Happy Independence Weekend! I only had to work a part day today, so that was nice. You just never know how much work will come in on a holiday.

With all that rain and now sun the last couple days and the garden explodes 😀

I am loving this mushroom a lot. It makes me want to make some for the back gardens, too, although there are no utility pipes back there 🙂 .

The cosmos keeps blooming. The nice thing about annuals is that they flower all summer long if you keep them deadheaded.

More snapdragons. I have always loved snapdragons.

 

I have a few perennials out front as well. The Agastache has more flowers on it.

 

I still haven’t seen any hummingbirds at it yet.  I have seen them, just not on my flowers or feeders.

This is liatris.  One of the plants I snagged from the old house in the spring.

More flowers on my little foxglove:

I love the freckled throats on them.  I have 3 foxglove plants and they are in the back of the garden bed and very small right now. So, no one can see them unless they go into the garden bed.  Or I guess all of you can see them since I put a photo up 😀

The front bed looks good for a first year:

There are 2 shrubs that are very tiny, one on each side (less than a foot tall now). One is a calycanthus and the other is a hydrangea. Then the rose bush in the middle. Those are the permanent items. The nice thing about perennials is most of them can be moved around as gardens change without much trouble.

In the back, the Enchanted evening has flowers and more buds:

My Belinda rose got attacked by squirrels. Last Saturday, I was out in the morning in the garden and everything was fine. I went back out in the afternoon and a squirrel had bitten off every single bud on that rose bush – and bent some canes.  How irritating. I may have to move the bush because it is in the pathway the squirrels always take by the trees.

The alium are getting closer to blooming!

Way in the back by my sign is the milkshake coneflower, which is also getting ready to bloom. Yay!

My butterfly bush has gotten really tall. It has one huge branch and a bunch of small ones. I had to stake it up. See how tall it is?

That’s 5 feet.  Those are buds getting ready to open as well.

Here is hoping the weather isn’t terrible tomorrow.  We have 2 parties to go to, but rain or shine – it will be a great day!

 

 

My favorite post of the week!  I love to peek out in the garden every day and see what is new. That’s the great thing about gardening. There is always something new and many times something unexpected!

On the annual front, the cosmos are filling out nicely.

 

This week the cleome also started sending out side blooms and are getting fuller:

I just love that color of snapdragon. Whenever you get a mix, you never know what color will come out.  Here is another nice color from the mix:

Whenever you buy perennials, unless you are buying the big mature pots, many times you often have to wait a year for blooms. It normally takes a year for them to get their feet. Then a small show of blooms the next year and then the third year is when they really take off.  I am always happy to see blooms on a new perennial.

This is Agastache, also called hyssop or hummingbird mint.  This is one I will get more of in hopes of attracting hummingbirds to the yard. It sends out little tubular flowers that the hummingbirds and hummingbird moths love. This one is called Rasberry daquiri:

 

Hopefully there will be some interest in this plant.

Around to the back – there is still a lot of work to do. I have this whole section that has become a dumping ground:

That fence was what had been pulled up from the side of the house and left in a pile. I need to put it on Craigs list for free and get it out of here since we aren’t going to put it back up. I started a compost pile here for now and I also stuck some daylilies here just for fun – and they are blooming. We aren’t totally sure what will be happening here. It is on the left of the patio.

My roses are blooming now.  This is Enchanted Evening and I love the color:

Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger; you may see a stranger across a crowded room..

Yes, I do sing that a lot. 😀

The free rose I got from Jackson and Perkins is also blooming and getting big. I was worried it ended up in too much shade, but it is throwing out blooms.

I also have some daylilies here. Just a clump. I removed most of them from this bed because I want to save it for my full sun plants. I actually thought I had only a clump of daffodils, but the lilies were mixed in there.

I will move this clump in the fall.

I received some drumstick aliums last year from a fellow gardener and they will be blooming soon!

I also wonder if anyone can help me identify these?  They are growing in the shade garden. It’s not Virginia creeper because it isn’t a vine. Each of these comes up as a separate plant.

 

I have seen them on the bike path as well, so they are some sort of woodland thing. They don’t flower as far as I know.

Looks like biking might be a bust this weekend, but we are going to try to get out early in the morning tomorrow and get to the lake if the forecast holds off until the afternoon.

