wednesday.

As an antidote to the previous discussion (which is basically a description of how I'm going to kill all of those plants), it's time to mention that the daffs are out properly now.  They're shining at the world.  Ahhh.

Billions of Blistering Bags of Beets!

I always liked the Captain Haddock rants.  Now that I'm older and gradually re-acquainting myself with Tintin, I find that some of them have aged better than others.  Nonetheless, they're inspirational enough that I can't look at my (admittedly somewhat odd) bag of plants without thinking of it as an alliterative epithet.

It's a stretch, of course, to describe the above as a bag of beets, but pestillence-porting parcel of peas isn't quite right in the Haddock spirit.   

Sunny Sunday

Still no actual gardening to report.  In fact, it dawned so grey, cold, and miserable that we didn't even make it down to the plot for the gardening meeting.  Oops.  

However, the sun has come out and it's lovely now.  The daffodils are starting to think that maybe it will be ok after all.

The hyacinths are doing what hyacinths do.  It's silly, really.  It must be a breeding thing.  There must somewhere be a natural hyacinth that isn't barbie-doll-ishly top-heavy.  It can't be a favoured trait to end up face-down in the dirt.  But not here in my little bit of earth.  Nope.  Gotta get so many flowers onto that sucker that it can't support its own weight.  

My favourite thing at the moment is the little star-like crocuses.  They must be part of the new collection I planted last fall.  They're not in the friendliest of spots, but they're doing an ace job being elegant. 

Uh oh.

Chutney the cat has something strange about her back which means that she's a lousy leaper.  I had been assuming that she couldn't reach the windowsill where I was putting the plants because the plants were in the way.  

I was wrong.  Putting these things into the earth just got more urgent.

No Gardening Today

The day is nearly over, and even though it's a Saturday, I have spent pretty much the whole day working.  Not a smidgen of gardening has happened to chronicle.  I thought for a while that I had watered the plants, but on reflection, I decided it was actually yesterday that I did the watering.  

Nothing to report.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful ...

Inside isn't all that delightful, to be honest.  There's no fire; unless you count the furnace.  Nonetheless, it is better than outside.  

The snow did come.  It's not serious about itself.  It really thinks that it's rain.  Nonetheless, I am not putting the hardening-offs onto this:

(This is a picture of the deck, where I dropped one of the peas and spilled its soil earlier). What you see is something akin to snow (definitely frozen, slushy water anyway) with pockmarks in it where the liquid rain has fallen.  It's an attempt at photographing uck.

The daffodils are re-thinking their progress, I suspect.  They were nearly out on Wednesday and they're still nearly out today.  

On the windowsill, broken string bean number 2 (not the one I maybe broke, but the one that presumably the birds went after) is already sprouting a new leaf.  

It's nearly May.  For obvious reasons, I am not singing, "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."  More like: "Make it stop! make it stop! make it stop!"

Back to the Bookshelf

The weather people are still claiming that there will be 2 cm of snow overnight.  They're also saying that the high today will be all of 6 degrees.  So, the outdoors plants are staying in.

My formerly bare bookshelf is covered in plants.  Hopefully, Chutney the cat can't get to them to destroy them if there is no room for her on the shelf.

The string beans suffered a setback yesterday.  One of them got a leaf broken off and it's bean-bit removed.  I suspect marauding birds.

Non-Gardening Day

Today was a day filled with all kinds of things, but not gardening.  

Tomorrow it is supposed to snow, so my grand plans of planting more things tomorrow are out the window.  I think that the peas that went in on Monday will probably be fine.  They've had a couple of days to work out which way is up.  I'm not at all sure what I'll do with the peas and beans I've still got at home.  They don't have an assigned window any more, but I don't think I should be putting them out tomorrow. 

I looked at my plans recently and I see that I intended to plant zukes and cukes last weekend.  That didn't happen.  We'll see if it does.

I am trying to hatch a scheme whereby I grow a fruit like currents or blackberries in a large container.  The big question is where to put the container.  I have some favourite ideas, but all of them have drawbacks (many of them along the lines of "but if I put it there, people will use it as a shade and duck behind it to piss").  

I guess I'll have to wait for real spring/summer to arrive before I carry out schemes.

I REALLY hope the snow is a lie.

Moving On

The secret-bearing bean has leaf nubbles now.  I waited for a while, but there is a limit to how long the others in the flat should wait for it to catch up.
The beans went out into the cold morning for hardening-off today.  We'll see if it kills the nubbly-one.  I have an emotional attachment to it, I'll admit.  However, I want beans some time this summer and I know that the way to get 'em is to put these plants into our plot.  They're not going into the plot without hardening off, so out they go.

