Instrument of Grace

Kitchen Garden Update

Here's a kitchen garden update, although as I write this, the photos have not yet caught up with the reality. 

On Sunday, Garden Man installed the "walkway" in the Kitchen Garden. I didn't really want the walkway, because it takes up too much valuable space, but I tried living with the stepping stones and just wasn't satisfied. Once the walkway was in place, I could start planting. On Sunday, the high here was 93 degrees. In APRIL. I'm just glad the humidity was low and we had a breeze. As the Kitchen Garden is in sun a good bit of the day, I waited until late in the afternoon to plant a few things.

On the left side of the photo, you can see the little Mugho Pine.  Just to the right of the pine is a trio of Greek oregano. To the right of the oregano, with wet soil, is a row of basil. Gotta have basil, and lots of it. I've learned over the years to pinch, pinch, pinch to get fullness and to stake. For some reason, our basil loves to flop over late in the season.  To the right of the basil are two squash plants, one a green zucchini and one a yellow straightneck which have since been shifted slightly so I'd have room for a delicata. I love delicata!  Toward the right side, where the ground is wet, I planted some arugula and chard seedlings. And the Kitchen Garden is well on its way.

Check back soon - see that box sitting up on the deck? There are some more herbs to be planted, and I've found my tomatoes, cucumber and eggplant as well as some marigolds and some seeds. I'm so excited about our garden this year.

Ponies In The Garden

Dee, of Red Dirt Ramblings, asked, so I'm telling the story.

 A few posts ago, I mentioned that we have ponies in our garden.  That's what Garden Man and I call our peonies. But we didn't always call them ponies.

It all started with Maria. I work in a large building, and the maintenance services are contracted out to another company. Even though the contract changes from time to time, the folks keeping our building clean and maintained usually stick around for a while. Maria was the person who maintained our wing on the fourth floor of our building. She was a teeny-tiny older lady with a shy smile. When you see folks every day, you tend to speak and smile to each other, and it was no different with Maria. She was a native Spanish speaker, and her English was a little rough. I have no idea how we got started talking about gardens, but one day we did. Maybe gardeners just recognize each other, at least that's what I like to think. Somehow we got on the subject of daylilies, and she said she'd bring me some Ozark Sundrops, Oenothera macrocarpa if I brought her a daylily. So I did and she did, and we shared. I'm really glad we had that exchange, because those Ozark Sundrops are Garden Man's favorites in our garden.

But ponies? Well, from time to time, Maria would pass by my office and tell me how the daylilies were doing. Sometimes she spoke of other flowers in her garden. One day, she said her ponies were getting big. I was surprised. I didn't know she had animals, too. So I asked her what kind of ponies, and she said she didn't know. She did say they smelled good, and one was red. Hmmmmmm. That COULD apply to horses. I've always loved horse hay-breath, and there is such a thing as a red sorrel and a red bay. Then she said she had a pink one her grandmother gave her, and one her mother divided for her. That made me realize pretty quickly we weren't talking about horse-ponies, but I still  had no idea what we were talking about.  Then, she said one smelled like roses, and I got it. PEONIES! She was talking about peonies.

And ever since, I've called them ponies. And every time, I think about Maria and her passalong Ozark Sundrops, and I smile.

P. T. Barnum Said . . . . .

There's a sucker born every minute. Don't I know it.

A while back, I posted about a too-good-to-believe offer from Horticulture magazine. I took them up on the offer, and I've received my first issue. It's not bad, not bad at all. I wish some of the articles were more in-depth and less like sound bites, but the photography is nice, and I like the glossy paper (not QUITE as nice as Fine Gardening, however). I've received only one issue, so I don't think it's fair to make judgement at this point.

