Touring the neighborhood

So it's August 11th...a bit over three months and the garden has gone from start to peak.  Odd sort of summer...long heat wave after a late start with lots and lots of rain.  Haven't done much active gardening.  Put netting over the blackberries...a bit too late to keep the birds off.  We picked about two cups of berries.  Tonight I took a bike ride in perfect weather.  The lawns were emerald green, the evening sky azure blue and a fragrant breeze coming off the fields.  The peak of summer I would say.  With the heat wave over we can take up being out doors again.  And I have four new chickens.  My last flock of six were one by one harvested by a neighborhood predator.  So my new flock is not so free ranging.  Four banties, with one rooster in the mix.  Life is back to balanced.. 

Box #2 Pencils, Staplers and Floppy Disks

Box #2...trash, thrash, all trash.  Keeping a few handy screw drivers, a couple key rings...really shouldn't bother with those...a couple pieces of broken things, who knows they might still be fixable with super glue.  It's the convergence of time, glue and pieces that's hard to come by. Keeping a small tin full of girls school pictures. And for the throwing away, if software comes on a floppy disk it's not worth even thinking about.  That made this an easy box.  I paused for a minute thinking about whether to throw away the hinged box that the disks were stored in, but I'm in the mood so off to recycling it went.  Then there was a index card box with alpha dividers.  I saved all my old drivers licenses, membership cards in historical societies, hospital patient ID cards...everybody wants to put a piece of plastic in your wallet.  Times have changed a lot in ten years.  And then there were the address pages from my 1999 Franklin Planner.  I read through all the names...many, most of people that I knew through work.  Strange to see how people who were once important enough to get a note in my address list have been forgotten so completely.  Makes me wonder about my present day work relationships...which seem important now.  Wonder what I can do differently to be sure that while they are in my life that I mindful of how short our time together will be. Every minute is of consequence.  And the rest of this STUFF...it is not of consequence.  Thanks Laurel, on to box three tomorrow.

On Another Note...My Indoor Garden

So I've decided to expand my blog topic...moving from outdoors landscape to indoors landscape.  I guess anyone who follows me will appreciate that in this life in KVille it's either one or the other.  And today, I took the first step to beating back the indoor jungle.  I emptied box one...in my goal to empty one box a day until I reach ground zero.  I may not be able to change everything, but there's no excuse for not changing what I can.  Laurel is my mentor.  She's holding me to my promise.  And maybe just maybe I can be the change that I want to see.

Box One...was file folders...from some long forgotten file cabinet, boxed for ten years without opening...like most of the boxes around here, untouched since we moved in.  I saved a bit, shredded a lot and trashed the rest.  Found my bachelor's degree, my marriage license, some old family photo negatives and a file of Christmas letters written back in the 80s.  Oh and my shot record...you know the one your mom keeps from when you were a baby..sentimental value.  That all got saved...well maybe I will pitch that shot record tomorrow.  What got trashed.: a folder full of product information from children's toys, a folder full of letters of reference and personnel evaluations from 30 years ago...really relevant stuff, my MSU transcripts the good the bad and the embarrassing.  Information about the cost of my dad's funeral...1996...Dad's been gone 15 years this September.  Guess I don't need to know the cost of his casket.  

Stay tuned, and just so you know...I really respond to applause!!

Expanding the West

So...there's been a bit of a gap here, sorry bout that friends.  Not in gardening...just in blogging.  But today and yesterday there was progress.  Thanks to Sister Karen.  Fourth of July there was a bit of extreme landscaping she helped with...we knocked down the overgrowth of the windmill.  Last year it was Laurel who did the job all by herself.  It's a miserable task and really we need a plan so that we don't have to do it again...something involving Round-up I suppose. This year..Karen and I did the cutting and Greg ran the refuse through the grinder.  Bunches of bug bites we got for our efforts and a few insults from a broody hen who had a clutch hidden deep in the overgrowth.  The rooster gave Greg some heat when he chased the hen off her nest.  Karen carefully transplanted the eggs to the laying box in the coop....alas...the transplant wasn't successful...the hen took the opportunity to return to the roost and quit the clutch.  .

And today...I pushed out the west edge of the north-south bed and planted two hydrangeas.  Hoping there will be adequate sun there for them.  I have four more buckets to add tomorrow...of spirea, and thinking about adding ferns around those plants.  I saw some big buckets of ferns marked down to five bucks.  No zone information though.

Hollyhocks are in bloom,  although there aren't so many of them.  They must be tasty to deer.  But without the fence around them the chickens have managed to knock out the Japanese beetles who ate them up last year.  Speaking of predators, Greg spotted a family of five mink in the ditch the day after one of our hens went missing.

And remembering my dedication for this blog to Lei and Karen...just to let you know I've been keeping up with the mowing too.  Sigh...miss you Lei.. and Karen hope that you are starting to poke around in that greenhouse.  Love, Log

Bath # 9, Baobobs and other Mistakes

Well, after two weekends of travel I am back onto the garden tasks...and this weekend got to the two biggies that were on my list...the hosta and the old fence.  I have nothing to say about the ninth bath.

I have to say that gardening out here in Kochville over the years has taught me a lot about the ability of the earth to recover from human intrusion. Stuff grows...over, under and through...devouring every evidence of human intention... garden paths, fences, buildings, clearings, plantings.  And then the earth moves by wind and rain and organic debris to cover the remains.  And that's the daily deal here.  At first we were innocent and overwhelmed.  Gardening seemed like a good idea with all this space, a little digging, a few seeds, a sturdy fence to keep the rabbits out.  Ten years latter, the garden contains nothing but the most hardy of perennials, not a single edible plant was every harvested...except that thyme a couple years ago.  And the fence proved most capable of keeping out the mower, the rabbits could care less.   Actually...that care less part...that could be said of us too...gardening is no easy thing to add to the list of things to do when raising kids, working, and keeping the roof from caving in...metaphorically speaking.