I have blooms this week. Yay!  But first, work on our shed.  We really need a shed for all the outdoor stuff. Our garage is too small for anything more than the car and our bikes (and it is a tight squeeze for that). So, we need storage space outside for garden and maintenance stuff. Right now the lawnmower sits on the covered stoop outside the back door!  We decided after we sold the house that we would buy a shed. We got a 7 x 7 foot shed at Lowe’s and had it delivered. Now we need to assemble it. Eeek!

It’s going to go over on the right side by the fence.

Here is the disaster area in the back:

We also have a lot of brush from cutting everything down.  We put a lot out at the curb during the city pickup, but there wasn’t enough room for all of it, so we will be using it in our firepit as it  dries out.

I started moving the extra mulch to the back. I wasn’t going to mulch this bed while I am still working on it, but the weeds are driving me insane! I can’t keep up with it.  It looks better, actually.

My 100-pound rose bush made it through the move and a really tough winter:

This makes me really happy.

The lupine have established themselves and are growing. I don’t think they will bloom this year, though. I love the look of the leaves.

My annuals in front are really starting to grow now:

The cleome are getting taller. This will get bushier with more time.

I like these flowers. I never really had the room to grow them. Now I have all the room 😀

More snapdragons.

It’s funny that these can flop over in heavy rain and then they just start growing up from the ground. I staked this one back up after it was on the ground for a couple days and you can see the funny curve in it 😀

Now for my new purchase. With one of my gift cards, I got a David Austin English rose.  They are shrub roses that are blends of old fashioned roses and newer varieties. I pretty much only grow shrub roses or floribundas. I don’t want to mess with hybrid teas because they often require spraying and such and are too fussy for me.  Anyway, this is Fair Bianca:

I wish you could smell it, too. So fragrant!

I am over the moon about this. I now have 4 rose bushes and 2 climbing roses. Eeeeee!

Slowly, but surely.  Lori’s garden grows 😉

Other new plants added recently:  Beebalm, Russian Sage, bleeding heart and I sprinkled marigold and teddy bear sunflower seeds, which have sprouted finally.

Saturday is for riding. I think it will be the only good day of the weekend. Happy Father’s Day!

Continuing work in the beds.  I have cleared out a lot of the shade bed. I wasn’t thinking I would get to much of that this year, but we have been making such great progress this spring.  I had some astilbe roots to plant, so early in the spring I cleared a section and then finished the rest later. Here is what it looked like last year:

What a mess!  There really wasn’t much salvagable in there. Lots of weeds and a couple grape vines, which were old and not great.  The bush there on the left had been cut in half and was bare on one side, so that came out.  I did keep a few daylilies and some Virginia creeper.

I also found a tick on me after working in this area. Not really a surprise there, but it is good to get this cleaned out.

Here is it cleared out. Still some stuff popping up after I got the beds cleared, but without mulch that is going to happen.

 

I was pondering what to do here and John suggested a water feature!  I hadn’t even thought of that. It is close to the house, so running electric wouldn’t be too hard. That would be pretty cool.

Those hostas in the background. Now that they have filled out, I remember why I didn’t like them so much.  They are huge and need dividing.

I thought I would show one of my favorite tools for gardening. It’s one that I use every time I go out for all kinds of stuff.  You know how inside I love the taping knife because of its versatility. Same thing with this tool.  It’s called a Cape Cod  weeder.

I use it for more than weeding, but it does a great job at that. You can use the pointed end to uproot taproot weeds, or lay it on its side like this to scrape surface weeds:

See? Makes quick work of it.

It’s easy to get around and under plants with this.

My snapdragons are just starting to bloom in the front. I got the rocket ones, which are going to get several feet tall.

 

Geraniums blooming.

These are at the very front of our sidewalk. My hope is to put a peony on each side in this spot. Maybe this fall.

 

This weekend is the big craft festival in town. I can walk there this year, which is pretty neat. No worries about parking!  I am going to look for garden stuff and a walking stick if that particular vendor is there this year. Have a great weekend!

I am glad for this weekend to have arrived.   Yay!  The baby garden is shaping up now.  The first couple of years will be bare, but that is okay.  This is the year for annuals while I decide on perennials.

