Garden Makeover Part II

Here's the plan for my newly spacious front bed: I'm going to take a bunch of my planters and pots and sneak them into the bare spots I've made. Devious!

I plant three huge Rex begonias right into the bed, and move two large mixed planters of geraniums and Abutilon and fuchsia into the bare areas.  Instant color where there was only bare soil. They won't live through the winter, but that's OK. They'll color it up and act as placeholders until frost. It's cheating, sort of, but it's good cheating.

Hoo-wee does that ever look better.

It's OK with me if it looks kind of like a garden center tag sale. At least it's interesting and not full of deadheads and crap I don't want.

I put some tropicals I don't intend to bring into the greenhouse in the spaces where the lilies of the valley grew. It's kind of a crazy mix, but it sure beats a mess.

 With a bunch of the superfluous pots cleared away and planted out, the front entry looks neater and more inviting now.

Achimenes "Pink Nighty" is stealing the show, with shocking pink blossoms popping everywhere.

 

I've been propagating that plant like mad, so I can have some to give away this winter. 

Achimenes, which is a gesneriad (African violet/gloxinia/sinningia relative) has a charming habit of going dormant in fall, dying back, and leaving little green pinecone-like tubers in the soil. You keep those in a Ziploc bag at room temperature, and plant five of them to an 8" pot come spring.  

From practically nothing you get this amaaaazing compact but trailing, bushy plant that blooms and blooms and blooms.

And then when it dies back in fall, you store it over the winter in a Ziploc bag full of green pinecone thingies. Takes no space at all, but you have all the genetic material you need to start fresh in spring.

It's truly amazing. They let you know when they're ready to grow by putting out a little red shoot!

I'm kinda nuts about a new Rex begonia called Jurassic "Watermelon." I'd like to think T-rex had this color and pattern. 

Hibiscus "The Path" has just gone nuts this summer. She got a bigger pot and lots of plant food and manure. She liked that!

Heck, she's as tall as I am now. I'm already planning what not to bring into the greenhouse, on her behalf. Sorry, giant scraggly Rosemary. You've just been voted out of the Groanhouse.

You too, three oversized jasmines. Too much foliage and spread. We're cutting back to one jasmine.

In late summer, the sun's intensity has dropped enough that I can bring my bonsai Japanese maples out of the shade and display them on the front stoop. I love to watch them color up come fall.

When I was finally done with my garden/front porch makeover, I mowed the lawn. 

Right before I took this picture, Mr. Baker was lying, frogspraddled, right across the path of the mower. This is what he does when I mow. He glares balefully at me and moves at the very last second. Then lies down again where I will have to come through on the next pass. It's his way of bringing himself to my notice as I mow and sing and talk to myself.

So there you go.  A day well spent, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I like working hard, especially when the results are so easy to see. Maybe it's time for a late summer garden makeover at your house! 

Thanks to the tuberoses in the foreground, this view smells even better than it looks. I like to think of our meadow as the world's largest flowerbed.

Late Summer Garden Makeover: One Day, Big Difference

July 19. The place is looking pretty fly; the drought hasn't hit yet; the late summer crabgrass has yet to take over the entire lawn, and the daylilies are all blooming. 

By August 21, though, my front gardens were showing their age. That big front bed was buggin' me. 

Over the years since I planted it, certain things had taken over, asserted themselves, crowding out the plants I loved and actually wanted there.

It was ticking me off.

I was winding up for a garden makeover. And I wanted fast results.

I had to wait for a good soaking rain. We got 2 1/2", and three days later another 3/4" of blessed rain, which would soften the soil enough for me to do some serious digging.

August 21 dawned clear and cool, 53 degrees. I went for my run and came back loaded for bear.

I started digging.

First to go were the huge, gangly, spent evening primroses that had bloomed beautifully, then turned into seed factories. I like evening primroses, but these had spread so aggressively they killed a bunch of things I like better. I wasn't about to let these drop their seeds all over this bed again. I got them out before the capsules opened. Whew!

Next to go were the orange ditch lilies that, no matter how often I pull them out, keep spreading. 

That's because you can't pull daylilies out. They just break off at soil level, leaving all the tubers. You have to get serious, get a spade and dig them out.

It didn't take long to get a cartload of tops and roots. Whew. That already feels a lot better. I have some beautiful farmer's market daylilies in that bed that I adore. But these orange ditch lilies just had to go.

Now there was some breathing room around the daylilies I liked. There was room for the bleeding heart to come back up in the spring, room for four beautiful little bleeding hearts my dear friend Lucy in Minnesota gave me this summer, and room for all the daffodils that had had to struggle through the daylilies. 

