I love my garden

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Not like I love See’s vanilla suckers, or Beethoven’s third piano concerto, or my Mobius strip bracelet [all things I definitely love] – but as in, I really, truly feel a heart full of love when I’m out there.

I spent the afternoon out there today, puttering around, doing the second installment of spring cleanup (which I started last week). I was raking out beds and picking up trash and just generally reacquainting myself with what all is going on out there. “Oh, right, that’s where those daisies Mary gave me finally ended up.” “Hmph, looks like the monkshood is finally established” (that took several years of putting a few new plants in every year). “Oooh, I’d forgotten about the white bleeding heart, pretty pretty.” I smile every year because when I moved the forsythia, geez, back in '94, I forgot there were tulip bulbs back in that corner – and they come up every year, behind and below the forsythia so you can barely see them. (Naturally, there are plenty of other tulips planted more recently and treated with far more consideration that have gone to the great compost pile in the sky.)

I’m reminded of friends and family, those still around and those moved away or passed on – here are the daylilies Dick gave me, Aunt Mary Ann was with me when I got those irises, that yarrow came from my sister’s garden, that’s the clump of geraniums I’ve whacked at time after time to give a clump to Marie, to Kathy, to Doug, to the neighbor four houses down, to that girl who used to be in the Art Department at work, what was her name… And Meredith is starting a garden from scratch this spring, I’ve already promised her some of the geraniums and some of the creeping dianthus – but I’d forgotten the columbines were so thick, I can give her some of those, I wonder if she needs any lamb’s ears…

I love the continuity and connectedness of my garden. I love that when spring comes, stuff starts coming up, each type of plant at its own right time, without me controlling it or reminding it. I love that it’s a project that’s never done. I love the fact that not all of my plans work – because I love coming up with new plans. I love plants that self-seed. I love the smell and the feel of moist, rich soil. I love going out there to do one quick thing and looking at my watch and realizing that three hours have gone by.

Yup, I love my garden.

2

I fixed a new flower bed out at Sweety’s place last weekend. It ended up looking very good (if I do say so myself).

It was all very ceremonious-feeling, my first “imprint” on his place. The bulbs which I planted came from a friend of mine’s old house place; complete with a rich history (her dad ran a greenhouse).

Mmmm. Don’t that dirt smell good?

3

This post inspired me to a superb barter. A guy at work jigsawed a piece of plywood for me. Yesterday I divided some perennials and brought him three rootings: lavender for his wife, ivy for him, and lamb’s ears for their young daughter. He was so pleased, especially when I told him about the wonder of lamb’s ears:

You can’t keep your hands off the lamb’s ears. You fall crazy in love with the lamb’s ears. You MOLEST the lamb’s ears. (And if you don’t divide them every year, you BECOME lamb’s ears. But he doesn’t have to know that just yet.)

Terrific post. Cheers.

4

[homer simpson]mmmmm, lamb’s ears[/homer simpson]

5

I’m a little behind you folks up here in the tundra of Chicago. But every day I look around to see what new is peeking up. And last weekend I gave the lawn a good raking and, afterwards, tried to convince myself that it looked better. :stuck_out_tongue: The week before I got all the leaves and trash out of the bushes and gardens out front. Still have to do the ones out back. But the disposal service isn’t picking up yardwaste until April, and I don’t want to stockpile too many bags under my deck.

Nice to get such scut work out of the way early, so when the gardens come in nicely, you have more time to enjoy them.

6

Oh I love your garden too Twickster! I wish mine were as advanced, but I’m working on it.

I’m in love with my compost, which I’ve been tending like a lover for four years. Sunday I went out there and turned it for the first time since last fall and it was rich, black, crumbly and loaded with big fat nightcrawlers. I can’t wait for this weekend, when I’m going to take it by the barrowload and dump it in my beds, transplant something a friend gave me (I don’t even know what it is!) and start questing for lamb’s ear. I love it too and have sorely felt the lack of it in my garden for several years. I’m also wondering if the glads are starting to come up yet.

“Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world.”…Virgil A. Kraft

Ah gardens.

7

Ellen, if you can’t track down lamb’s ears, I’ll divide and send you some bare-root.

Speaking of night crawlers, has anyone noticed that if you pick one up and pet it ever so gently, it will poop right in your hand?

One of my favorite things about gardening is the bonus time I get with my kitty. Nothing beats running into him in the yard, and he greets me with that delightful half-purr/half-meow: “Bhhhhhdddd-thwwroop!”

8

Ah, yes. I love gardening…

My daffodils are in full bloom right now…absolutely stunning around my home.

