We had a beautiful rain storm last night that watered the garden and brought cooler temperatures today. They were forecasting a tornado last night for our little village and the city of Kingston, but fortunately it was just a storm with very high winds.
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| Lovely pink peonies |
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| See my bean plants See all the new weeds?
Sorry this photo is so bad. It was the end of the day and I guess I was looking into the setting sun. I didn't realize how unfocused the picture was until I got inside. But you can still see how quickly the sprouts are coming up and how thick already the weeds are coming in.
I spent several hours outdoors today because of the nicer weather. See that wheelbarrow below? That was my second load that I removed from the garden beds and the drive. I'm still not finished.
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| Wheelbarrow load for my backyard compost pile. Notice the Bridal veil spirea bush in the background. It is finished for the year. I will prune it back hard in a few weeks. |
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The pros of growing a perennial garden are many.... the most important one being cost. Once they are planted, they come back year after year and you are spared the cost of replacing annuals every year. There is usually something flowering at different times throughout the season.
The cons of growing perennials is that they sometimes get out of hand. They must be pulled back, thinned out, and pruned or dug up. Some varieties grow so thickly, they sometimes choke out other varieties of flowering plants unless you stay on top of them. In this picture you can see the dying leaves of my daffodils. I won't cut those leaves for a while yet because while they are still green, they are feeding the bulbs for next Spring. The same is true of my allium (which are the tall seed heads that look like spheres) because they are also Spring bulbs. That means that I "have to live with" a very disorderly looking English Country garden look. Hopefully enough new plants flower to help camouflage the disarray. The flowers that are ready to come into bloom next are the bee balm. Once the white and blue Campanula bells die off, I will likely cut them down to a couple of inches to keep the bed neater looking. I tell you this because this bed has been weeded today, but it still looks frightful. Sometimes.....but only sometimes....I wish I had a "landscaped and formal" garden bed. But then I wouldn't have the variety of plants that I do have. The garden would look the same day after day. As it is, walkers pass my garden each day to stop and admire the always changing landscape in my yard. I do buy a few annuals for my planters to add hits of colour while the perennials are "between" blooms. So I guess as long as I am still able, I will tend to my perennials. But it is a lot of work.
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Your flowers are gorgeous. I would love to have a perennial garden, even if it looked "unkept", I think it's whimsical and lovely! The peonies are stunning. I bet the bride to be very much enjoyed the ones that you brought her!
ReplyDeleteDo you compost the weeds? If so, does it not cause problems when you put compost in your veggie or flower beds? I send all the weeds to the county dump with the rest of the yard waste and only compost the produce and occasional vegetable producing plant that I pull or trim. But if you don't have problems with composting weeds, I might just try it.
Those weeds by the beans look like grass to me. That's because the "grass" in our backyard is almost 100% weeds, lol. Greg gets upset with me every time I say that but it's true. The backyard was 100% bare sand back when we still had the huge oak tree small in the middle of it because nothing would grow under it. Now that the tree is gone (R.I.P. I still miss it!), it looks like we installed sod or something, but we didn't. Nature took care of it and nature doesn't install sod. Silly Greg.
I'm glad you got some rain and it's cooler, finally. Still, you must be tired. Are you in a better mood? Now I want to drive to a garden center and buy flowers which would be a waste of money since it's summer in Central Florida. Look at how Bless's garden survived the scorching temp they had in Southern California these past few days and that'll give you an idea of what flowers here might look like. I'm not savvy enough to recognize native flowers in a garden center and I don't trust the people who work there to sell me something that's actually appropriate either. Argh, I wish I had been able to attend that gardening class on how to achieve the English cottage look!
Have a great day, Susan, don't overdo it!
I don't put weeds into my composter bins. I only put kitchen scraps, fall leaves and shredded paper in there. I do however have a HUGE compost pile next to the vegetable garden where I throw weeds, branches, and all the prunings from my various bushes. I have never used the compost from the bottom of the pile because it is forever having more vegetation being thrown on top. Someday perhaps it will be a treasure trove of rich soil for the next owner of the house. In the meantime, I imagine all kinds of rabbits probably live inside the bottom because it would be really warm in the winter.
ReplyDeleteYes, the weeds in my garden do look like grass. We don't have sod either...just weeds that we mow down occasionally. I AM in a better mood. It is still nice out with a lovely breeze. I have already spent time outside this morning pulling more weeds from our driveway and I pruned my Forsythia bush. After lunch I plan on trimming back my Bleeding Heart plants. They are turning yellow and dying back now. I will also trim around the front lawn and mow the grass. There is always outdoor work to be done here, so I don't like "too hot" temperatures. During the really hot days of summer, I stay inside and do crafts.