I think the Brits have it right, fences are best made of rock.  I have plenty of rocks, piles of them.  Hold that thought....I will not be building any rock walls this season.

 

So Saturday was the hosta day.  I got those hosta split and the garden expanded along the east side. Greg's dollar buckets from Aldi's have survived.  Sage!  Moved a big hunk of granite to balance the garden at the other end.  Rocks do add something formal to a garden.  Sunday Greg and I took out the back garden...well at least we got the fencing down. The problem with wire fencing is that weeds of the woody sort grow up through the wire and then you can't get them out...like Baobobs, they take over the planet.  (I think they are Alder's.)  Budock is my most hated weed.    I had been using the space as a nursery...sticking things in the dirt there to save them (iris) or start them (shrub starts.)  The rhubarb from Pat's house is here in this space.  Pat really wanted me to be sure to take it...might get a pie this season!   And the remains of the hollyhocks are here too.  I think that there is hope for them.

Today ended with a pleasant fire in the stick burner.  Greg and I sat by the fire thinking about where to expand our gardening next.  Rain predicted this week and I am glad for it. That is until Friday... can't have rain next weekend..Highland festival next weekend!

Betty says these flowers are Poet something or other.  They are among the remnants of the back garden...with lots and lots of blue iris.  I think they will have a home somewhere else next year...gardening has a way of pulling you into the future.

Day 9 Arduous Toil

 OK, it's true I hurt more tonight than last night.  But Greg hurts more than me.  His job involved the heavy lifting and the pic axe.  We call that arduous toil here in Kochville.  It's usually passed out as penance for errors of omission.  I think that I should have started in January getting ready for the gardening season...maybe a bit of weight lifting and yoga.  My omission!   All the trees are planted.  The rocks are rearranged.  St. Francis has a circle of Flox....still no more hostas split and that old fence isn't out yet. But hey...tomorrow it's supposed to rain and that will make it easier.  Weather was decent today, got a bit of pink on my cheeks.

So today I learned that Moss Flox requires a knife to split.  I bought a patch of it, about nine inches square which I wanted to put into small bits to put around Francis.  The stems do not separate by pulling apart. Hoping that I didn't shred it to bits and that what I tucked into the dirt will thrive.  We added a bit of white alysum and a few orange Viola.  The alysum smells so sweet, too bad it's just an annual.  The other two are perennials and with luck they will be back every year and not look so traumatized as they do now.  Aunt Karen caught Merdi and me while we were out shopping at Beehler's Green House.  She vetoed any Marigolds.  Merdi prefers yellows and oranges...or pinks.  We settled on the violas...just to give a bit of accent.  

My grub posse has managed to untidy every bit of mulch that I put down today.  Hopefully they will be done with their work soon.  It is only the second week of May.  I've decided that if we get this heavy lifting done by Memorial Day that it will be just a little maintenance here and there.  Right?  May is so sweet...no monstrous weeds, you can pass through places now that you won't be able to in just a month.  The knack of gardening is timing and remembering.  Remembering what you planted when and where and why.  I always save those plastic sticks and then forget what plants they match up to the following spring.  I have a wonderful perenial edge with small red flowers coming up this year.  But I don't remember what it is.  I was quite surprised to see it.  Guess that's the sweet side of loosing your memory...life is full of sweet surprises.

Day 8 Tuesday is for Trees

The day started out breezy, rainy and cool....you know those three miseries of mine...just on the light side...and as one gave way another took strength.  By mid afternoon the breezy was windy but at least it wasn't rainy.  Nonetheless...this was a very productive day!  We weren't planning it quite this way but the flow carried us on.  Started out heading out to Kluck's to pick out our annual tree cycling tree.  Fun thing to do, take in the Christmas tree in January and get a coupon for a new tree to pick up in May. We  chatted up the nursery man there ...learning a bit about trees and shrubs.  But we can't afford nursery trees, so we came back into town and checked out the sales and what luck, Sam's had exactly what we were hoping for in five gallon buckets for $15!  We started out with six Cleveland Pears, then Greg went back for two more of those and a couple red oaks and a a choke cherry.  He stopped at Aldi's too and found clearance annuals for $1 apiece and brought home Forsythea and Sedum and a five other things (which looked all but gone.)  I cant remember what they are and since my body hurts so much...I am not getting out of this chair to go find the tags in order to tell you.  

We lined the pears along the drive to create an "allee" or a "colonnade" along the drive.  One has to be optimistic when planning, placing and planting trees.
We had driven around Thomas township looking at other people's landscaping...the good and the bad.  Seems like people make a lot of mistakes with trees...too close together, too close to the house, too small...etc.  So we gave all that a lot of discussion and then just went with it.  Got three planted tonight, the rest go in tomorrow.  Split a few hosta today too...and Pete and the grub possee helped out.

I think tomorrow, Wednesday, is supposed to be better weather, but after today I think I will spend more time drinking coffee and considering my next move.

My job with the trees isn't so bad as Greg's, I don't have to dig holes, but I do carry water up from the ditch. I  drop a bucket and a line over the culvert and haul it up when it's half full.  Haven't strung the hose out yet, but will need to soon, these trees require lots of water.  We mixed pete moss in the holes and covered the mounds with mulch.  But since we planted fifteen dollar trees instead of 170 dollar trees I think we need to baby them.  So anyway, the day is done, and I ache...but there's some ice cream in the freezer calling my name.  I think this idea of taking a week's vacation this first week of May might be a good idea to do every year.  Get the garden totally in and then coast on into summer.  Took up drinking gin and tonic's last summer.  Ahhh....life is good.