22 days of rain, 2 days of sunshine…

This ‘spring’ has been a roller coaster ride of weather.  We’ve had everything from mid 90’s right to frost warnings.  In addition we were in a moderate drought but after 22 days of rain, that has lifted.

The last 2 days have been beautiful I’m talking crazy beautiful, blue sky, breeze, mid 70’s perfect for getting work done.

Day one found me planting my plethora of plants that I had purchased at the plant sale and nursery trips.  I had already spent a lot of time placing them and deciding where I wanted to plant them.  I actually made note of how large things got and didn’t just plunk stuff down.

Day two I spent mulching and pulling that blasted stilt grass!

This is the ‘new’ portion of the woodland bed.  I’ve made it all the way down to the pond path. 

This is section behind the pond that is newly planted in, I can hardly believe I had enough plants to get all the way down here!

This is the side behind the gazebo, it was mulched and planted in as well.  It looks so nice like this, weeded and mulched. I can’t wait to finish the mulching and start spreading all those woodchips on the paths! 

Then I can move on to the next project, the bird feeder area and my new garden bed.  Of course there is still weeding to do in the back corner, they say damp and rainy again next week, so weed when wet, dig when dry…ish…

Woodland weeding…

 

I don’t have normal weeds, then again, I don’t have your typical garden either.  Remember I’m carving my garden out of a section of weeds, I mean woods.

When I think of the woods I think of several inches of rich moist leaf matter scattered below a lovely canopy of trees.  I think of understory trees and native flowers scattered through out and sun light being gently filtered onto the forest floor.  That however is not my reality.

This is my reality.  A mess of weeds that I don’t know what they are, plus the ones that I do know and hate with a passion!  Japanese honeysuckle and oriental bittersweet mat the ground, climb and choke the trees and are growing like mad up the deer fence. Dog rose is easy enough to get up when the ground is wet and I’m double gloved. More shrubs to pull out are Japanese barberry and Euonymus alatus, a.k.a. burning bush. There are also these stinking trees and by stinking I mean they smell bad.  They are sprouting all over the place and they are as hard as heck to pull up. Oh and the poison ivy there is so much of it, I’ve never seen so much in my garden or the woods in all the time we’ve lived here! The worst is the Japanese stilt grass and now some sort of other grass that is similar but bigger and wavy. 

Complicating this issue is the fact that there are indeed native plants fighting to survive in all this mess, American Holly saplings, Mayapples, Jack in the Pulpit, Solomons seal and Virginia creeper.  Further around in here are ferns and birds foot violets and some other delicate wildflowers that bloom in the early spring. 

Ideally, I’d love to just take a brush mower through here and be done with it.  My conscience won’t let me though because I think about the critters that live in the leaves and well, by hand it is.

I pulled, tugged, ripped and yanked my way through and if I left it, it’s because it’s a native plant, (or possibly I missed it). Most of what I left is Maple leafed viburnums, they are everywhere and I’m okay with that.  It’s a native, it makes berries for the birds and flowers for the pollinators and is very pretty.

The next overcast day I’ll be back at it!

How a garden grows..

I’ve been going through and labeling my gardening pictures.  I always planned to make a scrapbook that showed how the garden changed over the years.  Looking at the pictures has made me very aware of how much has changed, how the trees have grown and even the loss of some plants. 

Look at all that sun this was 2002!  There was so much sun that I had a vegetable garden.  That’s pretty amazing.  Things change though, the maple trees grew and grew.

No garden but there are those maple trees.  Just a mess of leaves and weedy brambles and vines in 2009.

In 2010 we built the new pond right were the vegetable garden had been, between those maple trees.

The maple trees are still there in 2011, but we’ve got a gazebo base, over looking the pond.

2012 the gazebo is up and it’s when we added the stream, the fieldstone walls and the bog.

Big changes in 2014 when we cleared the weeds and installed the deer fence, so much was about to change in a way I never dreamed of.  All those years of dreaming of plants not being eaten by the deer.  Of having quiet paths that meandered through a woodland garden rich with natives and shade lovers.  A place that was quiet and peaceful, with niches to sit in and just relax.

2017 finds me still working but well on my way to achieving the dream I have.  Some day I’ll be able to walk all through my gardens with less weeds and less work.  Until then I’m going to keep relishing all the changes and enjoying every moment of striving towards my dream.

Dog Tired…

After the weekend this is pretty much how we all felt! 

We got a lot of little things done like putting the spider shade and new safari straps on the Jeep.

Cooper loves riding in the Jeep and I love taking him with me but I wanted him to be safely inside so now the Jeep looks cool and I know he’s safe!

Randy finished putting all the new grilles in the windows and installed almost all of our new window screens.

We still haven’t decided if we want to try and stain them to match the honey of the windows or let them age naturally…

We also spent some time cleaning, clearing and marking around the pond area for the new plants and transplants.

This is the start of the new path, it’s made from the sticks and pruning's.  It’s actually supposed to start back further in the grass but we aren’t quite ready for that.

This area was pretty clear already, I started pulling out the bittersweet and weeds last year.  I still have some small stumps that need to come out but it’s pretty much ready for planting.

This is the view of the pond from the path, it’s getting there.  I am thinking that I want to do a bench in this area it’s one of my favorite views. (Just got to get rid of those rocks!)

The path heads off into the bittersweet jungle, literally, it’s a jungle of oriental bittersweet that has to be pulled out.  Randy wants to just mow it, but because there are actual native plants like Jack in the Pulpits, Mayapples, Solomon's seal, native viburnums and ferns I just can’t do that.  So one section at a time I pull, cut and move forward.  The leaves will be shredded and left in the planting areas, the sticks and branches chipped and put down as the path.

Cooper reached a milestone too, his crate was taken down.  We’ve been leaving him out recently and he pretty much just sleeps on the bed while we are gone.  We will keep an eye on him (we have a Cooper Cam ) and if he starts getting into stuff we can always put the crate back up.  My problem with that is he’s just inches from being too big for it!

I know the day has passed but the sentiment is genuine when I say Thank You! to all the veterans that protect the freedoms that I hold so dear!