Big Plans

We went to the seed store today!

On the theory that the side yard will have fewer weed invasions if there are healthy non-weeds filling up the dirt, we picked up annuals.  

We got some marigolds.  I think I'll put seeds in around these guys so that as the ones from the shop finish, new ones will be starting.  That's the hope. 

There's Janie Tangerine Marigold, with solid-coloured "crested, double flowers on compact plants".  It's to be planted in full sun 12 inches apart (in full sun), and it should grow 8-10 inches tall.

There's Marigold Bonanza Bolero.  They should produce variate flowers 10-12 inches tall (also to be planted 12 inches apart in full sun).  

We got some zinnias.  They're Profusion White and to be planted 12-24 inches apart in full sun.  They should grow to 10-12 inches tall.  They should be friendly, plain flowers with white petals and yellow centres.  I don't think I could pull a zinnia out of a lineup, so I am quite excited about seeing how these do.  They look like they might be good basic flowers.  

Too cool to ignore was the Gazanias in Tiger Mix form.  Most of the flats were already in full bloom, so this may have been a silly idea.  Hopefully, they'll last for a while.  They need to be planted in full sun 10 inches apart and they're supposed to get up to a foot tall.  They claim to be good for cutting.  We'll see.  

We used to get cut flowers a lot at the farmer's market in Hamilton.  After a certain time of day, you could get two bunches for $5.  This supplied one with just about the right amount of blooms and stems for a vase.  I miss that access to reasonably-priced flowers.  Here, $5 will get you a wilting handful of roadside weeds, if you're lucky.  Mostly, it'll get you laughed at.

One of the things I used to get at the Hamilton market was gladioli.  I love gladioli, so when I saw them at the shop today, I grabbed some bulbs.  It's too cold here for them to last through the winter, but according to the east coast gardener, you can take the bulbs out after the plants die back in the fall.  Perhaps I am up to it.  

I got a package of 10 gladiolus flevo 'Laguna'.  They're GUARANTEED to bloom!  They also say that they're easy to grow.  They instruct me to dig a hole slightly larger than the bulb(s), place the bulbs in the hole, cover with soil and water thoroughly.    They want full sun, go in at a planting depth of 4 inches.  They are supposed to grow to 22-28 inches.  They should be 6 inches apart and planted in SPRING.  That might be now!  

I also got 10 bulbs from the bulk bin at the shop.  I think they were supposed to come up red.  And VERY big.  Bulbs from the bin are about 3 times as big as those from the package.  

I'm not entirely ignoring the front.  I picked up a Heartleaf Brunnera (brunnera macrophylla), which I've been seeing around the city and liking the looks of.  It's a perennial that blooms in spring, likes partial sun or shade, copes with dry or moist, and grows to 18-24 inches tall.  I like its little blue flowers.  If this little guy works out, it might be the right thing to try around the far side of the house.  Oh! Or in the back.  Hooray for shade-loving flowers!

In the same line, I thought I'd try a calla lily up front.  This one is Albo Maculata.  The bulb (corm?) is packed in wood chips, so you know it's delicate.  This means that it won't survive the harsh conditions and crappy soil in the front.  But I need to give it a go.  The front needs nice things.    Besides, it too, is GUARANTEED to bloom.  It's supposed to be up in midsummer, so presumably I won't be seeing it until next year.  It wants full sun to partial shade (so it needs to go closer to the side than the door), it's to go in 4 inches deep and should grow to 16 inches tall.  If I ever get another, it will have to be 12 inches away from this one.  

But all of this is trivial. Forget FLOWERS!  We got a raspberry plant!!!! This is the most exciting thing in the history of exciting things.  I hope it comes out well.  

Last on the list?  The thing that we went to the shop for in the first place: Seed Potatoes.  Last year we grew Yukon Golds (and that worked well).  This year, I think we're a little bit late off the mark, so we're going to plant a fast variety.  It's called "Superior".  Sounds good, huh?  If we can get more than one potato crop out, we'll be living like kings.

Unexpected consequence of gardening

After I got home and took off my shoes, Chutney the cat started being unusually affectionate.  Very unusually.  Very affectionate.  But only to my feet.  Only to my foot, really.  Guess which one?

I must have scrunched up some catnip somewhere while I was pulling up the dandelions.  Having Chutney spend several adorable minutes making sweet kitty love to my sock is an unexpected reward for the hard work.