The scarlet runners are presumably now quite seriously hardened off.  Time to find a place to put them, I think.  Unfortunately, it's a busy week so I am not sure when the time will be.
The alien breech-birth bean is dealing with being outdoors interestingly.  The root that was exposed is wasting away.  I don't know if this is because it's been attacked by birds.  I suspect the local birds are gathering nesting material from the sides of the pots (and who could blame them?  It is nesting material) and maybe one or two of them has made an experimental pull at the root.  Or, perhaps, it's sensibly killing off the branch that can't deal with the cold.  Whatever it is, the growing part of the bean doesn't show any trauma.

Finally, I can't leave the nasturtiums out of the story much longer.  They're so pretty.  They really are quite seriously overgrown now and there will be sadness when I try to put them into the ground and they all die, but I am at the moment enjoying the nasturtium forest on my windowsill. 

Breaking News

The first of the grape hyacinths is blooming

I don't know if it's significant that it's in the shadow of the regular hyacinth.  I am sure that they came at different times last year.

Gone to Ground

The first batch of peas have officially kicked off the plot season.  This morning, I put four of the pea plants (including the two who intertwined yesterday) into a bag and brought it to work.  The bag and the pea plants sat in a sunless and grim spot in the corner of my office for several long hours, but when the day was done their imprisonment was over!  Hooray!

We dug up the soil and raked it around a bit.

We checked on the onions and garlic.  The garlic bears no resemblance to the stuff we put into the ground last spring.  They are rather like spring onions which are buried too deep.  Hopefully, this fall the garlic will bear some resemblance to the stuff we want to eat.  The onions are still crazy and marginal.

We dug little pits and tapped the peas out of their pots.  

We then put the peas into the ground, staking them as we did so.  

I think maybe we'll put some more in tomorrow.  

Neglect

Have you ever wondered what marigolds look like when you sprout them in tiny pots and then leave them in a sunny window until they are drier than paper?  

Wonder no more!  

Amazingly, they don't look dead.  At the start, I was keeping them very moist, but then I read that they would be leggy if the soil wasn't a bit dry. After that, apparently I went crazy because I kept looking at them and thinking "oh, no, mustn't overwater" instead of thinking, "oh no, those are bone dry".  So no doubt they will be leggy with poor root systems.  I have watered them now.  When I picked up the pots and they were as light as a feather, I panicked and rushed the whole assemblage under the tap in the bathroom.  They will need more watering in a bit.  This first dousing was just to get the soil spongy and receptive again.

The hardening-off of the less-neglected plants (they at least got rain on Friday so they've seen some water recently) continues in my heartless way.  This morning, I opened the door with my hands full of pea pots and found a) that it was much, much colder (1 C) than I expected and b) that my full hands weren't anything like as capable as I had imagined.

I think the one I dropped will probably survive, although all that rolling can't have been good for the low-lying leaves.

The peas really do need something to grab on to now.  They're grabbing on to each other in desperation.

The scarlet runner beans will need something soon.  I had thoughts of putting them into the ground today, but I didn't prep the patch I want to put them in and anyway it is really very cold despite all the sun yesterday.

The basil, the ones that survive because I moved them from their terrible and inadequate egg cups, unlike the ones that are dead/dying because I got interrupted while doing the re-potting and never returned to it, are being luminous again.

All in all, not a day to be proud of as a gardening wannabe.  Plus, my muscles are sore from the yard work yesterday.  Stairs, in particular, elicit unusual and unpleasant sensations.

High 7.4 Low -1.4

Hardening

The peas, beets and beans got another dose of it today.  The wind blew them all flat in the morning, but the afternoon was stunning, so they did alright.

So did I, for that matter.  It's not just the plants doing the hardening of today's title.  I am trying to get rid of my softie-ness.  The difficult truth is that yard work is hard work. 

The side yard is spring-ready.  I took out some stones, but mostly I tackled weeds and debris today.  I also dug up the spots that didn't have anything growing.  It looks better.  MUCH better. The front yard still looks derelict, but we'll deal with that in time.  

In the front, we still have snowdrops.  

We also have these delicate lovelies cheering up the entire place.

Even more delicate are these little star-like crocuses.  

The pickwicks in the front are just passing their peak.

