Mother Nature took control and made it rain today.
Thanks, Mom. Because I need to cool it for a day. I’m really, really tired. I’ve been doing a lot around here and there are still things that need to be done. But less and less, thankfully, as I cross items off my many lists.
One of the things I noticed in the Community Garden was how densely every bed was planted. Now, I know that takes place over time, but one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is this: gardening takes a toll on my body – specifically, my back. And it’s a lot of work. The more plants I add, the less space there is for weeds and the less mulch is needed (both jobs give me a backache.) That’s a lot of plants to add and it won’t happen in one season. Much of the big garden bed is full of plants, simply because the David Phlox and bee balm and decorative grass have spread (thank goodness!) I need to do the same kind of thing with the memorial garden and the garden beds on the other side of the house.
I love our property, but it’s not flat, it has several different levels, and that makes gardening and mowing life harder. Plus, we’re really in ‘wild’ country, so there is a constant battle to keep the wildness from taking over. If I left it alone for a few summers, it would be a mess.
These are my thoughts as I acknowledge that I’m not 30 but more than twice that age. I also need to lose some weight and my allergies have been going haywire this year, so all of that takes a toll. But I love gardening. It seems to be when I am happiest, feel at peace, and it’s a great stress reducer. And, at this insane time in our country, that is most welcome.
We can’t afford a gardener, nor would I want someone else doing the things I love to do. Just as I would never use a decorator. I sort of feel the same way about mowing – I know the quirks of this property, the divots, the little holes, the areas that have to be mowed or the ‘wild’ will take over, that kind of thing.
Sigh. Mission this year: plant more. And find inexpensive plants because I’ve already spent a lot.
I did get some pots planted for the porch yesterday, as well as the barrels and galvanized planter on the funky patio. I finished mulching.
Here’s a little update, some photos I took toward the end of the day.
You can see that the hostas and coneflowers are growing more and more each day.
I bought some lobelia for one of the new pots. I just plopped it inside the bigger pot.
Not the best quality photos, I snapped them rather hurriedly, but they give you an idea of what’s happening – at least on the porch. More will be coming of the garden beds.
I love gardening. It may be my favorite thing to do. I look forward to it every year. This year, winter went on so long that it made the need to get things going even more pressing (especially planting seeds.) All the seeds have been sown and Mother Nature is taking care of the watering duties today.
I’m off to Rick and Doug’s for some French Toast, a laugh or two, and time with Sam. They’ve had gardeners there for the past week clearing out some of the overgrown spaces and I can’t wait to see what it looks like now.
Happy Saturday.
I know gardening is very important to you and many others but I’ve never had the home to garden in. I have had a lovely container garden once that was wonderful. Its hard work and so hot here in the south my body just doesn’t say yes. Enjoy time with your friends today.
Well, I went most of my life without a garden! A place to garden has been a later-in-life pleasure. Take care, Linda.
Thank you for sharing the pictures of your flowers and plants!
Have a wonderful time at breakfast!
Thank you, Debbie!
I hear you! Gardening this year has also taken a toll on my body…and my budget. I can garden a bit…take a break…garden…break. It takes me twice as long to do anything. But, as you said, I love to garden. And that’s my price. And speaking of prices…I think flowers are more expensive this year….any thoughts? But, I still have a few more things to get. I figure…I’m frugal the rest of the year about most things..I get to splurge now!
Your pots are looking great. I spread mine around as best I can. That way I seem to have constant color in most places, until the perennials kick in. I have to admit…I’m a bit envious that Rick and Doug had gardeners clearing out the old stuff. Wouldn’t that be nice….just once?
Hope you enjoy the French toast….and especially Sam! ;)
Yes, I’ve noticed a price increase. I’m fairly frugal as well, but this is our time to indulge, don’t you think?
I was incredibly envious that they had gardeners moving all that stuff. I’d love a crew that would get rid of all the brambles and half-dead trees and stuff.
You have shared my thoughts this morning too. It is exhausting work, but it feels so wonderful to be out side and making our land beautiful!
I have just come inside having been out in my garden since 8am. I had to take advantage of the cool and damp conditions to divide a large Hydrangia bush. I have added 6 of them around the property and have 2 to share with friends. I love dividing and sharing plants and always accept what others wish to share with me. Free plants? Yes please! Just spreading the garden love.
Your photos are beautiful and I check everyday to see what you have been up to. You are very inspiring to me and I very much appreciate all aspects of your blog!
Free plants are a great idea – some of the plants in my big bed were gifts from a friend.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Denise!