More life, more gardening

We went to the plot this evening after work.  I didn't bring a camera, so there is no photographic evidence of: A MIRACLE!

The peas are flowering.  There are no less than 2 blooms on the very same peas that are "lying down" after their hard, wintery weeks while we were living it up.  I am very impressed.  

We planted, starting at the south: a row of scallions, a row of beets and a row of radishes.  There follows a trench for us to walk in and then there is a row of zucchini and a row of beans.  To the west there are more peas near the ones already struggling to survive.   The blob west of the trench is free for potatoes when we can.  Let's hope that the seeds do alright.  I dumped all of the package in to the trenches, so we'll have a lot of thinning to do, hopefully.

I spent most of the time at the plot uprooting dandelions.  They are EVERYWHERE in the garden; a real pest.  The biggest trouble with them is that the slugs love 'em and use them as shelter before ransacking ones peas.  Since I can't be having competition for my peas, the slugs and their dandelion homes have got to go.  Of course, I didn't get all of them.  I pulled up every plant within 6 inches of our plot.  Furthermore, only about 10% of those (if I am lucky) were fully pulled up.  Most of the roots snapped.  I suspect there will be many times more dandelions popping up.  I know that constant vigilance is required, but I am the inconsistent gardener.  I won't be around for a couple of weeks.  The consistent dandelions will win this one, for sure.  

Old Trick

When I went to water the basil this evening, it was up to its old trick of capturing the evening sun.  

The nifty frost background, by the way, is achieved entirely through the gift of window filth.  The problem is that the filth is not on the inside.  Oh, no.  That I can (and, indeed, occasionally do) clean.  It's not on the outside, either.  That I can clean (and for some perverse reason I do it much more often than the inside side).  Nope.  It is neither on the inside nor on the outside.  It is between the two.  

I can borrow a ladder and reach the outside (storm) window, but I can't possibly remove it.  When we moved in, there were a number of storms in the basement.  All of them got broken by me, trying to move them.  Every last one of them.  They are great big flimsy panes of glass in great big flimsy aluminum frames.  The frames buckle and turn under the weight of the glass, which then snaps because it's being buckled and turned.  This is unpleasant enough in the relative safety of the basement, but if it happened while I was lugging a great big heavy awkward thing at the top of a ladder, I am 100% certain that disaster would ensue.  Bloody, bone-broken, garden-below-ruined-forever disaster.  It's just not a possibility.  

So, I don't know what to do.  The previous owner of the house smoked, and we managed to get rid of the stench and guck pretty well but there are a few windows still suffering.  Of course, grime from other sources might have gotten in there, but I'm inclined to blame the evil weed.  

I have no idea how to fix the problem.  Some day, the solution will appear, I am sure.  In the mean time, I have to content myself with "frosted" bedroom windows.  

Alive, alive o-oh!

Yesterday evening, as I mowed the "lawn", I noticed that there is new growth on the scarlet runner beans by the guy wire.  

Furthermore, it looks like some of the nasturtiums have also pulled through.

No sign of life among the marigolds, though.

There is a lot of this weed up at the moment.  It's popping up everywhere.  

Unfortunately, I think it looks somewhat like a delphinium.  One of my delphiniums is going like gangbusters.

This could be a weak and struggling delphinium, or it could be a weed.  I don't know. I'll have to work it out at some point, though.

Flowering

This stuff is flowering nicely in many gardens across the city (including the public gardens).  I don't know what it is, but clearly I should try to grow it next year so I can have something flowering after the tulips are done.  

In other "news" the fruit trees are blooming now.  It's pretty.  We should get down to the valley and look at the apple blossoms, I think.

I saw something nasty in the woodshed

This morning, after very little gardening yesterday, I am quite sore.  Hmph.  Still a softie.  

I had another critical look at the back, post "clean-up".  Admittedly, I spent no more than 20 minutes back there yesterday, but there is some improvement.  There is a bench-like thing that is rotting away and has to go (and be replaced by comfortable, easy-to-eat-from, unlikely-to-be-stolen patio furniture ... any ideas?).  Also, the fence is mint-green and 80's lilac.  That has to change, too.  

I am bummed out that this pot is broken.  I liked this one.  Lesson learned.