We need a ton of mulch for the beds in the front and back, but I figured that would wait until next year since any money spent was going towards the plantings.  Well, one of our neighbors stopped by and said she had extra mulch in her driveway and that we could have it.  We offered to pay for it, but she didn’t want to take any because it was good to see the neglected house being taken care of.  How nice is that?  All of our neighbors seem really nice.

Anyway, we hauled that mulch over 1 wheelbarrow at at time.  It was a lot of mulch, too.  She would have had to pay to have someone haul it all away.  We filled up the big front bed and have a bunch left to put probably in the back or on the other side of the front.

 

A lot less weeding will be happening now.  Up here, anyway.

The mulch makes everything pop, like my mushroom:

The cleome have some blooms on them.  These are supposed to be 3 to 4 feet tall by later in the summer to help fill in this spot.

 

This is my baby calycanthus shrub.

It has a ways to go to get to 5 feet tall 😀

This is the cosmos:

 

I have never had cosmos or cleome in my gardens before. 

The other side of the front is the wild and wooly side. 

I will be really glad when those bushes are gone.

The back garden is coming along.  We have this tree/shrub thing that is blooming.

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It provides a shady canopy and now that I got the ground cover cleared out from beneath it, I put in some of Debby’s fairy impatiens that she sent to me.

My sad little back garden.  My roses are doing well, though, and have some buds on them!  This bed is going to take a long time to get going, but that is the fun part.

 

I want to buy allllllll the plants for here 😀

The back yard is great for gathering, too.  We had cake and firepit enjoyment!

 

 

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Have a great weekend!

Progress being made in the garden bed.  No more plant ‘acquiring’ by me from the old house anymore.  Oh well.  The buyer wants to keep the garden beds, so that is good. I am giving her a schematic of the old garden so she knows what is what along with my email if she has any questions.  Still a little sad to see that go.

Anyway, I had hacked off some iris rhizomes along with the root clusters and brought them here. One chunk had buds, which I probably should have taken off to help the plant establish, but I just couldn’t do it.  It had full root system, so I thought it would be fine and here it is today:

This clump probably could be divided again this year and I might do that.

I had also lopped off a couple of the Boysenberry buttercup, which did not have any buds, but darned if they didn’t bloom anyway!  This flower loves me   

We also started working on the slate path.  This involved setting out the stones where we wanted them, then digging up the grass and digging out a trench.  Then we laid down a weed barrier:

We used this edging material, which is kind of spendy, but is better than sharp edged metal and looks better than the rolled edge stuff. It shouldn’t heave in freeze/thaw cycles either.

Then paver base:

 

Of course, when we laid stones in, we couldn’t quite get them in the same spots because of the connecting points of the trim and then sometimes the stones were too thick to go back into the same spot. So that meant rearranging again and trying to find the right pieces.  Good thing we have a bunch to choose from.  After we got them in, we then realized that keeping the stones level with each other ended up have them end not level with the perpendicular sidewalk, which slopes downward. Sigh.  So, about one-third came back up along with the sand and the barrier to add dirt back in to raise a slight slope.  Now we need to put the stones back in place before I show the final picture.

A few more blooms – I found a patch of forget-me-nots in the back yard:

 

And my Zephrine actually got a baby rose bloom on it 😀

 

These seem to be going well in the partially shaded area and have new growth on them.  I wasn’t expecting any blooms at all or at least not for a while. so that was fun.

Hopefully we will get the path finished up this weekend. Looks like biking only Saturday and we will have to stick closer to home because of afternoon storms. I am thinking we might check out the Elvis festival in Lake George just for fun 😀

Not a ton blooming now, but that is what happens with a new garden bed.  I have been buying a lot of small plants.  It’s hard having the patience to wait for the small perennials to get big, but I would rather buy 10 small plants for $30 than 1 big plant for $30.  It just takes time and patience.

We were at the old house mowing the other day and I ‘acquired’ more plants.  There are blooms over there.