I have found that starting at end of July to end of September there are lots of sales at the “good garden centers”. You have to break up the root boundness and be a vigilant waterer but it’s a way to create fullness on a budget. Of course, the best is free from friends because they always come with a story! I haven’t been in my garden much because of surgery and I miss it terribly. Enjoy the rest that rain brings.🌷
Yes, I’ll definitely fill in as the summer goes on and plants are on sale. I hope you’re feeling better, Betsy!
Im glad you are finally able to garden, especially put in new plants, Claudia, while enjoying the emergence of plants already on your property. I’m grateful for my California garden, being able to garden almost year-round. I had a professional work with me to design my garden and then someone put it in for me. The landscape architect provided lots of plant choices. I love how it turned out from a lawn area so dead it was a dust bowl to a series of plant beds connected by crushed granite paths. No more lawn, which is what is actually encouraged in drought-stricken California. I love my outdoor space. I had a hired gardener take care of the lawn previously but now take care of the garden myself.
Gardens give us peace and beauty and a chance to make a difference in the landscape. Tremendously important!
It does feel good just to get your hands in the dirt and dig, doesn’t it, Claudia? Your garden looks beautiful. I agree with Donnamae that plants seem to be more expensive this year, but that hasn’t stopped me from buying them. I just have to be a little more picky about what I choose. It was so cold this spring that I was late getting all my cleanup work done. I certainly wished for a gardener to help me then!
It feels great!
I would love for someone to dig out all of the brambles. I can’t imagine ever having the money to do that. It would be a lot of work!
Everything look so lovely and colorful. You did such a great job. Enjoy your French toast and your visit with Rick and Doug.
Marilyn
Thank you, Marilyn!
Your garden is looking terrific, Claudia. Take a bit of a rest – you earned it. There’s still plenty of time for digging, cleaning, raking, planting & general fixing up. My parents never started planting a thing until Memorial Day each year, though we were outside prepping for it for what seems like weeks. Like painting, gardening seems to be 90% prep. Here’s a tip I learned from my master gardener SIL – maybe you know it already: check out the clearance section of nurseries for the most reasonable buys. My SIL buys a selection of unlabeled plants every year for one specific bed in her garden. She calls it her Surprise Garden because she never knows what’s going to pop up. And evidently the unlabeled items are especially inexpensive – which totally makes sense, I guess. Enjoy that French toast supper! Peace.
#Resist
#ProtectMueller
Yes, I’ll most likely do that at some point. But I have to get some filler in now or I’ll be pulling weeds constantly!
do ferns grow in your area? around here if you plant ferns they take over the area and keep the weeds out. And they can be quite lovely space fillers in areas that are hard to work on regularly. We had some green belts filled with them and other ground covers until some idiots thought that drug users hid under the ferns! 2 and one half foot ferns!!
Ferns grow, though I don’t know if I have enough shade in my beds for ferns to thrive.
Really? Drug users hiding under the ferns???
hello from the depths of summer! ah. well.
have a wonderful dinner with the boys. laugh til it hurts! that’s the supreme test!
xoxo
We laughed a lot, as always. So grateful for laughter!
Your yard looks so nice. Gardening IS a lot of work; I realize it more and more. I do know people who garden with density of plants but they have small, contained, fenced yards that are almost like patio gardens; much easier to maintain ala square-inch gardening. Still very enjoyable – – comfy chair & table, maybe a little fountain bubbling away, a birdbath for those in flight, patch of grass, floral borders and some decorative ceramic pots; maybe one nice, not-towering shade tree (ornamental); works for me.
Instead, we have a good-sized yard front & back and neither my husband nor I am up to the physical side of the backbreaker part of gardening, as is the requirement of this house and the last one – – dealing with steep hillside. So, yes, expense of weekly gardener and 2-3 times a year a larger crew for brush clearing/tree trimming? Going to be very hard for us to continue with, as retirement looms. I’ve got a neighbor next door who’s just lived there for a year – – young dude; strong; works construction – – and he said to me last week, “I’m so sick of this hill. I had no idea this yard was going to give me such a headache when I bought this house.” It’s true, every day after work, now that the time has ‘changed’ and it’s lighter out in the evening, he’s always working in his yard and, believe me, it ain’t no showplace; yet. Hard to even see what diff he’s making, poor guy.
So, Claudia, he’s in his 20s and it’s about got him beat; can’t believe how it must be for you!