Obviously, I am not the greatest of housekeepers.  However, in late fall, I know that the leaves have to go into the composter or the spring will be quite nasty.  We did fill the composter twice with leaves last fall, but there were a few places around the back that managed to accumulate the leftovers.  Having removed one of those accumulations, I now understand why old fiction so often used the leaf pile as the home to monsters.  Things move around in there.  Things move around under there.  It's creepy.  

With the slight improvements, I was able to look into the back and see past the dreadful enough to notice that the mysterious bush is in bloom.  Nice.  

Some gardening, no proof

We started the day at a gardening meeting, which involved a large amount of meeting and not much gardening.  I tackled some of the dandelions growing around our plot and Mike did a champion job cutting them back.  

This afternoon, having baked a delicious tea cake (mmm... almonds) I realised that I had a few minutes to spare before we went out to dinner.  It's been dry all day, so the blossoms in the back were ready to be swept up.  I started that and got distracted by all of the broken pots at the periphery (because of my idiot decision to let them sit upright all winter long) and started to clean those out of the way.  Then it seemed like a natural extension to tackle the broken barrel that has been rotting into the deck for the past year and then I realised that really, I didn't have time for all of that.  But I did start some of the work, which is good.  It's been getting worse and worse looking.  I think another couple of quick "just throw it away for crying out loud" sessions and the back will be in much better shape.  And many of the maple blossoms have made it into the compost bin.  And I'm full of cake.

Even less

I realised today that we have had daffodil flowers for a month.  Now I wish I had written down the type of bulb I bought. 

We walked by the school that used to have a lot of daffodils the other night and it appeared to have no daffodils.  My plan to steal them all may have been thwarted.

Not much

I'm not really back into the garden, I have to admit.  

I think some time soon it will be time to take stock and figure out a plan for the next few weeks.  We definitely need to be planting at the plot now, and I think that I should plant the side yard so we have flowers after the bulbs are gone.  I wanted not to be relying on buying seedlings, but I suspect I can't really grow all I want to from seeds.

The soil in the side yard needs work.

The herb garden at the plot is being taken over by strawberries.  I think I'd like to put some pots down to bring some strawberries home.  We did  successfully grow them in a pot one summer.  It would be good to try that again.  I do like some fresh strawbs.  

The back yard needs a lot of clean up that I've been neglecting.  I would like to try planters in the back again, but it's going to take a fair amount of start-up effort which I may or may not have at my disposal. 

This is more of an immediate to do list than something I'm going to find interesting many months from now (except, of course, to remind me that I STILL haven't cleared away all of those broken pots because I know I won't be doing that immediately).  

Grim and Grey

Not much time for gardening today.  Not much inclination, either.  It's chilly and rainy.  So much for our ability to bring warmth and sunshine wherever we go.  Still, the rain makes the maple blossoms fall like bright green polkadots onto our deck.  

When we first moved into the house (in late June) we couldn't understand why the previous owners had let leaf litter remain all winter long.  What else could explain the layer of rotting organic matter on the deck?  The next summer, we learned just what it was that could explain it.  There are a lot of branch tips on a full-grown maple and each one of them carries a largish number of blossoms.  The tree has a lot of stuff to deposit into the ground around it.  Unfortunately for our tree, it gets deposited into our composter and not (eventually) back to its roots.  

Last year, we had the tree cut back (it was attacking the neighbour's house).  Perhaps this year, we'll get its roots fed.  It's a nice tree.  I'd like to be nice to it.  

Plants at the Plot

We walked in via the Public Gardens and our own humble plot this morning.  The plot is looking very humble indeed.  

The peas are, shall we say, struggling.  Heaven only knows if/how they'll survive.  I am going to need to plant some others because I can't go for a whole summer without fresh peas.

The beets are now ex-beets.  So sad.  They came up all red and pretty and full of promise.  RIP beets.   I also can't go a whole summer without fresh beets.  It would kill me.  Oh! and beet greens.  I think it's well past time to get some beet seeds into the ground.  

The beans are even more ex than the beets.  I can't even find a corpse that I can be sure is beans. I took a picture including the most likely candidate, but it really looks just like dirt.  

The garlic is looking alright.  We can rejoice in small mercies.   

