A break in the rains..

Last weekend Randy worked very hard to get the gazebo roof completed.  It’s been a long time coming but I love how it turned out.  We pressure washed it to get it ready for some quality sitting time this summer. 

I didn’t get a lot of time outside this week the rains came and hung around making it to wet to weed or plant.  The one day I did get out though, I worked all around the pond area trying to get the work done before the plants exploded in growth, I barely made it!  I did however manage to get the topsoil, leaf grow mix added to the pond walls and leveled out the stones.  I also managed to get the weeds out and the mulch down.  I still need to attach the stones but that’s another day when it’s dry out.

Today with a break in the rain we moved quick tackling a bunch of little things; moving some outdoor furniture, spreading mole repellent, cleaning out under the deck, mowing the front lawn, moving a massive pile of pots to the front for recycling, spreading some pine straw under the azaleas in the back and installing the water canon in the back flower bed.

Several years ago I bought some metal frogs that were brightly painted and I wanted to mount them to the gazebo.  I asked Randy to drill holes in them and he eventually did but they hadn’t gotten mounted.  Today he mounted them only the way he did it is leaving me with a really gruesome feeling.

Those nails were not quite what I had in mind and while he doesn’t understand, it’s freaking me out.  I wanted a smaller nail, much smaller that I could put a dot of paint on so the frogs would just look like they were hanging, not like they’d been, nailed.  Yeah, we gotta do something about that.

In other and much less gruesome news, the azaleas that were planted to hide the heat pumps are doing very well, even though the deer ate them last fall when they broke in to the backyard.  They don’t all bloom at the same time which is not really a bad thing, because it means lots of flowers at different times, but I bet they would be amazing blooming all together.  I  guess I need those guys that do Amen corner to come take care of mine!

Speaking of blooms, I’ve been waiting years to see this bloom,

It’s been eating by deer, mowed over multiple times and now transplanted to a safe spot behind a crepe myrtle.  Maybe one day it will even manage to climb into the crepe myrtle but for now, I’m so happy to see all these beautiful flowers!

A day in the yard..

Living where we do has a lot of perks, it’s private, usually quiet and there is a lot of wildlife around.  We are free from any homeowners association (which I will NEVER be a part of again!) and we are surrounded by trees so we typically don’t feel the blazing heat that people in concreted areas do.  Plus leaves and sticks well they make great mulch.

There are some downsides though, the wildlife can be destructive, all those trees drop a lot of leaves, cast a lot of shade and drop a ton of sticks.

It was a beautiful day and so I decided to forego inside stuff and move to some outside stuff.  What should I tackle first?  Ah, I know…

My very neglected area around the gazebo and pond, the sticks, the leaves, the weeds, oh my!  I needed a plan and so I started by collecting all the sticks and hauling them off to the stick pile.  Then I raked leaves, and raked leaves, and raked some more leaves.  When I started it looked like this.

When I finished it looked like this.

I ended up with 2 large and 1 huge pile of leaves that will need to be removed.  I also decided that I’m going to spend a lot of time over here this year.  I’ve got a lot of weeding to do and I want to concentrate on making this area heavily planted and easier to maintain.  The leaves are a blessing and a curse, they make great mulch but the problem is they encourage ticks.  Woodchips and shredded mulch ticks don’t like so I’m thinking of getting mulch for closer to the pond and using the woodchips in the ‘woods’.  It should also make leaf removal a little easier.

I found some things that made me very happy while I was over here.

I have been nursing this holly along for years!  It started out as a 2 leaf sprig and I have taking care of it and hoping it would grow. I was so happy to see how much it had grown!  I love hollies and would love to have more evergreens in our wooded areas, there is very little cover for the birds in the early spring and winter. 

My mom gave me this lungwort and I didn’t think any of it had survived so I was delighted to see this little clump blooming away.

My helpers had a great time outside, but Cooper decided that the shade cast by the gazebo was the place to be!

My final project before coming in was a temporary fix to a problem that I’m blaming Tucker for, as prior to him, Cooper never did this!