My parents had this house before me and, in the last 30 years of their lives, they did mostly let the yard ‘go’ such that it took my husband and I, once we bought the home – – with a landscaping crew of 4 guys, 5 days a week – – several months to cut it back and rediscover the property although, of course in all that ‘reclaiming of the jungle’ we were also doing major projects like new retaining wall, cement paths/borders, hillside ‘stairway’, all new drought-tolerant plantings and drip irrigation (and lawn removal, as grass is a water hogger and we live in perpetual SoCalif drought with off/on water restriction).
These are major expenditures that my young neighbor can’t even fathom such that, when they go to look at homes as first-time (younger) home buyers (entry-level market ), their big interests seem to be if the older home has been remodeled to reflect those ‘granite counter’ kitchens and baths, ‘ensuite’ master and whatever is the latest trend, putting no emphasis on what they’re going to do for a front & backyard. I’ve watched this happen again & again in my neighborhood over the past half-dozen years. But, personally, we overhauled our yard before we’ve improved the inside of the house because, well, we just did, not thinking of resale but for what our own needs were and we know if we sell we’ll never get our money out of it but, you know, you do what you do at the time. For now, although it’s a pain in the tush to maintain, we do love our yardspace. Tranquil. Feast for the eye.
An aside: I’m worried that it’s already mid-May and there are NO jacaranda trees blooming anywhere in my town. I purposely drove around looking for all my faves and they’re thin, spindly; with no blue-purple blooms. They usually start flowering as early as April 1 although others bloom a month or even two months later, giving us beauty to the landscape til about mid-July. I can’t figure out what’s going on; even in the worst of drought, like back in 2015, they were still blooming by now. Maybe a month from now will be a welcome surprise.
I’ve been trying to read up on the subject and jacs can have flower suppression due to excessive wind and we HAVE had an enormous amount of wind this year (like the hurricane-force wind we had which started the December wildfire) although our valley is always somewhat windy, like hundred-year-old records of weather have shown. (Almost any fruit orchard around here has a windbreak of trees like, I dunno what types, poplars and especially eucalyptus from former years; the farmers and ranchers don’t want to lose any fruit yield either. They need those taller long lines of trees at the borders of the planted acreage to hug the rows of smaller money-making trees.) The jacs, I’m reading, can decide one year to simply not flower (this is NEWS to me) but my fave count is at least a dozen trees and they wouldn’t all just be deciding to be fickle; so, I’m perplexed. They’re old, old trees. I’ve expected my young one in my yard, only planted four years ago, to be slow to flower but there’s no explaining the list of my faves which (a few of them) are likely a hundred years old by now. One of the most lush of these jacs grows in the poorest soil imaginable at the street, in front of a house that was built in 1914 or so; just a little house that looks like it’s about to fall down. I always fret that someday sooner than later, they’ll bulldoze that house and I do not want the tree disturbed!!
Hope you’re having a restful Saturday evening by now. Rest for a sore back is good.
Jacarandas are such beautiful trees – were they traumatized by the fires in some way?
your gardens, lawn and porch look terrific! hope you get plenty of time to just sit and enjoy the results of your hard work.
glad you could spend time with some two- and four-legged friends today. and rest your back. :)
i can handle the eight (ha) plants in my home, but if i had a lot of gardening and lawnwork to do – as much as you do (don’t know how you do it!) – i’d probably hire someone to help me with it. just not my thing. but decorating? i’ve always enjoyed making a place my home and couldn’t imagine having a stranger decide such personal things for me. plus i like wandering around antique shops in search of i-know-it-when-i-see-it things. :)
hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend!
kathy in iowa
At some point, it will be too hard on my back, so I’m trying to look ahead so I have to do less weeding and mulching – both of which cause back aches.
Good Morning …
Today’s topic of ‘gardening’ resonates with me from beginning to end.
Check your local papers for ‘plant sales’ held by local gardening clubs, historical society’s, local wildlife programs/centers, which have gardens as well for great PERENNIAL specimens or better yet take a GARDEN TOUR for engaging in educational/informative conversations … not to mention ideas that are outside of your realm. DO NOT DO TOURS if you can’t take photos! I’ve had wonderful success with these though I’m extremely choosy of my specimens since I have to work with the space & gardens I have within our association though NO ONE COMPLAINS about our yard … I just have TOO MANY driving by & interruptions.