Funny Old World

When I went to look up the link to the exquisite tulips of yarnstorm, I discovered that she went to the Keukenhof just before I did.  The world, especially as found on the internet, is uncomfortably small.  Of course, I don't know the blogger yarnstorm.  I just read her blog.  I haven't reached the point where I can leave comments (although if you're stopping by, feel free to do so; more power to you for breaking through the wall) let alone forge an actual relationship with an internet-person.  Nonetheless, it struck me as an odd enough coincidence to mention. 

We booked our trip to meet our own requirements, and were therefore pleasantly surprised that we happened to be in Holland during the tulip festival at Keukenhof (and on National Windmill Day).

Even though the tulip festival was in its last week and we braced ourselves for a lacklustre show after the hot hot hot weather, the gardens were spectacular.  

There were very few flowering fields, however.  In the above picture, you can just make out a purple stripe which is some tired tulips hanging on.  All the other stripes had finished flowering.  I am still having a hard time getting used to the idea that tulips are a thing that grow in fields like cabbages.  I can't believe how different it was a week before, but I think it's lucky I didn't see what yarnstorm saw.  It would have destroyed my mind.  

after

I'm back (although not yet back to gardening).  

I did see some absolutely wonderful other people's gardens while I was gone.  Probably I'll put some lessons learned from them into the blog after I've had a chance to filter the ~2000 pictures I took.  However, this blog isn't about other people's consistently marvellous gardens.  This blog is about MY inconsistent gardening.

The garden, having been neglected these two full weeks, is looking mighty fine even if I do say so myself.  My dire predictions of missing everything were absolutely wrong.  The grape hyacinths are busting out beautifully.

The daffs are STILL GOING!! 

Better yet, no-one has obviously stolen them.  A little while ago, a strange man suggested to the sweary one that he should steal flowers from the derelict school up the street.  Now, I have to admit that the thought did cross my mind that they have a really fabulous daffodil garden going on and presumably when the bulldozers finally arrive, the demolition crew aren't going to painstakingly rescue all of those delicious bulbs.  I have yet to work up the nerve to make a midnight raid.  I keep thinking that really, it would be like a public service to dig up those lovely perennials; the taxpayers' money went towards making that garden!  Surely it shouldn't be wasted along with the building.  Of course, given my inconsistencies, I am not the most worthy recipient.  Also, if my garden were awash with daffodils and the school garden had a my-garden-sized hole in its display ... I think someone would be able to put two and two together.  At any rate, I still have daffodils in my garden.  I haven't checked on the school.

The tulips are out, now, too.  

Even the late tulips at the dark end of the garden are starting.  I can't remember what this one was called, although I think it might have had something to do with a WWI battle site.  I do like it a lot, though. 

This has in the past been the best time for the garden.  I think I may have fewer tulips coming now than there were in previous years.  This may be due to some aging of the bulbs.  It may be due to my appalling habit of forgetting where the bulbs are and digging them up over the summer.  (They are then subjected to the indignity of sitting out in the open for months until I remember to plonk them into the dirt somewhere ... anywhere.  I did even forget to bring one bunch of unfortunates in out of the sun for really quite a shockingly long time.)  It may be because I haven't done much to make the soil nicer for them in the past few years.  The excellent tulip-obsessed blogger yarnstorm puts in all new tulip bulbs every year.  This shocks my frugal soul (what does she do with the "used" bulbs?), but you can't argue with her results.  

Of course, the real question is: "What survived?"  It's not enough to have a couple of beautiful tulips.  If I am going to be a gardener, I need to be able to grow stuff in more than one way.  

First of all, let me explain.  While we were living it up, sweltering under sun-drenched 30+ degree weather in Paris, back at home the temperatures were hovering around zero and steel-grey skies poured oceans of chilly rain onto the ground.  We didn't miss spring here because it delayed itself for a couple of weeks.  Our maple tree is in full flower.  The other trees (lindens, maybe?) aren't even that far along yet.  The natural world in this city looks very fresh and green, just like early spring.  

All of those hot-weather plants I dumped into the ground weren't going to enjoy the cold nights, I thought.  Little did I know that winter would return.  

Nonetheless, it looks like maybe the nasturtium is clinging to life.

There is the barest possibility that one or two marigolds will have survived the shock.  

The scarlet runner beans by the house are possibly going to make it in the long run.

The scarlet runner beans on the guy wire (the whole point of the srb's) look very much like they won't make it in the long run.  

