Spring Inventory April 11, 2010 - Back Yard

Yesterday I walked around the yard with camera in hand to record early spring activities. The first three photos are wide shots of the back yard. Despite having snow on the ground three weeks ago, plants are growing all over the place. It's too early to plant tender new plants. That's okay. I still need time to do spring clean up. Please note the height of the grass in these photos. Have you guessed that the lawnmower we bought last fall is still in the box? Maybe today (she says optimistically).

You can poke the photos to see them larger. I should have used a larger font in the labels in many of the photos.

The lily garden is thick with leaves, but some lilies are already poking through them. I'm hoping the leaves were thick enough to protect the delicate lily bulbs from our few deep freezes last winter. If all goes well, a lovely vine with orange flowers (whose name escapes me) will come back to cover the trellis.

Last fall I planted some primroses bought at half price closeout. It looks as if about half of them survived the winter and are already blooming. I want to get more and plant them earlier this year so they'll have a better survival rate. I love the bright blooms this early!

The next shot was taken behind the tree in the photo above. It was cleared last year with Roundup but nothing was planted. My hope was that the wild violets would come back as a natural ground cover. They did! I'll be planting other perennials in the area and let the violets fill in between. I'm surprised to see so many white violets and some with purple & white blossoms. In previous years they were mainly purple. I wonder if the chemicals in the Roundup had anything to do with this, although the same thing is taking place in areas that weren't sprayed. The Japanese maple tree is going into its third summer looking very healthy. Lots of leaves unfurling.

Too bad I can't say the same about the dogwoods that were planted at the same time. The white dogwood (foreground) is dead. The pink one has leaves but will not be blooming this year. Between them can be seen mounds of coral bells leafing out. Most of them were purchased at the Powell Gardens plant sale last spring. I'm thinking about putting in a Japanese Rose (Kerria japonica 'Pleniflora') when the dogwood comes out.

There is no photo, but I'm sorry to report that all three of the Encore azaleas are dead. Found out from the Powel Gardens blog that only one variety -- Amethyst -- is hardy enough for Zone 6. You'd think the numbskull at the local nursery would have known that. Another nursery gets their Encore azaleas from a nursery farther north than we are; I asked them to order 3 more for me.

Along the north fence (looking toward the front yard), the daylilies from Lilywood Farms are poking through their covering of fall leaves. The long rows of green are surprise lilies (aka naked ladies) that were here when we bought the place. Apparently they plan to be here forever. All efforts to dig them up have fallen far short of goal! The foliage will yellow and dry in several weeks, then in August there will appear lovely pink lilies, one bloom per stalk -- naked without any foliage. I'm rationalizing that they make a nice border for the long bed of daylilies.The area by the "kissing tree" (a double pin oak) shows the hellabores leafing out. The witch hazel that was presumed dead yet put out a couple of leaves last fall again appears to be dead. The other two have leaves already. Always the optimist, I'll leave it in the ground for a while and see what happens. None of the ferns are showing green yet.

The Bradford pear has me a bit concerned. Instead of being solid white with flowers (as are the other Bradford pears around town), ours put out leaves with only a few flowers. I'm wondering if all of the spraying I did to kill off the invasive vines on the ground didn't mess with the tree. The container says it won't cause harm if not directly applied, yet so far as I know, this is the only difference between our tree and the others. We'll see what happens next year.

The last photo from the back yard is of the wild violets growing between the edge stones in the little plots beside the shed. Aren't they lovely? I don't understand why some people treat them as weeds. Look at the pansies! They were planted last fall and came back with colors flying high.

This is a long post. I'll report on the front and side yards in the next one.

The Garden Awakes

Today - March 21, 2010 - I braved the spring snow to trek out to the back of the garden to snap the first blooms of the season. One of the three witchhazel whips that were planted last summer has produced three blooms. The two whips on the other side of the oak tree show no signs of bloom. I hope they made it through the deep freezes we experienced this past winter. A walk around the garden before the snow revealed more signs of spring. The daylilies are poking up, some of the ground cover plants are turning green, the pansies left over from last fall are actually blooming, and the little red nubs of peony stems are showing. The surprise lilies (aka naked ladies) are going strong, but I would expect no less of them. :)

If Mother Nature can bless us with a few dry days, I'll be able to rake up the last of the autumn leaves. The ground is way too muddy to even consider it now.

Daylilies Planted!

It has been 18 days since the past post. There hasn't been much happening in in the garden until the past several days. The daylilies bought at Lilywood Farms were picked up over Labor Day weekend. There were nearly three dozen of them to be planted. The majority went in along the north fence. (Sorry for the bad photo -- it was late in the day, so the shadows were deepening and making for awkward contrasts.)

This bed reaches from the sunporch to the hosta and lily garden in the back corner. It's five feet wide and about 35 feet long. I turned over the dirt for about 10 feet and then gave up. The rest of the lilies were planted in decent sized holes dug out of the hard dirt. My shoulders couldn't take any more digging. I thought about renting a tiller but never got around to it. Three daylilies were planted along the north fence, just inside the entrance to the back garden. They've been mulched and look better now. This was taken just after they went in.

