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This is what is happening in my world:
1. Lost another tomato and a pepper to wilt. Dang!
2. Went to a local daylilly farm and found 5 that had to come home with me. They are so pretty and they dig them right up out of the ground. Good big clumps. Most of the ones I got had buds so I will get pictures as they open.
3. I continue to plant out and now I am rearranging a bed. The bed by my back door is full of gerber daisies. This is what the former owner planted. I enjoy them very much BUT Wayne fed them with Miraclegrow and they look like giant collards or something. They are way too crowded and so I am transplanting them. But honestly, I have the worst luck when I move them. They just wither up and die within days. I know it is too hot and too dry, but I gotta do something! I am watering carefully and trying to baby them along. This is one of my favorites.
As I move them out and make room I am putting down a new rose--Julia Child-- and transplanting some zinnias to add more color and attract the butterflies. Here is my zinnias and phlox patch. There are new zinnias coming up so I have plenty to move around.
This same bed has a 4 oclock that is finally opening some. It was partially open this morning.
4. My hibicus is blooming and I love it. This is another bed I have been working on and it is looking better.
5. My little fat dog suffers in the heat (as all little fat things do, especially me). I have to keep his hair short. He thinks he is so cute.
6. I have my neice, Madison, with me this week. If she isnt talking she is singing. Me and Wayne are use to peace and quiet. We could hardly hear the ball game tonight on TV and you KNOW LSU is in the College World Series. This is serious TV. In reality we love keeping her. She entertains us.
7. For years I thought flowers came in pink or purple. Now I am learning to use other colors. I love this black eyed susan and plan to save seeds so I can mix it in with my pink next year. Yardgranny has a large patch of these and they are so nice.
We have to get up early to go out and putter around and water the containers before it gets too hot. I enjoyed the way the sun hit this area this morning.
Peace and Love.
Can I just tell yall how much it rained Sunday night?? 3 inches.It is now Monday night and parts of my yard is still under water. (we do have some drainage problems). Still, I cant complain. I am always thankful for the rain.
The next part of my yard that gets attention is the side on the right (I guess it is the east side). Full morning sun, afternoon shade. We havent done a whole lot and it shows. I have a big gardenia that is going to get a big prune job once the flowers quit. It was infested with white flies in the spring.
To one side is a stand of daisies and a very poor rose bush.
I worked some last year on this other side of the gardenina. I have a hibicus, daylily, butterfly bush and a few little plants.
You can tell it is neglected. I spred a few seeds around in there the other day but the rain may have washed them away. It is my mission this week to fill this poor little bed up with something!! I do believe I will have to divide some sedum and iris and maybe dig a few lilly bulbs. I have some zinnia and sunflower seedlings that are ready to plant out. I dont even have a statue or bird bath over here!! Maybe a lantana would help...wonder if I can get one on a bargin table?
Peace and Love.
The heat is on here in sunny SC. The good thing is we are getting thunderstorms pretty frequently and that is making things jump.
Now how am I suppose to study the seed sites and make a wish list with this big orange cat in front of the screen? She likes to help me pick things out.
Wayne made another raised bed frame last weekend. We will probably get dirt next weekend and save this for a fall planting..
This is my volunteer zinnia patch beside the driveway.
I started out with Thumbelina zinnias and most seem to be pink or lavender.
Except for one cream and two whites. I havent ever had white before.
I have fallen in love with daylilies again. I have done some research and was amazed at the colors that are available. Here is one that came to me from my mama.
I dont know the name of this lily, but it is great. This is her 3rd year and she made a lot of new stems this year. I plan to move bulbs from this around the yard when the blooms finish. It stands about 7 ft tall.
My neighbors hydrangea sticks through the fence. We saw this little critter on our 'round' tonight.
Lastly, I cut a few flowers to bring in and enjoy.
Peace and Love.
Well here it is June 11th. I have flowers blooming and yet I continue to plant more. Went to Wally this morning and got a bag of 3 "guacamole" hosta roots and a bag of 20 gladelous bulbs. The glads will be a pinky purple. That is one plant that I have neglected to plant enough of. I love them. From seed we have started Sweet Williams, more hollyhock, coleus and coreopsis. I had a bag full of coreopsis seeds in the shed that we had forgotten about. We tested a few and sure enough, they sprouted. I plan to have many of those.