The lavender, which I savaged, seems to have recovered enough to be producing plump leaves.  I would love to grow large quantities of lavender.  It's not really hot and sunny enough here to do it well, though.  

All in all, that's not the weed-ravaged nightmare I was anticipating.   

before

So, before heading away for a while, I thought I'd take some pictures of our yard.

We'll miss the very peak of the grape hyacinths, although they are looking very good right now.
Looking not so good are the nasturtiums, but they're planted.  We'll see if there is just a graveyard to admire when we return.  I hope they'll rebound.
The marigolds are still very small.  They aren't obvious, but there are 19 in the ground and hopefully some of those will survive to produce some pretty orange flowers for me later in the summer.
The tulips are looking like they might be out soon.  I am sorry to miss them.
The scarlet runner beans may survive.  The "lawn" surrounding them looks so awful, I suspect that they won't.
The ones by the house should have something to grab on to, but I haven't had time to provide it, so that won't go well.  Such is the life, I guess.
The full-sized hyacinths are really past it, but holding on.  They are delightfully long lived.
The daffs are wonderful.  Drunks walking by the house at 1 am comment on how nice they are (loudly enough for it to waft through my closed bedroom window).

We'll have to wait and see what "after" will be like.

Give me an inch...

I missed two days!  Yikes.

There will be a lot more of that over the next coupla weeks while I'm on vacation.  Ahh.

But, before we went away, the plants couldn't stay out of the ground any longer.  In went the marigolds, nasturtiums, and scarlet runner beans.  

It turns out that 19 marigolds is an awful lot.  I put some in pot and all, some I tore away a lot of the pot, and some I tore away all of the pot.  We'll see which ones thrive.  

The nasturtiums are just a write-off.  I shouldn't have put them into the ground, but I couldn't change the plan.  I'm not a plan-changer.  Anyway, they'll be nasty dead things by the time we get back and that will be easier to deal with than putting just-barely-living things into the compost.  

The scarlet runner beans are not so much of write-offs although they are much the worse for wear.  I meant to put them around a pole that sprouts out of "our lawn", but when I approached it with edger in hand today I noticed that the pole is leaking some oily stuff all around it.  That can't be good for the plants.  So, instead I changed the plan (maybe I am a plan changer, after all) and put the scarlet runner beans around the base of the guy wire for the pole.  However, I couldn't delude myself that there was room for all six there, so I put two over by the house next to the chimney.  If I have time, I'll hammer some nails in and tie string for them to grab on to as they grow.  Otherwise, they'll get to flop around until I come back and decide that they're a disaster.

 

Longish Quickie

I popped by the plot on my way in this morning.  (No camera, but if the rain keeps away, perhaps I'll pull by at lunch.)

The peas look OK, but sort of haggard.  Right now, they only have bamboo poles to grab on to and I think that the poles are too fat for the peas to grip.  I think they need string.  

The beans look dreadful.  I don't know if they'll make it.  Of the three plants I put in, only one has any leaves at all, and those seem to be in imminent danger of getting knocked off somehow. 

The beets look almost exactly the same.  REALLY not sure what to expect from them.  I hope I get a chance to put the seeds in before we go away.  I would hate to miss the season altogether.  

I had a longish chat with another plot gardener, Mary.  She gave us the onions.  They're Egyptian walking onions.  Her plot has many bunches of them.  She also has some really good-looking garlic coming up.  It puts ours to shame.  

She asked about our plants; not surprisingly, she wanted to know how we came to have things popping up so suddenly.  She said that sometimes the things grown on windowsills are too leggy and they don't flourish in the garden.  This, I didn't know.  She also said that hardening off is an art unto itself.  I know so little about hardening off, and I am doing such a crap job of it, that I am willing to believe that there are subtleties, but on the other hand, I think for now I am happy to be the inconsistent gardener and do what works for me.  To hell with what works for the plants.  

Sure, I'll be sad if there are no beans this year.  I'll be CRUSHED if there are no beets or peas.  However, this is a hobby.  I have a tendency to try to become a whole-hog expert in what I  do.  This isn't entirely a negative thing.  Being good at things is something to strive for.  On the other hand, being not good at things is something to deal with.  Enjoying things that you're not good at is an art unto itself.  (I learned that from 3-pitch softball.)

So, all in all, I'm glad I had that educational chat with Mary. I'm not sure that I learned what I was supposed to, but these little reflective moments are what the blog is all about.