Tucker feels why walk around the outside when you can cut through the middle and better yet, why go into the grass to pee when you can pee right here.  So I put up some fence and put some stakes in the ground when I ran out of fence in hopes it will deter him until the water Scarecrow arrives.  Yes I’m setting up a motion activated water sprayer to spay my dog.  He is trampling plants that it has taken me years to grow and he does it out of sheer laziness I think.  Hopefully he will only have to get wet a few times before he gets the hint, the flower bed is off limits to big feet!

Finding fall finally???

Welcome to the bone dry and hot edition!  This has been one of those summers that for the most part I could have spent somewhere else, a place where it’s a nice 85 with low humidity and occasional rain to keep things happy and growing.  I don’t water plants, the trees we had planted yes, but plants, not so much because the entire point behind planting drought tolerant plants is that you aren’t supposed to need to water them!  I have established plants that are wilted and looking right awful, we are at day 18 without rain, hopefully we will get some relief from the heat and the lack of rain soon!  The leaves have already started to fall, not only that but we’ve already used the cyclone rake once and the pond net isn’t even up yet!  The trees are screaming fall but the temperatures continue to say summer.

Tucker and Cooper continue to be a very big source of amusement in our lives.  Tucker is growing like a weed and at 6 months was just shy of 70 pounds!

This is the day after puppy first grade, apparently all the learning just exhausts him!  He continues to want to be Cooper’s best buddy in the world and while he likes being close to Cooper, Cooper isn’t so sure about that.

As you see they have a very stress filled life here at Logs End.

Things have been pretty quiet this summer, which is great considering it has been too hot to really ‘do’ anything outside or go anywhere with the dogs.  Hopefully with cooler weather we will get some more time outside.  I know Randy is looking forward to making a leaf pile for the dogs, he may be able to do that sooner than he knows!

Till then Cooper is ready to go!

Plants and Gates

I finally got around to removing the ferns from around the fire pit and relocating them to the woods near the shed. (Yes the dog pool is down in the fire pit, it’s a perfect spot for it!)


They look really ragged but hopefully they will survive and come back and be lovely next year.  My goal is to make this, look like this;

Which is just a gift of nature.
The fire pit took some pondering and I decided on something that I’ve not had much luck growing because it needs dry and sun, something that isn’t in surplus here.

Lavender!  I mixed in some Silver mound Artemisia for a texture and color contrast.  I sure hope they thrive and fill in, I love lavender and this is a dwarf variety that won’t get so big Randy complains.  While we were working on planting them, the bumblebees were all over them I can just imagine sitting there, smelling the lavender and listening to them buzz.

Two weeks ago we had Nick, from Acer Landscaping come out and fix the fieldstone walls for us and they did a fantastic job!

Today was a big day, today we put up one of the two sets of gates!!!  We still need to attach the fence to it, but the gates are up!

Yes they are stepped on purpose, the yard is incredibly uneven.  We will work on finishing that up this week and hopefully building the other set and installing next week.
That’s all for now, have a great week!

It was rough, but worth it!

Dog tired!  This is the end result of a several hours of play and exploration!  These two pretty much went nonstop with the running, digging and all out goofing.  Tucker got so tired that he went up and flopped down on the deck to sleep, he was done!  Wonder if he’ll ever be able to keep up with Cooper???

Yesterday I mentioned how great the azaleas looked but you couldn’t really see them in that picture.  Well here there are in the freshly weeded and cleared area.  I’m hoping that this fall, we can shred the leaves and spread them in all these areas to keep the weeds down, it really makes a difference.

We moved toward the old bee area and all this area was overrun with Japanese stilt grass, barberry, bittersweet and these really stinky weedy trees.

My fern patch is filling in, I love this area so much.  I’ll have to get in there and weed it but the more they grow the happier I am.  It’s just the most lovely, spot it just looks like a ‘forest’ floor should to me.

Everywhere you see ground was covered with Japanese stilt grass, Randy must have carted four or five loads of it away!  That stuff is just horrible, each piece makes hundreds of seeds and they stay in the soil for up to 7 years.  How will I ever get rid of it!