Gardening is like therapy to me. It’s the best feeling in the world.

Mercy…yes! I love having my kitty out on her leash whjile she’s sunning herself while I putz in my garden. (she’s an indoor kitty) She then talks kitty language to me and chatters at the birdies.
:slight_smile:

9

Elvis (my cat) loves to hang out with me when I’m out there. My old bf used to joke that Elvis’s job was to keep an eye out for low-flying aircraft. I think he just enjoys playing jungle kitting (wending his way amongst the plants in a terribly stealthy fashion).

10

Ellen, I have a deep and personal relationship with my composter.

And twickster, I have a garden like that too. Here is the bee balm my coworker gave me from her garden. Here is some sedum that we brought back from Nebraska. You can’t kill the stuff–mom just troweled it up, threw it in a box, and it rode in the trunk half way across the country for three days. Here are some daylillies that former Doper bunnygirl gave me!

I also think about the huge yard and garden my family had when I was a kid. I’ve planted many things that remind me of that yard.

Gardening is therapy.

11

Lambs’ ears: the plant that doubles as a pet.

My kitties won’t leave the house, so I garden feline-free… but that’s a good thing for the toads. Like Dinsdale, I’m in the Chicago area, so nothin’ much is happening yet, but I did notice that my burning bush is starting to look green. That’s almost always the first definitive sign that spring is here.

I’ve been working on establishing a decent self-supporting perrenial bed for the last three years, and ths will be the first year most of the plants will be “mature” - I can’t wait to see what they do! This year I’m adding a spaghetti garden by the kitchen door (tomatoes, basil, oregano, parsley, peppers) and a friend down the street who is yardless is going to help me with a veggie garden in exchange for some of the veggies.

Mmmm, spring!

12

Currently my kitchen is overrun with started plants (Yeah, I started them a bit early) But hey, I have a green bean bush in a container in my kitchen, and I’ve been eating those beans for about a week now. I had no idea just how many beans a single plant could produce. Yikes!

I’m also growing a version of the spagetti garden, but mine’s more of a salsa garden - tomatoes, hot peppers.

I’m doing a container garden on a condo deck, so since space is at a premium, I’ve decided to grow mostly edibles, with a few flowers for companion planting and bug and critter deterence. Anybody know of any plants that would keep nibbling bunnies out of the veggies?

I can’t wait for spring (and summer!)

13

Mercy, Mercy! I would love some of your lamb’s ear! I have some marigolds that I’ve been raising from seeds for several summers that were originally sent to me from an online friend in Tacoma, Washington, from her plants. After that first year, I sent her seeds back from the flowers that grew in my yard. So we’ve got cross-continental marigolds growing and it makes me happy every time I look at them.

Email me; it’s in my profile.

14

I’m in Chicago, also, so I’m at Dinsdale’s stage - beds cleaned up and lawn raked. Bulbs and irises are up. Got a few tomatoes started in my basement, too. This weekend I may jump the gun and do some seeding in the dog-damaged areas on the lawn.

15

Marigolds are supposed to keep bunnies at bay, but I haven’t tried companion-planting them, so I don’t know for sure. But, I did put in a small bunnies-only garden a few years ago that kept the rest of my garden bunny-free! Lots o’ small greens and lettuces that I just let bolt at will in one corner of the yard to attract the bun-buns, who then were quite content to stay outta the people-patch. Now I have the Enormous Dummy Dog, and I suspect she’d bunnyhunt, so this year I’m putting the bunnybed on the OTHER side ofd the fence. No point in letting the bunnies go hungry.

Hey, as long as you’re concentrating your container garden on edibles, don’t forget that violets, pansies, roses and nasturtiums are all edible, and that many herbs come with pretty flowers, too - chamomile is the first one that comes to mind, and of course lavender.

16

Spring is two weeks behind. Late is OK, though. Late I can accommodate.

The daffodils were mere buds yesterday; today they’re blooming enormously, nodding in the breeze. They can’t keep still. If they had legs they’d dash off like sight-hounds, blazes of yellow streaking down the street and leaping into the river. They would do the backstroke, faces to the sun.

The peonies are doing their thing. Bonus this year: Buds. Divided two autumns ago, they managed last year to sprout but do little else. At the end of March they pushed up their impossibly scarlet selves – licorice-looking things – and said it was a restful year off (thank you very much) but the time had come to resume the pinky, sticky, sweetly stinky business of blooming. A little kelp spray, if you would.

Who planted the peonies? Who planted the splendid and rare white peach tree? Who planted the tree hydrangea, the one lost in a storm five years ago and whose death I mourn still? Who cared for all these things in the scrubby yard of this sad duplex, knowing full well that rentals aren’t forever? Did that long-ago gardener, packing up to leave for good, stop for a moment and wonder: Who will do the tending?