Here is a red/orange lantana growing beside a yellow yarrow and a tomato. It is in a bed by the pool and seems to like it there. I love the bright color of it.
These are in the same bed. I just got this daylily and put it beside the orange coneflower.
This pink hollyhock has just opened up. It's in the same bed as the first 2 pictures.
Our beans were suppose to be bush beans, but they are vining.
This is tomato row. Plenty of green, no red ones yet. With the tomatoes we have basil, marigolds and volunteer sunflowers.
Next is pepper row. They are doing good, lots of blooms and a few baby peppers.
My hycinthia beans that I got from KeyWee are sprouting. Oh joy. Cant wait for those to take off. I have a large patch of volunteer black eyed susan vines that I am thinking of making a teepee for. Also, we had a thunderstorm tonight that gave us half an inch of rain. We had a half inch last night too.
Peace and Love.
Friday night was kinda tough here. I was keeping my nephew for a few days, which was fine. He is 8 and a huge helper. Then Daddy needed to come for the night. OK...not a problem. Daddy is 80 and has alzheimers and has to be watched constantly. He doesnt sleep too good away from home and spent a good part of Friday night roaming about the house looking at things. He is very pleasant just confused. I stayed up with him. So when Wayne got up Saturday morning, he watched Daddy and the boy so I could lay down and sleep a while. I got up at 11 and went out to see what they were doing. This is what I found.
They had put down mushroom compost and made me a path through my "desert"!!! I couldntn believe he had done that. It doesnt look like a desert any more. It looks like a real live flower bed. He is the greatest.
We are still having luck with the BioDome. We now have more zinnias, red sunflowers, bee balm, gaillardia and black eyed susans started.
It is a lot of fun to watch the process. Oh and I do have a new black hollyhock this year. It looks short because the stem runs along the ground for about 2 feet from the base of the flower. Strange...I am thinking it was wanting more sun, maybe?
Here is a happy daylily.
And finally, my hydrangea. She has a passion flower running through her branches but it doesnt seem to bother her too much. However, I am finding little passionflower vines under the hydrangea and in other plants. Wayne told me they were weeds, but I wanted one so bad. We both think it is beautiful.
Peace and Love
My BIL gave us a mess of zucchini and squash. We cooked them up tonight with some onions and they were absolutely delish. Daughter made a pot of red chicken stew... this is chicken (whole or parts) cooked in a pot with equal amounts of ketchup and coke. The liquid must cover the chicken. It cooks up tender and the gravy is good on rice.
We went to a local nursery today (in the pouring rain) because we had some discount coupons that had to be used. I got a couple of yellow flowers. The first is a rudbeckia, called glorisia daisy.
I planted it in. I dont know the name of the other. It wasnt labeled and I didnt think to ask.
I thought about my dry desert area a lot today. I have decided to make me a path through the bed and then just fill it in and keep it watered. I put down 3 rosemarys that I had rooted, a red daylily, lambs ear, mint, ajuga, and a black eyed susan. Most of these were divisions from plants around the yard. After it had rained, the holes were much easier to dig. I am pleased with the results. I pulled a chair out there to sit and study the area and enjoyed the view so much I will leave the chair. It has a great close view of the bird feeders...which had a lot of activity this afternoon. I am going to do as Yardgranny suggested and use pots to fill in and maybe try to put small birdhouses in short posts for decoration. This is the view from the front of the bed after adding some more plants.
There are some oak leaves in the bed. We are going to rake them up and add mushroom compost over the dirt. Then we will run the lawn mower over the oak leaves to try to shred them some and put them back down. It takes so long for oak leaves to break down on their own. Here is another view of the bed.
This looks like a daylily alley. They do look nice blooming.
Yardgranny gave me this beautiful yellow one. It was a large clump and I divided it up to get it started in several places. I love it.
Finally, here is my broken eared rabbit peaking through the volunteer zinnia patch. This is the view I get from my kitchen window. It wont be long before he is hidden.