The pickwicks in the side are pretty much finished.  I removed the rotting flowers from the main batch.  This is not a task I savour and I probably would have waited for the rotting to get a bit further along were it not for the fact that the pickwick patch was being eaten by clover (more on that to follow). 

The deep purple crocuses (with some pickwicks mixed in) are just finishing and they are going to get the chance to rot properly before I take away the flowers.

The zwanenburg bronzes are completely done.  I removed the mercifully dry remains of its flowers as I cleared out the last of the leaves and a few weeds from under their stalks.

The hyacinth is peaking.  Lovely.  

The grape hyacinths are coming up but they're a way from blooming yet.  

The daffodils are starting to look like they'll bloom soon.

Some of the tulips are looking promising.

Mostly, they're looking like tulip leaves, though.

I have no idea what's in the ground around the tulips there.  I hope that they flower soon to solve the mystery.  It's just possible that they're onions or garlic.  I remember thinking that any leftover sets we had should just be put into any convenient bit of ground for the sake of seeing what they did.  

I cut back the lavender.  

I cut it very far back. 

I cut back the marjoram (?).  It was attacking the zwanenburgs and neighbouring tulips.  I tore some of it out of the ground, too.

I went gonzos on the mint.  I am starting to think that maybe the mint was a mistake, after all.  I was happily cutting it back (it was choking some tulips) and thinking how well it was doing and then I found some roots.  HOLY COW!!  The mint is seriously sinister in the way it wanders around the garden.  I'm going to have to keep a close eye on that little bugger.  I suspect I could remove all the mint I know about and it would still be coming up in unexpected places.  I ended up digging out a large chunk of it, and also digging little trenches between it and the tulips and daffodils.  Any roots in the trench came out.  

I left this in the earth. I hope that it's something I want.

I also left this in.  They can't both be delphiniums, which is basically the only perennial that vanishes completely every year that I expect to come up.  The delphiniums actually look like this:

The tulips at the far end, next to the delphiniums, aren't yet out.  However, they are usually last.  And well worth the wait.  I think the picture shows how much worse the soil is at that side of things.  I believe that is part of the reason why the tulips are so late.

There are irises, which didn't flower last year but hopefully will recover from the transplanting and start blooming eventually.  I put them into the ground at the end of the season in 2006, so I think that they should be given a stern talking-to if they can't produce something nice this year.

The bits and pieces of daylily are not obviously dead.  Some bits have sprouted where the plant originally sat, and I think I didn't put any part of it back in the original hole.  I think they must be shoots from the bits of root (?) that were left in the ground in the chaos of trying to get that monster out of the earth.  We did get to the stage where we were hacking at it quite barbarously.  It wasn't an easy task.  I will have to remember that I split it in 2007 and remember to split all of those in 2011, and NO LATER.

There are these things which could be irises and could be daylilies.  Time will tell.

So, I did pull out a lot of that insidious creeping weed that at first I thought might be a herb.  I now am certain it wasn't.  I can tell the difference between the herbs and the weeds.  The herbs smell delicious when you hack at them and tear them out.  I don't fool myself that I got all of the insidious one, but I got lots and lots of it.  I think it's got such a stronghold because last year I managed to convince myself that it was alyssum coming back after self-sowing.  Oh, innocence; such a mistake.  

I don't know if I'll have any alyssum this year.  The marigolds could be a nice replacement.  The nasturtiums will fill in the ground where the runner beans grow up.  That's the plan, anyway.

I didn't take photos during the process, but in the front I still have some clover attacking the bulb plants.  What gives with that?  Why is the clover favouring the places where my dear old bulbs are coming out?  And why is clover so bloody impossible to get out?  I have been digging and digging and digging with my little claw, just to get to the point where the root is weak enough to break.  I know, you're supposed to get the whole thing out.   I can't follow the whole root when it's wrapped around the bulbs.  

The rhododendron is looking better this year than it usually does.  We had two in the back and they were so sad and hopeless that we gave them away.  They survived the transplant and are enjoying seeing the sun for more than 20 minutes every day.   The back yard has issues.

The biggest victory on the day is the "lawn".  That little strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, which the sweary one spent a good half hour raking and clearing.  

This is the best it has looked since we moved in.  No, we're not golf-ready.  We're not about the lawn.  And if we were, we'd be very ... upset ... about that gash delivered by the sidewalk plough.  As it is, we can shrug it off and hope that the wound will heal. 

After several hours crouched over the beds this afternoon, I may be hoping for healing myself.