Alium:

 

And the Amethyst in Snow Centaurea:

 

I took some rootlings of that one. I love it so much and if these don’t take, I will certainly be purchasing more – but crossing fingers for free 😀

On to Radiance Manor:

We do have a rhododendron in front.  Or rather I think there are 2 or 3. They are wild and half dead, but it looks like a few bases in there:

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I would like to keep these if I can. I have never had a rhody before, so I don’t know much about them. I was reading that for shrubs in this state, you are to do what is called a rejuvenation pruning, which is cutting it waaaay down and hope it comes back. Eeek!  So, if I lose the plants, no biggie, and if it works – great!

The slate that we got the other day will be used likely for a path from the driveway to the front walk – right along here:

We aren’t even worried about the lawn yet. It’s in terrible shape, but at least the weeds are green.

When we were digging out the bed here and in the back, we uncovered more slate tiles.  How convenient!  I laid some of them down in the big bed for a walking path:

Now I need to bury them a bit. I need to place other pieces here and there so I can walk into the garden bed without compressing the soil much.

I also got a butterfly bush.  Doesn’t look like much here:

This is going to be the jewel, though.  It’s the big boy – Black Knight.  This will get 6 to 8 feet tall. I have the room in this garden for it.  These grow pretty fast and this should be a nice size this year and produce flowers.

I also found a place for my broken pot.  A snow and ice slide this winter busted the bottom off this, but it still will stand on a flat surface, so I just plunked it on a rock in the bed with a sweet potato vine in it.

 

I am trying a new plant this year.  Lupines.  I have always wanted to give them a shot.

Lupines can be really finicky, but the nursery had these on sale for 5 plants for $10.  How could I resist? These are in a partial sun spot, so fingers crossed.

I also have one of my favorite flower combos started.  Globe thistle together with coneflowers:

A mixed of ‘acquired’ and purchased.  Also, note I chopped some iris rhizomes from the old house as well.  You can also see one of the stumps in the background there. We dug up 3 from this garden bed and there are 2 left, but they are not in an area imminent for planting, so I am leaving them for now. The walking path actually will go there.

Nothing like a bare baby garden bed.

 

It will be fun taking a picture in a few months and seeing how much these grow.

Spring is fully here now. We did have frost warnings the last couple nights, though. Temps got in the 30s, but it didn’t seem to affect anything.  There are some late tulips in town. Saw these on a walk this week:

 

 

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This week brought actual planting going on in the garden beds. We were at the old house and I dug up a few plants and saw this:

I definitely want to get some of these at some point for the new gardens.  

I got a bunch of annuals for the front bed since I honestly wasn’t expecting to make this much progress with it and didn’t have much planned yet.  The annuals will give some life to the bed while I start adding the baby perennials.

I grabbed some irises from the old house, coneflowers, liatris and some centaurea.  Not sure if they will survive the transplant or not, but no harm, no foul if they don’t.   For annuals, I got some cosmos:

 

They will get about 2 feet tall.  I also got some cleome for height, which will look like this (hopefully)

 

And some tall snapdragons.

My lily of the valleys are in full bloom.

 

 

I am over run with them!

This is what happens when you don’t keep control over a spreading plant.

There is a mix of LOTV and daylilies all down the side here. Some of that is on the neighbor’s property as well.

I was so happy to see this in the back yard:

 

My razzmatazz coneflower that I brought with me from IL about 10 years ago and moved last fall to this house. My old friend. So happy to see it survived the winter.  It’s funny – this plant has been the same size for 10 years. It is sterile, so it doesn’t make seedlings and it doesn’t get big enough to divide. It is a very strange plant.

Pixie was watching me from the dining room window:

 

My hostas popped up in the last week from nubs to this:

 

I was going to dig these up and put astilbes in their place, but then decided to leave them this year since I am lacking in plants right now. I am not the biggest fan of hostas, but they are green and growing. Not to mention this bed is full of those white rocks and it will take a long time to get the bed clear of those.

I got more plants today, too!

 

All of those plants I purchased over the winter at sale prices. The wait is worth it, though!  These are from Bluestone Perennials, which is my favorite online company.  Their service is very good and I especially like the ecofriendly coco pots the plants are packed in:

 

These pots go right in the ground so there are no little plastic pots to recycle. Less waste.  

So guess what the agenda is for Friday night? Planting!!  I know how to partay.