INVASIVE perennials such a Bee Balm – I planted ours within a HUGE heavy duty tree pot from a nursery we set into the garden bed to keep it from spreading a sprig at a time since I’m a ‘neat nick’ { wink } Then I just planted other perennials around it , Corydalia- simply ‘weed’ in the spring all it’s set seed withing a certain radius, Masterwort- will transplant or let a volunteer or two create the ENGLISH COTTAGE GARDEN look I so love, etc … Since our growing season is so short from May 31st to September 19th { give or take } I always purchase the largest specimen{s} I can afford to give them a great hold. When I plant my babies I ALWAYS use Organic Bone Meal, Peat Moss & Moo Doo Composted Manure & even MoleMax {irritates, but doesn’t harm the DIGGERS mucus membranes} as a wildlife deterrent I use every year now since the compost I lay every year to build my beds attracts them!
I think I’ve overwhelmed you enough for one post! I conquer with you my friend … it’s been such a long winter in a tumultuous environment that digging in the soil is so therapeutic to one’s soul! Big hugs my dear. If you only lived closer I’d have given you some of the things I was dispatching … I TOTALLY get your idea for planting closer, tighter & less weeding. I’d love to know the ENGLISH SECRET, but they appear too tight lipped! I do weed my beds regularly even if it’s an hour or two after a day of work. I ‘love’ weeding & talking to my perennials.
I’m spending Mother’s Day in the garden spreading the composted manure, integrating the vintage market, re-cycling center, yard sale, etc… the garden love retrieved from our property shed, etc… Now if only we had some grass, but I’m not putting any energy there. Should we make the decision to move I’ve already a lot to ‘pot up’ for their trip … now if I could figure out how to take the wildlife with should we move in the next couple of years!
– xo
Anne
Thanks, Anne. I love my spreading bee balm, though, because the big garden bed is just that – big – so it fills the space nicely. The same with the tall David’s phlox. I’m going to take your advice – weed and talk to my perennials! I love that idea!
Being a perfectionist as a gardener is challenging to say the least! I wanted bee balm so badly within our pollinator beds this was the answer for me. I’m so glad easy going gardener’s such as yourself exist. I LOVE your garden photos and never wane on viewing them!
I’m sure my neighbors think I’m a nut! I talk to all the living things in our gardens whether I’m working or just doing the every morning walk-about! I noticed yesterday, my darling hubby, Dave has caught my disease of talking to the wildlife! As I was tending the needs of the rhubarb I rescued of my god parents { no longer with us } from the new homeowner last summer I was explaining and talking away as if it were going to answer me back! My husband says I think it actually hears and responds to you …
Be careful, Claudia … your neighbors will think you’ve flipped your lid they over hear you chatting away in the garden! LOL
– xo
PS … Last summer my husband was watching me take out the ‘meal worm feeders’ as I do every morning/evening {… to avoid bear issues} when he said I saw the gray squirrel & chipmunks come out within a yardstick of me waiting to feed, nuthatches, woodpeckers & chick-a-dees following me overhead and barely getting onto the hook when the woodpeckers {Hairy & Downy} would light onto it as I’d barely get it on the hook! The first couple of times I was nervous until I realized they weren’t intending harm! Upon my return into the house my husband chimes out, “I see you have a following Snow White!” LOL
I love, love this! What a wonderful gift you have. You ARE Snow White!
NO, not really! It just tickled my funnybone & thought you’d enjoy a good chuckle too! LOL
xo
Thankfully, no one lives that close so they won’t hear me!
* L.O.L * … not that either of us cares! { smile }
Your gardens and porch look wonderful – your hard work has really paid off! Now sit back and enjoy the view. Hope you are having a lovely time with your friends today.
I did, Janis. Thank you!
Enjoy the day and company (maybe your friends will have some extra plants for you from their garden). My front yard is vegetable beds and our growing season is coming to an end here in S. FL , but I hope to extend by planting densely and providing shade from papaya trees to keep the herbs & veggies cool as long as possible.
What about checking CraigsList for plants? I always put my extras up there and people are eager to take them and that way they have a home. I bet others do the same.
Almost all of their plants are new, as the designer has been reconfiguring the beds.
I will do that – I’ll check Craig’s List. Thanks, Cara!
Claudia…I have gotten my plants over the years since I bought this place at Lowe’s…when their plants start to looks a bit droopy they sell them at a big mark down…that includes all sorts of flowers and bushes…all I have to do is give them a bit of rescue and love and they are perfectly happy to be revived…Your place is looking so nice!
I also get many plants at the Amish and Mennonite greenhouses in this area…Very good prices…
Unfortunately, no Amish or Mennonite communities in my neck of the woods!
Thanks for the advice, Nancy!