thequiltedgardener's Blog

It is going to be another B E A U T I F U L day in Southeastern Connectiuct today and though I will be sitting at my desk for the majority of it I have lots to look forward to.
Yesterday, I left work on time and drove home and threw on gardening clothes and got busy.  Even though I had cleaned out the leaves in the fall, the moon garden [in photos has trellis] was full of leaves.............and TONS of acorns.  The srquirrels have been tearing up the yard for sometime looking for thier acorns and all the while they were resting safely in my garden!  Eight or nine wheelbarrows later, the garden was cleaned out and the beauty of plants reaching for the sun can be seen.  I love how they make their way through the soil.
Fortunately for me, it was also the time of night when the birds feed so I was serenaded by the songbirds.  Once again the red winged black birds have located our birdfeeder.  Once they find you they tell all their friends and wipe out the food.  I don't mind much, only that their presence keeps away the songbirds.  While I am outside the blackbirds sit in the trees white the other birds come in to eat and sing.  Nothing says spring like singing birds and baby plants.
Even for a girl with pictures, I found myself out there saying............now, this is where  this plant is, no I moved it over there so that means this is ..........---.  At the end of the season last year I made a few changes and don't quite recall where they all landed.

Today the sun is shining again.  So I will run errands on my way to work so I can rush home and get digging......ok maybe not digging, but cleaning out two more beds.  The last one will be the one I want to dig out.  Seems each year I dig this garden out........did I blog this aleady?  Can't remember-must me the mid-life mind at work here!  :)

This bed is viewed from the office and the lower bedroom and is on what I refer to as the front side of the pool.  The humingbirds are in abundance due to the windowbox flowers and the feeders so I wanted to incorporate some of thier favorites here along with flowers that attract butterflies.  I tend to be drawn to the purple/blue white and red colors so that is what I am going with.  The problem really is that I have not been able to balance the bloom time in this bed.  It is feast of famine and durring the famine all you see is greens..........and they are all very similar so it really isn't as appealing to me as it was in my mind.

This year I ordered a black knight butterfly bush to add here and am going to thin out some of my other favorites from around the yard, filling in the spaces with lemon balm and chinese foliage to add that needed green with a variety of leaf shape and shades.  The other challenge is that the bed is long and fairly narrow so I tend to think that I can plant more than the space allows.  Widening the bed would make the most sense, but this is the path we use to get under the deck with the wheelbarrow and hoses and things so I can't really close it off.  Making it smaller would make it impossible for the mower to go throw and that is always a criteria in the bed planning.  Maybe I will remove all the grass there..........hey, maybe that will work.  Oh, did I mention the water?  This area receives the water from the downspout and althogu it was my intention to catch that water, rainbarrels haven't been purchased yet.........and I am not sure they are in the budget this year.  So wetnes can be an issue when there is extensive amounts of rain.

Several times over the last two weeks I have drawn up what I would like to do so now it is a matter of digging out what is there, amending the soil-because I can, and then planting.  This task willl also create the need to find a place to put the things that are there now that won't stay............that was going to be one of the other big projects this year but that is a whole nother story!

Off to work.  Thankfully I have what most would consider a wall of windows overlooking the channel so I can enjoy the beauty of the day even while inside.