But remember the three free gifts I got with my subscription?  They arrived yesterday. Designing for Shade, Designing With Perennials and Designing With Containers were all listed as publications of Horticulture. I should have keyed in on the word publication. You know, publication can mean anything from a hardbound book to a stapled pamphlet. In this case, think stapled pamphlet. Oh, yes, they are beautifully photographed, and they have nice, weighty glossy paper. And each one, not counting front and back covers, has four pages (that's one signature, or piece of paper, folded in the middle to give four page surfaces).  The whole thing is two 11 x 17 inch pieces of paper stapled together in the middle. Not only are they pamphlets, they are skinny pamphlets. I know, I said they had lovely, full color photos. They even have a bit of information I might find useful. But as an intermediate gardener, I already know most of the content.  If you offered these for sale, I wouldn't buy them, even for a dollar each.

When I said in that earlier post you could stamp "sucker" in red right on my forehead, I had no idea just how much of a sucker I was. Now I do. And I feel duped. These "gifts" aren't gifts at all. While I may get more than my money's worth from the subscription (only time will tell), I will forever feel suckered in, if you will, by these "gifts."  I doubt the folks at Horticulture intended for those receiving these publications to feel cheated, but that's how I feel. They were listed as gifts, but would any on the staff at Horticulture give these as "gifts" to their gardening friends or family? I doubt it. When it comes time to renew, will I remember the articles and useful information, or will I remember feeling cheated by my three free "gifts"?  I suppose only time will tell.

Coming Along Nicely

Taking a walk around my garden is better than medicine. I know I get mad when I spot evidence the rabbits have visited, but there is so much good going on. Just a quick walk around lifts my spirits and gives me energy to face the next pile of chores. Gardens are good medicine!

My peonies (we smile and call them ponies, and I guess one day I'll have to tell the story) seemed to leap from the ground. They are still leggy and coltish with leaves held clustered together. I was surprised to look into one of the clusters today and find a flower bud and an ant. Unfortunately, I seemed to have lost some of the photos sharpness when I resized. I'll have to rework my technique. Still, it's a nice image.

And the Redbuds, Cercis canadensis, are in full flower around these parts. My drive home from work shows them growing wild all along the roadways. Since they are in my Big Six, seeing so many in my daily commute makes me smile.  We have five seedlings we brought from our former home, and they are all growing like weeds, which is fine with me. One has increased in size significantly over the last two years, and it really looks like a tree, now. This year, it's completely covered with pink buds. Here's a closeup. I hope these cheery flowers make you smile as much as they do me.

Happy Saturday! I hope you can garden.

Coming Soon to a Salad Bar (for Rabbits) Near You

Be vewwy, vewwy quiet.  I'm hunting wabbits . . . . . . . . . . or at least I WANT to.

Just as I'm coming out of my winter-induced funk and delighting in all the little things coming up in my garden, the last thing I need is for some of those little things to be made littler.  In my latest walk around, that's just what I found.  Three heuchera in a group, and one eaten to nubs, one nibbled and one left entirely alone. I suppose I should be thankful for the two that weren't decimated, but I'm not. I'm MAD. The evidence:

And that wasn't all.  How DARE they eat my little tiarella in full bloom?  I'd just planted it last year and was so looking forward to seeing it flower.  I'll get those pesky wabbits!  More evidence:

Today I'm bringing out the heavy artillery:  Liquid Fence.  That stuff stinks to high heaven, but it works.  Unfortunately, it seems I've already let some of the horses out of the barn, but I'm going to close the barn door before the rest get away.

And because I couldn't bear to end this post on a sad note, here's a photo of where the Kitchen Garden stands today.  The stepping stone path will be removed this weekend and a mulch path installed. And then, let the planting begin!

Kitchen Garden Redo

Last year, I was lucky enough to be able to secure the services of Garden Rant writer, sustainable gardener and garden coach Susan Harris. I say lucky because we just happen to live in the same area and because she was able to give me some great ideas. One of those ideas was expanding my little kitchen garden, a flower bed, really. I didn't think we'd get to that project this Spring, but we're more than halfway done. I expect to be able to plant by next Sunday.