17

**

A gorgeous image, Mercy – thank you.
Ummm, former gardeners, exactly. The woman I bought the house from clearly wasn’t one – I’d been here several years before I realized there was a lilac in the back corner, it was so overgrown – but I see hints of someone who loved this yard. I see it in some of the spring bulbs – I remember seeing that tiny clump of purple crocuses on the slope to the back yard the cold March morning I brought my sister and BIL (a carpenter) to check out the house before I made an offer. And hyacinths – they’re so … '50s (they remind me of ladie’s hats of the pre-Jackie-O era). But I can’t take them out, because I adore the blast of fragrance I get when I push open the gate getting home from work. And roses – including that wonderful sprawly white rose on the slope to the back yard that blooms and blooms and blooms and blooms. It took me ten years to decide to take out the orange roses, in part because someone loved them enough to plant them in two separate places. When I did, I ended up with three bushes, and gave one to my boss (who admired the roses on my desk spring after spring), one to my sister, and one to the guy who cuts my hair, with whom I’ve been passionately discussing gardening for … omigod, 15 years. And the spot where the one bush came out unchoked a red climber that blooms prettily once each spring – it’s now got its own little trellis and is looking good to go.

It’s the invisble links in the chain that we gardeners create amongst ourselves with our plant-swapping and storytelling that make the chain so strong.

18

I am a new gardener and trying to restore a yard and garden that I believe was once beautiful, but that the previous owners of our house let go. I am basically starting from scratch. It can be intimidating to start from nothing, but I am learning as I go. I planted a few things last year and it is encouraging to see them come up again - something is going right!

Can someone tell me more about lamb’s ears, I am intrigued.

I enjoy hearing stories about other people’s gardens.

19

Velma, I can report on my lambs ear, received from Mercy in a dry and pathetic state, because I was out of town when they arrived. They didn’t look like much, but mercy assured me they’d recover and they have! They are in my kitchen window recovery hospital, waiting for me to get them into the ground.

Otherwise, they’re gorgeous, fleshy, velvety soft little plants that only grow to, what, about six inches high? They’re lovely along a border of a flower bed, where you’d have easy access to petting. :slight_smile:

Also, Velma dear, I fear for your garden in its embroynic state, what with the Cooler of Death having oozed its deadly cargo out there and all. :wink:

Azaleas, azaleas! I am in heaven; it’s spring and the azaleas are blooming! I have five – a giant explosion of a thing, deep red and dense as velvet. Two smaller reds, in a lighter shade, a teeny pink I thought I’d lose when I fogot to water it during a drought a couple years ago … and my white azalea. Oh the glorious thing! It’s a bride dressed for her wedding day, billowing and blooming and making my porch the most gorgeous spot on God’s green earth.

I like your sentiments, twickster. I planted none of these azaleas yet I love them fiercely.

My poor hands are clean this Monday morning, and there’s sadly no dirt under my fingernails. The Easter holiday took me out of town. But I did enjoy azaleas from one end of the state to the other!

20

This will be the third gardening thread I’ve posted to today. Evidently, I’m on a roll…

I spent far too much money this weekend on new plants. I’m shopping for a new house and it seems so senseless to plant new stuff in the landlady’s yard, when I’m only going to dig half of it back up in a few months… I just couldn’t resist, though.

I found some purple basil, which I am anxious to try in a purple pesto. (Kinda like purple ketchup: it should taste the same, but I’m not sure if I can get past the color). I also found more lemon verbena (killed mine last year), and valerian, which should come in handy when I’m sleepless.

Grabbed more columbine – I just can’t seem to have enough of those around the house. Got many purple things – two different plants, neither of which can I remember the names. And another split-leaf philodendron for the landlady’s house. I’m trying to landscape her yard to be low maintenance, assuming the next renter won’t be as obsessed with gardening as I am. So everything I put in is either a perennial or can stand neglect and drought.

I’m just excited to see some of my old friends come back – the plants that attract the birds, bees and flutterbys to the yard. It’s so peaceful to take that post-garden shower, then sit on the deck with a cold drink and watch the critters forage and take baths in the bird bath. Yesterday, I watched while this blue jay meticulously bathed in the bath… while a chickadee sat nearby “on deck” waiting for his/her turn. “Serving number three… your bath is ready.”

And then there’s the squirrels, who try to eat all my bulbs if I forgot to put any birdseed out…

Why am I at work, when I could be sitting in the yard, digging holes and getting dirty?