It's absolutely amazing the biomass I took out of that bed. Out! Out! Out! You can see the last remaining ditch lilies on the left side of this photo. They're going.

When I was finished, there was even room for me to plant a few new things next spring!

Next to go were all the lilies of the valley. 

I know this plant well enough to know that I will never get rid of them all. But I tried.

Now, I know a lot of you love this plant. I do, too. The problem is, this plant is a thug. A big ugly garden thug.

I got the start for what became a monstrous stand of LOV from my grandma Ruigh's garden in Meservey, Iowa. 

I never dreamt it would take over half my front bed with a foot-deep, impenetrably dense mat of roots and runners. 

I am a sentimental person, but I abandon sentimentality when a plant ceases to be an asset. Unfortunately, you can't grow just a few lilies of the valley. You wind up growing nothing else. Can you say "INVASIVE?"

Grunting and cussing, I dug and dug and dug. I was amazed to see they had infiltrated the hosta roots. Nothing stops them! The roots were so thick and heavy I had to chop them into manageable two-foot square hunks to be able to lift them and shake the soil out of them. 

Horrid!

 Another cartload of pure ugh. About 75 pounds of lilies of the valley. And a Lenten rose, one of many, that just keep seeding and spreading. I want things like larkspur and delphinium, bleeding heart, bergenia, fuchsia and butterfly weed instead.

When I was done, there was a pleasing amount of bare space in between the plants. Yay! 

Now to tackle the doorstep clutter. I can't help it. I'm a compulsive horticulturist. I propagate and pot up babies and divide and recombine...I just love messing with plants.

And pretty soon it gets difficult to get in the front door.

But I have a plan.

Next: Cheating with Container Plants and Tropicals: Late Summer Garden Makeover II.

Little Miracles

I just changed keyboards because my old one was full of Cheezits, dog hair and Edy's Slow Churned French Silk ice cream. Multiple threats to my kids about eating over the keyboard produced only elaborate sneakery and slumping back in the computer chair while slurping ice cream from a mug, a posture which supposedly kept the food from falling into the keys. I looked down this morning and saw a big mocha drip running down into the space bar. Smoke came out of my ears. Went downstairs and dug out the great springy Macally keyboard I got for my old blue iMac. Battleship gray, it's ugly as sin with my sleek white Mac, but it works, the keys moving like satin. I have now shed my growing aversion to writing, brought about by the difficulty of working with a gunky keyboard, and the masses of mistakes caused by stuck keys. To tell you the truth I never much liked the sleek white keyboard that came with my G-5. The transparent cradle, through no fault of my own, filled up with the most embarrassing kiddie compost. Well, I do pet Baker over the keyboard. So the black dog hair is my fault.

As of this morning, there is a crude sign taped to my computer, where even a seven-year-old couldn't miss it.

EAT AT THE KEYBOARD: LOSE COMPUTER PRIVILEGES, FOR GOOD.
YOUR CHOICE.

It will be a miracle if even this heavy threat is heeded. I know that I'll find French Silk in this keyboard, too.

Speaking of miracles, this has been a day of them, ones I'm very thankful to witness. I've been waiting for the backyard bluebirds to hatch since incubation commenced on April 10. They're about a day late, but they were hatching at 2 p.m. Hallelujah! Three hatched, a fourth pipping, and we'll see about Egg # 5.

The lilac I have been mourning since the big freeze that commenced April 5 is showing signs of life.
Against impossible odds, the flower brackets that had been frozen crispy through night after night of 2o's somehow retained enough turgor pressure to straighten (mostly) out, point upward, and begin to develop. They're way behind, but their florets are opening, and I got the barest whiff of lilac scent out of this one today. They won't be as beautiful as they would be; they actually look strange against the blasted black leaves hanging on the plant, but they will open, and I am thankful not to be denied that signature scent of spring. The lilac: an heirloom from Bill's dad's family farm. The farm was destroyed by a highway cloverleaf, but the lilac remembers and goes on. Miracle. Maybe I'll get those tip cuttings this year after all. I MUST propagate this wonderful plant.

Hosta "June," opening up. Let's hear it for chartreuse plants.The lilies of the valley I dug from beside my grandmother Ruigh's house in Meservey, Iowa about five years ago are finally taking off. I'll have enough by next spring to send starts to my sisters and brother. Oh joy, oh rapture, to know that this very plant delighted Frieda, filled her sunporch with perfume, and now grows in Ohio.More miracles anon. April is just full of them. They sustain me through everything.