thequiltedgardener's Blog

Wow, my winter list doesn't quite compare to the mental list I made yesterday while playing in the yard.  The woodchips that my family so graciously helped me move from the driveway to the edge of the property in the fall is about two feet deep-literally.  Our neighbor had a bunch of trees cut down so I went over and asked the tree service what they were going to do with the chippings?  They had no problem driving thier dump truck over to the next driveway and dumping.  After the second load, DH thought that would be enough.  Good thing I went with that.  The pile looked one size, but upon moving the chips.........became another.  I know that some people wouldn't use the woodchips because they are "fresh", I had read somewhere that it wasn't good to use fresh ones near plants because it may kill the plants.  Honestly, the price was right and I had done this twice before and not lost anyone!  Free is always good!  In an effort to remove the huge pile from the driveway so we could put the cars in the garage if it snowed-this was end of October-early November, we spread and piled along the property line in the back.  My intention is to keep the weeds from growing on the town property.  Those weeds tend to become trees and then next thing we know, we are dealing with even more mosquitos because of the shade..........and then there is the shade-we like sun!  There are enough trees there that they are already fighting for light.

So......................in the back corner yesterday I continued to clean up the plant debris left behind from leaves dying back , and then filling in the woodchips around the babies before any weeds rear thier heads.  The multiplication that went on back there is wonderful.  In my minds eye it is beautiful.  The area where I have put the green house in past years will need to be planted but I think I can manage to find enough plants to fill the space.  This woodchipping thing is hard on an old girl.  I have to get this done first because once the plants get bigger it will be harder to mulch around them without damaging thier leaves.........guess I am really saying that I will hve to be more careful.

Because the neighbors cats like to hide in the plantings near the birdfeeder, I thinned out some of those before they got to big. 

The dilema I am having at the moment is again about the front pool garden. Having been out back I can see that I wil need to spend alot of time now to prevent spending my time later weeding.  At the same time things are sprouting that I wanted to move to the front pool garden and I am afraid that if they get too big they won't transplant well.  I have a lovely Chinese foliage plant that has made it self quite comfortable in the garden........in fact at a glance it looks like it has taken over!  I love ths plant and really want to introduce it in other areas in the yard by when I tried before, now is the best time to do so-at this size.  I may be forced to put them into pots so the roots can grab hold and then transplant later as if a purchased plant would be.

I spoke with my mother lst night and she had left her recliner and spent two days outside in her garden.  Additionally she went to Lowes and picked up a few plants.  We talked about what I have to offer and we are going to make some swaps.  I really wanted to have more bleeding hearts for the back and apparently she has lots of volunteers at her place.  The purple coneflowers, blazing stars, tower white columbine, chinese foliage and lemon balm are all things that interest her.  A few Iris will go over to her also-she only has one kind.

This weekend we are going to do another college visit and it is going to rain-according to the weather man-so I am not sure how much outside time I am going to have.  I may take a couple of vacation days if the weather is nice next week so I can play- a girl needs to play!

Off to the races.........................
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