I started this post on Friday afternoon. Then I picked it up again last night before dinner, after I had planted most of my containers. It is now Sunday afternoon and the long weekend is more than half over. I have spent another 3 hours outside today pulling weeds in a different garden bed but it isn't even half finished. I am well and truly ready to crash on the couch again, but I will try to send out this post first.
Do you see all that long, tall grass in the back of the picture? That is what the front of the picture looked like this morning before I started pulling weeds. You couldn't see any flowering plants. I even found 3 flower pots in that mess that I had been looking for earlier in the season. Ha. You might see a laundry basket in the foreground (right hand side) that is full. There is a wheelbarrow to the left which you can't see, and it is also full. That little patch took 3 hours, so now you see what I am up against. When I last posted, I mentioned I had started on one of my perimeter gardens. I thought it might take another 2 days. In fact it took another three days. I have mowed both front and back lawns again this week. I removed big clumps of ribbon grass that had choked out my irises and tried transplanting the tubers. August is the time you have to transplant iris, but I have no choice. I was losing them anyway so it is worth a shot.
Monday is Victoria Day holiday and is traditionally the time to visit the nurseries to buy the bedding plants that will be going into the garden this year. I try only to buy annuals that I want to put into my planters and hanging baskets. I have enough perennials that I don't
need to buy any more, but it is always so tempting.This summer I decided to limit the annuals I buy to just two colours....red and white to pay tribute to our country's 150th birthday. There is a forecast for rain this weekend, so yesterday (Saturday), I decided to go to Burt's Greenhouse to buy my flowers and get as many of them planted as I could so that I might take advantage of the expected rain to give the transplants a good start.
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| Red and white nicotina in the centre surrounded by red petunias |
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| Red geranium in the centre with trailing red verbena, red and white petunias and dusty miller surrounding the edge of the planters |
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| My hanging planters have red and red and white Regal geraniums, and white trailing lobelia |
Every day this week has been sunny and dry, and as a result, I have been outdoors working for a few hours every single day. I am feeling so exhausted when I come in. I change out of my filthy (but apparently fashionable) clothes and shower. Then I cannot keep my eyes open so I fall asleep on the couch until it's time to take the dog out and make dinner. The only other work I have done this week......
....vacuumed the kitchen and dining room
....transplanted some house plants one morning while it was still too cold outside
....baked some dog biscuits
....washed laundry and hung outside on the clothesline
....used 4 liters of my homemade weed killer in the cracks between my patio stones behind the shed. I need to make some more to finish the job.
....phoned my mother
....made a roast pork loin dinner for my son and GF on Tuesday night. They took me out for lunch yesterday before I went shopping for flowers.
I have some more perennials that made a showing this week.
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| Candy Tuft |
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| Pasque Flower |
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| White Bleeding Heart |
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| Mini Irises growing through Snow-in-Summer plant. I need to thin this out. |
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| Allium just starting to open up their heads |
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| Different varieties of tulips |
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| Lilac trees |
Yellow tulips are done, but the other yellow "flower" is Euphorbia. Behind those, my hostas are just making their way out of the ground. In the background are tiny flowers. The white ones are Lily of the Valley (just starting to bloom) and the blue ones are Brunnera (just finishing up their blooming period) Growing throughout the bed are little Honesty plants (Silver Dollars) that are growing from seed from last year. As they get bigger, I will pull up most of them and throw into the compost. They are very pretty purple and white biennial flowers, but I have more than enough. This is a shade garden. I will be adding pots of impatience or begonias to this area to provide summer long colour.
Happy 2-4 weekend, or Victoria Day weekend. Happy Memorial Day weekend to our American friends.
Susan, your garden looks so lovely! Even with all the weeds! LOL. I, too, have a garden full of weeds! I'm ignoring them as I don't have time to weed!
ReplyDeleteMy yard is a full-time job. I could easily spend 8 hours a day on what needs doing. I was a much younger woman when I planned out my gardens and still worked full time. I thought things would be different once I retired, but then I have included looking after a large veggie garden as well. There was less and less help from Rick as he was unable to do very much. And I have to face it, I am slowing down a lot. Ha. But if I had my druthers, I guess I'd druther putter around in the yard than work indoors. That includes domestic housework as well as working for others. I do enjoy my retirement.
ReplyDeleteLook at all your flowers! It seems that you go from having snow on the ground to suddenly having weeds everywhere in just a week. I know it's longer but it sure feels that way. I guess all that rain is helping the weeds as well as the flowers, eh?
ReplyDeleteAt least you're enjoying doing all of this. How exhausted you must be but wow, the results are worth it. And me and my 3 roses and 10 marigolds, lol! Your planters are going to be spectacular once they fill up.
I need to spend time in the backyard and pull some weeds too but it's hot outside (although not as hot as it's about to get this summer) and I just don't feel like it. My mood is reflective of it, though, the more introverted I feel, the more time I spend indoors and the more closed in I feel. I really need to get back out there...
Enjoy your week! Who cares about housework?! Not us!
You have pretty much described our change of seasons here....snow one day and summer the next. When you add a rainy Spring to the mix, that leaves very little time for preparing the gardens. Our summers are relatively short so we try to take full advantage of being outdoors.
ReplyDeleteI too am feeling house-bound, by choice. I push myself to get out in public these days, so getting out in the yard working in the dirt is kind of therapeutic. There are a couple of scheduled social events this week which should help me get out of my "safe place" I might even have a lot of fun.