Four of the daylilies were planted up front, at the SW corner of the house. I'm hoping they'll grow up enough to help mask the hose connection. I'll put some other plants in front to give it some depth.

Several daylilies are planted in the maple island. You can't see much of them behind the ferns and hostas. I think they'll get enough sunlight there. I got 3 of each kind of daylily, but I didn't plant them together. When they start blooming, there should be a good mix of colors and styles.

I saw some pansies at a good price at Lowe's last week, so I bought a couple of flats for color and put most of them along the edge of the island for color. I put more of the pansies by the pink dogwood. The scrawny nasturtiums were pulled up. A couple of them managed to produce a single flower, but they weren't adding much to the yard decor.

Did I mention that last spring I bought three witch hazel bushes from Michigan Bulb and that one of them died? Well, it didn't! Just last week I noticed that the stalk has leaves on it! If this isn't a great reason for extreme procrastination, I don't know what is. I can't tell you how many times I nearly pulled up the stick and threw it away. It's hard to see the leaves against the grass, but they're there -- I swear! You can see the top part of the stem where it got so dry that it cracked and fell over. [Poke the picture to see a larger version.]

I'm proud to announce that we got the first beautiful, red, ripe tomato off the plants yesterday! There are probably a half dozen more that are very green but firm and healthy looking. I trimmed back some of the foliage so the fading sun can get to them. If they never turn red, I won't mind. I love fried green tomatoes. I'm just tickled that we got any at all.

I trimmed back all of the gladiolus foliage, which was getting pretty raggy looking. What green remains is mainly weeds. I think I'm going to mulch them well and leave them in the ground, although in Zone 6 we're warned to take them up for the winter. I'm banking on a warm winter and hoping for a warmer summer next year. If they don't do well next summer, they will be history. That one mum is looking good. I think I should get more to edge that flower bed in a semicircle from fence to fence. There are some later mums by the gate that are just beginning to show color.

Here are the hollyhocks. The slightly smaller ones in back (red arrow) were planted from seeds. The larger one up front (yellow arrow) was purchased from Michigan Bulb. They're not all that different in size, even though the seeds were planted fairly late in the season. There's a lesson here. They should make a lovely patch of tall color at that corner of the house next summer.

One of the arbor vitae bushes died. I need to go back to the nursery and find out if they guarantee them. The other one is showing a small patch of browning. I'm hoping it's just natural aging and not a sign of a serious problem.

I noticed the leaves on one of the dragon flowers by the front walkway had some white on it, almost as if it had been sprinkled with flour or plaster dust. You can see some of it on the leaves behind the flower. I noticed the same thing on a friend's flowers when we visited last week but thought they had just dusted it with an insectide or bone meal or something. Maybe not. I need to figure out what this is and if I need to do anything about it. So far this is the only plant I've seen with the problem.

The weather is holding nicely . I'm having fun getting the garden ready for winter, even if it does mean some awfully sore muscles at night!

Sunday Morning ... a Surprise!

The heat wave broke last night. We should be in the low 80s today instead of the mid 90s. I'm happy about that. I got out this morning and planted the daylilies along the north fence. The shadows in the early morning pictures make it difficult to see, but there are four clumps of lilies spaced along the board fence. The three nearest are the same, a burgundy color. That large clump broke into three pieces. The other clump is much smaller. I could have divided the clumps even more, but the grower suggested planting them as is for now and separating them in the fall, when the plant begins to go dormant. I'll do that after Labor Day, when we pick up the other daylilies from the farm. These are the hybridizer's didn't-make-the-cut rejects. This is the burgundy lily. Its petals are narrow and star-like. It shows up a bit red on my monitor. The petal touching the bottom of the photo at the right looks to be nearest the right color.

This is the yellow one. This photo is a bit green. In real life, the blossom is a beautiful clear yellow. The blue tape is how the plants are marked for digging. You go up and down rows and rows of plants to choose the ones you want. They're marked by one person with your name on the tape and dug by another.

You may have noticed a bunch of greenery in the first photo, along the fence at the right. I saw it for the first time today for what it is: poison ivy! I did a round of weed killing before I started planting this morning, and this puppy was hit with both RoundUp and Weed B Gone. Last year there was a small poison ivy vine on the big oak tree, but Lloyd managed to kill it off.

The main reason for the killing spree this morning is this vine. It has heart-shaped leaves, grows about 6 feet a day (it seems) and seems impervious to RoundUp. I'm hoping the 2,4D in the Weed B Gone will do the job on it.

This is the infected part of the yard. The main body of the vines is on the other side of the fence, so I sprayed all of that, too. I want to plant decorative grass along the fence here, but there's no point in doing that until the vines are gone.

This is the grass that will go in that corner so that something else can go here, beside the shed.