Here's a view of our kitchen garden last year.

It's a rectangular, mostly south-facing bed against the back of the house. The three green mounds in the center of the photo are miniature boxwoods, and the green mound to the far right is a mugho pine. The overgrown clump to the right of the rightmost boxwood is a bolting parsley.  This photo was taken in early spring after we'd planted three tomatoes and a couple of peppers.  While the bed had a good bit of room, only the left half got enough sun, and there just wasn't enough room for me to grow all the things I wanted.

Susan suggested enlarging the bed into a slightly teardrop shape and bringing it around the heating/cooling units to the bed on the side of the house.  So that's what we are doing. We'll be adding a stone "landing" at the bottom of the steps from the deck at a later date. Here's a photo of the beginning of the expansion. You can see we're adding a good bit of area. You can also see the ugly heating/cooling units, but I don't want to take up the space to screen them. They will have to stay where they are.

After cutting in the edge, we moved all the pots out of the way. Garden Man tilled the grass area so he could rake the grass clumps out.  He also had some roots to remove. Once the offending parties were all taken out, he moved the boxwoods and the mugho pine to a spot in the far left of this photo, in front of the AC units.  I then dug out the rosemary, lavender and oregano and set them aside.  Then Garden Man spread every last bit of our precious compost pile onto the area and tilled it in. 

In this photo, you can see the boxwoods have been moved. We had yet to move all the pots, the pine and the herbs.  Some of the compost has been spread, and there's more in the wheelbarrow.  I think there were a couple more loads, and that was it.  Luckily, we have another pile with last fall's leaves just beginning to break down.

While we were busily working, it began to rain, so I didn't get any photos.  Before the rain began, though, we were able to get all the compost tilled in and the bed smoothed. I also got the lavender, rosemary and oregano replanted.  It continued raining the night after we worked and into the next day. The v-trench at the bed's edge looked like a river.

The next step will be to put a walkway from up in the corner near the deck steps and hose bib down the length of the bed. The bed is so wide now that I can't reach into it from the yard.  I've decided to put a rain barrel where the downspout comes down, next to the deck. The rain barrel should help with water management and provide extra water for dry spells.

So far, I'm very pleased and can't wait to get planting. I'll post more photos when the weather allows.

The Big Six

Steve Bender of The Grumpy Gardener started it. Of course he did. If you know who Steve Bender is, you know he's always up to something. In my opinion, he's the best thing about Southern Living magazine.  The "it" I'm talking about is his "Six Plants I Can't Live Without."

I thought I'd join in the fun, but when I started to think about it I realized I'd have a hard time picking plants I couldn't live without. I love most of the plants in my gardens, and some I love passionately. But you know what?  If you took them all away from me today and said I could never have them again, I'd find other plants with which to garden, other plants to love. I wouldn't like it if you took away my current favorites, but I would find new favorites. I wouldn't be able to help it because I'm a gardener. It's as much a part of who I am as my blood type, my DNA.

Once I realized there really weren't any plants I truly couldn't live without, I went back to the hard task of choosing the six most important.  This list is good for today.  Ask me tomorrow and you might find one on the list replaced. It might be back again next week.  I told you I loved most of the plants in my garden. Here are today's big six.

Cercis canadensis - Eastern Redbud - These trees have been in my landscape ever since I can remember. The first tree I climbed was a redbud; it was the tree next to our driveway at the house where I grew up. One of the first trees I planted after I left home was a redbud, and seedlings from that tree grace my gardens today. I have only a half acre, but I have seven redbuds. One is a purchased Eastern redbud, five are seedlings Garden Man and I brought with us when we moved here, and one is a Cercis canadensis 'Forst Pansy.'

Hydrangea in all its iterations, but especially Hydrangea quercifolia, the Oak Leaf Hydrangea. I remember Oak Leaf Hydrangeas growing down the fence row between my grandparents and their neighbors, and they are perfect shrubs for my Mid-Atlantic location. They have lovely blooms and gorgeous fall color. If I could fault them in any way, it would be that the deer find them too tasty. A little Liquid Fence takes care of that.

