As the blog goes, so goes the garden

You can tell pretty plainly where my allegiances are at any given time... my walking blog has been pretty busy lately due to the marathon and the start of new training agendas and goals. Meanwhile, the garden blog hasn't been updated since July. Oops! Though that does mostly reflect the attention the garden has gotten of late.

I planted some mexican heathers and some snapdragons back in early October in the front garden, but it was still a smidge too early for the snaps, so many of those withered in the heat. The heathers are doing great, though, and I hope to keep them as a perennial "front of the border" member for a long while.

But now the weather has cooled off and I can commence my fall/winter annual plantings. I went to Buchanan's and got a flat of Rocket snapdragons and a flat of different kinds of poppies. I didn't plant my annuals until early January last year, but they were lovely while they lasted. Hopefully planting them earlier, I'll get that much more out of them this season.

I also got a Butter Cream lantana that I'll use to replace the dead Blue Daze in the pot out back.

As usual, I'm going to use this space to make a to do list for my gardening chores this weekend:

1. Move Bluebird hydrangea over one foot. It's being overrun by one of the spider lilies.

2. Clear out butterfly bed to make room for redesign of that bed.

3. Remove mexican bird of paradise from pot. It's just not doing anything and doesn't look pretty at all. I'm planning to reuse the pot up on the deck once it's built. (Did I mention we've decided to build a deck? Yeah, we have. Should be starting in mid-November.)

4. Get bags of soil to replenish the potted plants.

5. Get bags of mulch for the front bed.

6. Plant the new plants up front and mulch the whole bed.

7. Plant the new lantana out back.

8. Move the "real" bird of paradise to butterfly bed.

Further down the road, because of the deck, I'm going to buy a large pot for the deck to put the satsuma in and then move the big lemon tree to where the Satsuma used to be. I'm having to retrain the lemon tree because it had taken on a really unpleasant shape, so I will likely need to stake it until it is established in its new spot.

And where the lemon tree is now, I'd like to put a disappearing fountain. I'd like to find a way to use the pot by the front door for it, but since I turned it into a fountain and sealed up the bottom, I may not be able to. But I think that would be a really nice way to deal with that circular spot where the lemon tree is since it's going to forever be shaded by the deck and nothing would grow there very well.

Anyway, many plans in the works now that my training load is lighter for a while and weather is too beautiful to stay indoors! It's just frustrating having to wait on the deck to be built to do some of this stuff... like the plants I'm going to pot up there need to wait for that because once they're potted, they'll be way too heavy to carry up the stairs. But if that's my biggest problem, I'm doing okay. :)

Progress

Still no pictures, so my apologies to the ADD folks.

But I'm making a little bit of progress every time I go out and work in the garden. I've moved several spider lilies to more appropriate places (or at least, out of inappropriate places). I've moved the trellis from the back-right corner of the garden to the left side, mid-fence. It's adding height to replace the butterfly bush and banana trees. I got a couple of mandevillas, one fuscia and one yellow, to grow up it. I needed something that doesn't get more than about 10 feet tall and those should do nicely.

I still need to move a couple more spider lilies in front of where I planted the new vines and trellis and then I can start moving to the right and clearing out some weeds and thinning out the left corner of the garden, much of which has been overgrown by bamboo. It's nice to see a positive change already though. The part I've done so far is good and I think will be very stable for the long haul, which is what I'm trying to accomplish with this overhaul.

Back in the Garden

Well, now that I'm back home, the garden is finally starting to bother me. Lately I've only had enough time and energy to keep the grass mowed and edged, so the garden has gotten out of hand.

The benefit of just leaving it alone, though, is that I can see what my plants want to do and be fairly smart about it when I shuffle them around this time, which I'm definitely going to be doing.

The banana tree is GONE. Roots and all. It had sent up about 6 fairly large baby trees since I cut down the original tree a few months ago and they were shading everything and really just taking over the space. I love the plant itself but I just don't have room for it, especially if the bananas aren't going to be edible. Adios! The only problem now is actually disposing of them. They're HUGE.

The other problem is that the stuff I planted around the lemon tree is doing a little too well and is hindering the lemon growth. I only have 4 lemons on that tree this year. So my plan is to get rid of the sweet olive that is not doing anybody any favors back behind the lemon tree, and move the spider lilies around the lemon tree to that space and then also back behind the hydrangeas. Fortunately, they're just bulbs so they're very easy to dig up and move. This should make a pretty swath of nice strappy green leaves and I don't have to do anything to them ever so it's okay that they're in the back and hard to reach.

(Sorry, I know this would be so much better with pictures but I don't have the energy after taking out the banana tree and pruning the dead blooms off the white butterfly bush. Mostly, I'm just gathering my thoughts on what needs doing.)

Speaking of the butterfly bush, mine is really very tall and leggy and doesn't look nice next to my vitex, which I like better, so it may be hitting the trail, too.