Peace and Love
I do have a problem area that I need to discuss with yall. But first let me tell you that I went to YardGrannys house today and oh how I love her gardens. I think she may be magical. She sent me home with 4 bags of goodies.....green goodies.....flowering goodies!!! My nephew is 8 and he helped me plant all afternoon. However--we did have supper at a decent hour. We had balogna (or as we call it, baloney) sandwiches and red seedless grapes and washed it down with pink lemonade. For a bedtime snack we had watermelon....yeah, I know, we will all be up using the bathroom all night. Nothing new here.
I have an area in my back yard that butts up against a brick wall and has a fairly large oak tree shading it for part of the day. It does get afternoon sun. It is DRY......every bit of moisture gets sucked right up. I have mulched it heavily. I call it my desert. So digging is next to impossible because of all the roots. I have wondered and pondered on what to really do with it. Along the edge I was able to get some flowers started, mostly from 6 packs and seeds. This pix was taken about a month ago and has since starting filling in.
Here is the back wall. I do have a rose that has topped the wall (8ft) to reach straight up and get sun. The fig grows to the left to get as much sun as possible.
I am always thinking of my flowers when I go to sleep. The other night, it finally struck me to make an herb garden here. I bought a lavender and stuck it in and it's doing good. Dusty miller will grow there and I already have parsley under the rose. I will have to grow as many plants as possible from seed so I can plant them in without having to dig a giant hole. What do yall think? Farther away from the tree its easier to dig and we grow cukes there. I will try to get a better picture of the whole bed tomorrow. Any ideas for hot dry partial shade?
Love and Peace.
A week or so ago we purchased a BioDome from Parks Seeds. It is a nifty little box with a tray that holds sponges (which you plant in) and has a vented top. You put water in the box to keep the sponges moist. We immediately went about seed starting and I am happy to announce that we have had 2 rows pop up. Tonight we finished filling it up with seeds. It holds 60 sponges in all. When the plant pops up you plant sponge and all in the ground or in a larger pot. I do think my purple zinnias are big enough to pop in the garden. Happy Day,.
I also went to Lowes this morning to get a Poblano pepper to replace one that had died. I managed to find a varigated catmint, mouse ears hosta, RED daylilly (Pardon Me is its name) and a bag of orange lillies. Happy Happy Day.
We have a problem eating supper at a decent hour in the summer. We want to play outside til dark, then come in and shower then eat. Well, eating supper at 9 oclock is not good for the digestion. New rule, eat supper before going out to play. Soooooooo, that meant I had to have supper ready when Wayne got home.....Oh any of yall that know me, know that cooking is my least favorite job. So I fried chicken tenders. They were good. It made me wonder why we quit frying stuff to start with. So for the summer, I for one, am cooking and eating all the fried chicken I want. I especially love it with sliced tomatoes. Yep, that's my summer menu.
My cat, Peter Marie, just came in here meowing. She doesnt usually talk much. I looked around and dont you know she had brought me a big old water bug. I told her how proud I was of her andnow she is on patrol. Poor Petey, usually all she gets is flies or tiny yard bugs. This may be her first big kill. As you can see, she is very ferocious.
Peace and Love.
First -- my shady area that I am working on-- my daughter gave me pavers for Mothers Day and I put some around the camillia and put my pots on the paver. This area is coming along.
Now for the front bed. I have been working on this area for the past 2 years. Wayne got the old stumps out and trimmed all the azaleas and shrubs. Then we added several bags of good garden soil to help amend it. We bought gerber daisies and salvias. We transplanted iris, coneflower, yarrow and put out zinnia seedlings and scattered cosmos seeds. I am looking forward to this all filling in.
I had tried my hand at rooting a few things. My catmint, salvia, sedum and rosemary took. The rose cuttings in potatoes.......not so good. 3 died and 1 is still green. I will try another method.
Yesterday the sky was blue and it was hot and humid. Our butterfly bush seems to love that kind of weather. We had a couple of visitors.
We got a little rain last night. Everything is green and happy this morning. In my new bed by the pool the cosmos and hollyhocks are popping right up. My volunteer zinnia bed is starting to bloom. The cukes have blossoms and the we have some baby tomatoes. Love this time of year.
Peace and Love.
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