I finally have blooms for What’s Blooming, how about that?  This year’s posts are going to be sparse on blooms as I am building a new garden bed. Maybe I should change the title of this post for the future. 😀

We stopped by the old house and I took some pictures of what is blooming there.  That garden bed had a lot of winter damage. Looks like 2 of the 3 rose bushes there are gone.  I will pull them up in a couple weeks -just to make sure they are dead- if we haven’t sold the house yet. I need to also grab some irises (irides??) since we aren’t closing until who knows when.  Anyhoo – some flowers:

Beautiful hyacinth!

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These are the Apricot Dreams tulips that are so old. Tulips usually aren’t super long-lived as the original clumps, but these are going on 5 years, I think?

This is the Monte Carlos tulip that doesn’t even look like a tulip 🙂

Now back to Radiance Manor and the work that is being done.  We finally got the left half of the front bed de-bushed.

 

Digging out stumps is major work. It looks like a blast zone:

Check out this mammoth stump!

It is really too heavy to just pick up, so it got dragged over to the side. It needs to dry up and then we will cut it up. The city takes brush and stuff up to 4 inches in diameter, so this obviously can’t be put at the curb. 😀 We dug up 4 stumps with more to go out back.

It was looking so bare that I just stuck some tippy pots in the ground.

Not their permanent place, but good for now.  I put in some dahlias and yanked some vinca ground cover out of the the bed on the other side for trailing.  Not sure what that metal thing is to the right. Some sort of utlity item – maybe water?

I think it looks like a little mushroom and I just might paint it red with white spots for fun.

My few tulips out back are blooming and look nice.

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On lonely little daffodil bloom:

Guess who is going to be planting platoons of bulbs this fall?  Think it will be me??

The magnolia tree also has bloomed and is lovely!

I was pretty excited because I got plants in the mail this week.  Debby sent me some babies from her garden and I have them potted up to try to recover from a cross country journey:

Hopefully some of them will make it.

I also got my Zephrine climbers today.

I tried a new company for these roses, called Great Garden Plants. They sent me a free plant with the order, too.  A sunsparkler sedum.  Free gifts are always nice.  They also included a gift for Pixie in the form of rubberbands. She goes crazy over rubberbands – although I try to keep them away from her because she eats them.

I was thinking I got bareroot roses, but I guess I ordered the potted ones. I already received my other bareroot rose from Jackson and Perkins and *they* sent me a free rose bush as well!  Maybe everyone knows I need plants. Here is hoping they do well and I will update – obviously :D. 

Thank you for all the comments on the bathroom update.  We are enjoying it – and enjoying it being done!  

Now for some garden news…finally…I was really pleased to see some things out in the garden this week!

 

Can you see those? Tulip shoots!  I should have more coming up, but those might be later tulips.  I also see a ton of daylilies, which I knew were there, and some daffodils mixed in there.

 

If anyone wants daylilies, let me know. I have platoons of them. These are the really tall old fashioned orange ones. A lot of these will be moving from this bed as it is the full sun bed and I have other plans for it.

Our magnolia tree survived that wretched winter:

 

Unfortunately, we have to cut a big branch off of it because it is pushing the fence over. Or we need to cut away part of the fence.  However, this tree has buds!

 

I am pretty excited about having a magnolia.  I know next to nothing about trees and not much about shrubs, so I have some learnin’ to do.  We need shrubbery as we are pulling out a bunch this year.

Some things that didn’t fare so well? Those of you that read the post about the snow slide off the roof – well, the snow from that slide is almost gone except this part:

What it left in its wake was damaged ornaments.

That’s not supposed to be in 2 pieces.  Neither is my sundial:

The snow and ice is heavy when it comes rushing off a roof. It snapped the metal clean in half. This is why you wouldn’t want to be standing under it.  😯

Now I know where *not* to have stuff come next winter.

At least spring is finally starting.

I also have to show off my new colorful shoes!

 

We were out shopping the other day and John was looking for shoes. I was not, but isn’t that when you always find something?  These are a brand like Dansko and they are so, so comfortable. I couldn’t believe how comfy they were and so I impulse bought them.

 

They aren’t leather, but cloth. They don’t match any of my clothes, but I don’t care 😀  I wonder if I can get away with wearing them with shorts?