Itea virginica - Virginia Sweetspire - I have the cultivar Henry's Garnet in my gardens, and even though I have quite a few, I don't have nearly enough. This lovely shrub has an arching habit, pretty white flowers in spring, stunning burgundy fall foliage and winter interest. It will grow in full sun and full shade, and if you mulch it, it will reward you with offshoots. It matures at about 4 1/2 feet in height and doesn't need pruning. It's just about perfect, I think.

Lilium - Oriental lilies.  What other plant gives you such huge rewards for so little effort?  While I like all the lilies, Orientals are my favorites, and I have quite a few in my garden. How could you resist a show like this, especially one that smells heavenly:

Hosta - almost all the varieties out there. I think I have ten or eleven varieties, and I expect that number to go up. The one variety already here when I moved in, Hosta undulata 'Univitatta', is a rapid reproducer.  I have at least 200 of those on my half acre.  Want some?  Hey, I'm recording visitors, so I know who you are.  Be looking for an unmarked package, coming soon to your mailbox. Garden Man's favorite is Krossa Regal which I also love, but my favorite hosta is Gold Standard. It starts spring in tones of chartreuse and blue, and I think it's charming.  Here's a closeup of the leaves in early spring.

And the sixth one is a tie between daylilies, heuchera, and coleus today.  I just couldn't choose, even though I thought long and hard about it.  So, what plants do you love, need and couldn't live without?

Out of the Darkness and Into the Light

It's been a long winter, and I'm so happy spring has arrived! I didn't realize how long I'd neglected my blog, and it has been a very long time. I'll spare you all the sorry details, but I do want to explain.

Just after Christmas, a very nasty virus spread like lightning through my office. I brought it home and it hit my family, too. It should have been a couple of day thing, and it was for the most part, but I'm still suffering some lingering effects. Thankfully, they lessen every day. Then, in early January, we had below zero temperatures. It hadn't been that cold here in fifteen years, and it was a shock both to me and my plants. It killed most of the Sarcococca ruscifolia we planted, the ones we'd looked two years to find. The ones that weren't killed have just a few spindly branches left alive. That alone made the winter darker. Then we lost our holly tree, a very expensive investment, and I have no idea why it died. It looked like we lost many of the perennials we put in during our fall border redo. Work has been crazy with no end in sight. And winter seemed to go on forever. I guess I just got into a winter mood.

And then, I noticed signs of life all over. The cherry blossoms didn't lighten my mood, but I began to notice signs of growth in the perennials I thought had died. Then green shoots from the bulbs I planted in the fall began emerging from the ground. And my mood warmed a little.  When buds began showing on those green shoots and more and more perennials came alive, I came alive a little more along with them. And then there were flowers and warm temperatures, and they melted the last remaining bits of winter in my  heart.

First came swelling of the buds on the Allegheny viburnum. They'd been there since last year, but they started growing.

Then the first of the bulbs began to flower, first the tiny daffodils  . . . . .

. . . .  and then the larger, more vibrant ones.

How could you possibly keep winter in your heart with such warm, cheerful faces just begging you to turn your face toward the sun? I couldn't. I did turn my face toward the sun and I heard the first notes of the song of Spring begin.

But there was more. Who could resist the perfect blue of Brunnera?

Jack Frost Brunnera, that is.  Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' with its lovely variegated foliage. Last year I splurged and bought three, and this year, they rewarded me with the bluest flowers I've ever seen.

Finally, when walking through the garden, I knelt down to look at a little clump of foliage and found this little hellebore flower . . . . .

 . . . .  and the thaw was complete, over, done. Spring is indeed in the air, and there is a song in my heart.  The birds are providing harmony, and all is right in my little corner of the world. I hope Spring has brought a song to your heart, too.