I'm considering moving the trellis from the butterfly bed to that spot and growing a vine up it. I need something tall but not deep and doesn't need much maintenance and that would do the trick pretty well.

Doing this would really open up the butterfly bed and that whole corner so I'm thinking I'll move the stepping stones over there and put the bird bath at the back of that with plants all around it. Ohh! I loving this in my head!

I need to cut back some of the bamboo that is falling forward over the orange tree and everything else back in that corner. Also, the trellis with the climbing rose on it is doing absolutely nothing and is totally shaded by bamboo now, so I need to find a new home for that.

That's as far as my brain can visualize right now but that's a great plan, I think, and will take me at least a couple of weekends to get done, given the current heat situation and my training and traveling schedule. Just feels good to have a plan vs. being totally overwhelmed by it.

What Every Gardening Gal Needs

Trowel and garden fork earrings

And not related to gardening but my real job: What every Help Author needs

Aphids

Madame Butterfly posted a comment on this post asking what to do about aphids aside from "digital compression." First of all, congratulations on having the stones to actually touch one of those things. They are nasty looking and I won't get near them!

But after battling with them all last year, first on my daylilies and then on my milkweed, all the people who said, "Just fire a stream of water at them and knock them off." were right. I quit buying bags of ladybugs, pouring soapy water, etc. and just jet sprayed the buggers into the next lifetime. I did that with my milkweed last summer and with my daylilies this spring and both times, it has worked! I don't understand why. You'd think they'd just crawl right back on, and they do to some degree but not in the same numbers.

So, MB, give that a shot. If your butterfly cats fall off, they'll crawl back on with no problem. Good luck!

And P.S. I know exactly where NZ is, as we visited the north island a couple of years ago and, aside from the food, it was amazing! Visit our trip blog: http://vegemiteadventures.blogspot.com.

You can put your weeeeed in it

Got out in the garden for the first time in a while. It was after my 2.75 hour walk so I didn't do as much as I'd hoped. Just pulled weeds in the back yard and mowed the grass and clover, which somehow seems appropriate for St. Patty's Day. Or maybe inappropriate... Hopefully I can get some more done tomorrow while the weather is so beautiful.

Anyway, in the process, I found the cardinal's nest I'd seen the female building a few weeks ago. It's nestled in the tangles of the trellis with the sweet autumn clematis and passion flower (or passion lack-o-flower...). How cool is that? I'll answer for you. Very!

Here's a bad picture of it. It's up kinda high, so I'd have needed a ladder to get a better shot.

I also took a few pictures out front where my first iris is blooming and it's HUGE with lots of side blooms. Very pretty blue that looks great with the warm reds, yellows, and pinks in the bed. Gawgeous!

And here's my trumpet vine out front which has just bloomed like crazy in the last week. It's amazing. Hopefully the clematis that's planted with it will decide to come back this year.

Confession Time

So, I haven't exactly been obsessed with gardening (as advertised) in the last few months. It's been a combination of factors. One is that my garden is small and pretty well full up. I have to wait for things to croak, either due to bad gardenswomanship (new word!) or the dog digging things up (RIP sage bush), to plant new things. Which is really just about the level of maintenance I can manage right now, so that's okay.

Second, I spent September thru January training to walk the Houston Half Marathon, then I got bronchitis, which sidelined me for nearly a month, and now I'm training for the New Jersey Half Marathon at the end of April. Now, you Type A folks out there could probably handle the training committment and still have energy and focus left for the garden, but I'm type B, maybe even C, so I just don't. What's worse is that after New Jersey, I'll begin training for the Portland Marathon. Note it's not a half this time. It's the full 26.2. Lord help me. My plants will be happy just to get watered this summer.

However, I find the siren song of spring calling to me out there and that passion for gardening really never goes away once it gets into you. So, here I am with a grocery bag full of bulbs that need planting and a little experiment in annuals of all things going on in my front garden.

The front garden has been a whole other adventure this fall. I came home from New York in late October to find that the City of Houston had done some water line repairs and in the process, tore up my driveway, culvert, and part of the front garden. Nary a note left on my door. Just a big pile of limestone filling the hole they left. I think it took about 3 months to get fixed correctly but they got it back almost the way it was, so I'm satisfied and glad to not have men in hardhats stomping in my front garden anymore.

However, that bed was looking pretty terrible by the time they finished and even neighbors were commenting on it, so I bit the bullet and went to the only nursery in my area that had anything colorful in stock and bought a big mess of snapdragons, some sort of little daisy looking things, and poppies to plant all through the front bed among the existing perennials. And honestly, though I've ranted that annuals were a waste of time, these make a world of difference and I hope they last a really long time because I'm enjoying them tremendously. So I'm eating my words. Certain annuals with a certain majesty and sculptural flair are acceptable! Many of them would still probably not find a place in my garden but I suppose that's a matter of taste. Mine being "good" of course.

I'll do a garden update once the first iris blooms out front. The bud is just waiting to open so hopefully I'll catch it. Besides the lemon trees, it will be the first bloom of the season!