Under all the stilt grass there were some plants.  A couple of different coneflowers and some Joe Pye weed. 

This area still needs some tending but it looks to have several different plants in there; milkweeds, catmints and some things that I won’t know names for till they bloom.

Randy worked on cleaning up the area behind and while I don’t like the fact that he did mow over native Jack in the Pulpits, Mayflowers and some viburnums in his quest to clear, the end result is better.  He pulled out some many thorny things that his arms look like he was attacked by cats!

 If I could get just one full day every weekend out of Randy like the last two, we could have this yard whipped into shape fast!  It makes such a difference having him help, even if he does murder plants that I’d like to save sometimes.  I’ve always wondered how people that have those picture perfect gardens do it.  I know now, they have muscle to help!

The other sides…

Today we finally got to the other sides!!!!  While we have nothing to plant it’s really nice to have finally cleaned out all around the shed.  It took half the day, but it really was worth it.

It looks much better and now I can worry less about the dogs as they love running around through the woods and there was quite a bit of poison ivy in there.

I pulled a lot of weeds and burning bush sprouts up from this area.  I had to uncover the azaleas that are doing so well back there.  They are filling out and are glossy, dark green and just looking better than I’ve ever seen them.  I can hardly wait till next spring when they bloom, again!

Cooper and Tucker played, a lot!  Cooper loves being chased, Tucker, well he doesn’t love to chase all that much, yet, but I see it coming.  I love that I can take them into the back yard and let them go.  Tucker even seems to be outgrowing the need to eat everything, which is a blessing.  It has been the biggest issue with him being off leash, he doesn’t just chew stuff, he swallows it; sticks, mulch, grass, leaves you name it. 

Tomorrow, I think we are going to work out front, now there’s a full days worth of work!

 

 

Welcome to July…

It’s July.  Where is the summer going and why is it going so fast?  I need a way to slow things down, isn’t it supposed to be the lazy days of summer???

The rain took out my milkweed jungle, rather the torrents of rain and wind that came with some severe storms did.  I tried to prop it back up, but it just didn’t work.  Now it looks messy and the sweet smell has drifted away.

The bee balm continues to bloom and attract lots of hummingbirds, the pink bee balm has had bees and butterflies on it.  Out of the mess the Joe Pye Weed and Goldenrod have appeared and will hopefully get a chance to bloom without being eaten by the deer.  They are eating things fast this year, I spray it rains, they eat. 

Case in point.  I noticed that my yellow daylily and my Cherokee daylily were close to blooming so I sprayed them.

 

Today when I went to see if they were blooming or not…

That’s what I found, it’s so frustrating.  I’ve got to get the rest of my plants moved this fall.

So far they haven’t reached my daylily called Joan, if they do at least I got to see it bloom!

Oddly enough they are eating my bonset this year, I wouldn’t think they’d like that it has very fuzzy leaves but..

It is usually a good five feet tall by now.  Sad, I guess it will have to be moved as well.  I’m thinking that a lot of the stuff at the front of the driveway and at the porch is going to end up at the deck bed and the deck bed stuff is going to end up in the shade beds.  That deck area is about the only place that gets enough sun to support all these plants.  Well, the former bee garden gets sun too, but that may end up as something totally different in the coming years.

I went out to do some weeding the other day, taking Tucker and Cooper with me and was trying to decide where to start.  I settled on the deck bed, thinking that I really need to keep after the jewel weed.  So I kneeled down and

decided on another location after almost grabbing this lovely visitor!  At least five feet long, it wasn’t too bothered by my presence, just kept laying there, but I suspect had I grabbed it or stepped on it that would have been a different story!

There are so many insects which you know is fine by me as long as they aren’t munching on me! What I have seen a lot of this year are these lovely garden spiders.

I haven’t looked up what kind they are exactly but they are all over.  Being the kind of person that doesn’t want to wreck their homes I weed around them and do my best not to mess up their webs.  They are really very lovely!

The damselflies are back, I’ve not gotten a good picture but I’ve got dragonflies galore too!

Nature just never ceases to amaze and delight me, except the deer, they just really frustrate me!