Triple Digits

Poppies in the 'maple garden' May '12

Holy cow! It feels as if I'm living on the surface of Mercury over here!  This last week has been nothing but triple digit, sticky-icky heat even at night.  Except for some shady spots, all the grass in the yard is that nice dead straw color as well as texture.  You know, the kind that crunches underfoot.  But the gardens are staying hydrated even as the rest of the world melts.  The beautiful spring blooms (like the poppy to the left) have all died back giving way to our summer blooms announcing summer in bright yellows, pinks and even subtle shades of black.

Repopulated 'chocolate sunflower'

Even now things are changing in the gardens.  The sunflowers from last year repopulated their garden bed, except they're more yellow this year....The black petunias are doing wonderful with their orange pansy buddies on the front porch.  The citrus trees are loving their front row spot in the sunlight and their friends, the strawberry plants.  When I first transplanted the strawberries I picked away the buds so the plants could focus on growing a little bit.  Since then, I've let them have their fun in growing mini fruit.  It's that or let the squirrels get to them...

First harvest of strawberries

In addition, the white pumpkins, cantaloupe, butternut squash, and pickle cucumbers are running amuck. The cucumbers have taken nicely to their trellis but the rest of my little cucurbitaceae (aka the melon & squash family of plants) friends will have to be wrangled up too before they get more ambitious.  Cutworms got to my red bell pepper plant not too long after transplant.  However, some soap spray and cornmeal later I got rid of the pesky things before they got to the banana pepper plant.  And we have mystery corn in the yard.  I wanted to plant bicolor sweet corn in my container garden this year; however, the birds were gracious enough to spread their corn seed about the front yard.  Now there's corn growing in front of the driveway in random spots.  The boy blamed me for a millisecond before we noticed the culprit of the bird feeder.

Planning for the garden expansion

Not only have the gardens been busy but we have as well...Next to the maple garden we began to plan out the newest feature to the backyard...a mixture of herbs and decorative plants. So far there are black viola, echinacea, chives, oregano, apple mint, and lavender in that new spot with room for other perennials and maybe some annuals.  In the left hand side of the picture (which you can't see), I think I'm going to put a few Asiatic lilies that we have cooped up in a pot and maybe next year get a different variety of day lily.  I blame our trips to the Botanical Gardens for all these wonderful ideas....

That's it for now, classes have taken up ludicrous speed as I try to finish my graduate program in under a year before my funding runs out...talk about fun...but! Don't let the heat keep you from going outside!  Remember give water to yourself and your plants, wear sunglasses/hat/sunscreen, and stay cool!  Now go play in that dirt :)

Where'd May go?

     Holy cow peeps!  Where did May go?  All I know is that classes started up, my bestest friends got hitched, and it's transplanting time here in good ol' Wisconsin.  The windows have been open for the last week and the cats have raided the back porch, claiming it as their play spot for the summer.  And I don't blame them, especially since the robins, cardinals, and a slew of finches now hang out in our back yard.

But on to what's been transpiring in the gardens!  Apparently, everything decided to started blooming while I was away.  I didn't snap a picture of the palm sized poppies in the back, but the 'champagne bubbles' variety are already open. The pic shows the snapdragons (who survived winter), dianthus, and the campanula.  There are, of course, many more flowers blooming around the yard.

A few weeks back, I collected a few of the bleeding hearts and pansy flowers for pressing.  The colors stayed quite nice and it did thin the herd a bit, as they say.  The pansy have since overtaken the front retaining wall and I'm pondering thinning them out again.  Never mind the fact that the Chinese Lantern in the maple garden is running amuck...

And on the porch there is the normal suspects of black petunias.  This year they are paired with orange pansy.   I think it's a very beautiful contrast and as they grow it will be even more striking.

In the vegetable garden, the golden boy tomatoes are housed in their cage while the red bell and banana peppers are sitting cozy in their  shared tote.  I still have to get the melons seeded not to mention the bicolored corn.  This year, I picked up some apple mint that will go with the mint garden quite nicely.  In addition, I planted a 'red wine' mixture of sunflowers with the strawberry corn and blue corn on the side of the house. The chocolate sunflower from last year decided to repopulate the garden bed itself so I didn't bother adding more to the mix, lol.

the fence so far with the maple garden behind it

On top of that, I get to expand the gardens even more!  We split the yard in half to make a true back and front yard.  The walkway for the fence goes through a wooden arbor.  And since there's space, I'm going to spread out the gardens with lavender, oregano, chives, and a few other herbs among the flowers, because I can.

Needless to say it's been a busy end to spring.  Next on our list is to finish the fence, paint the house, and at some point, I need to put together the garden bench I've been planning for.

All it needs is love...

Pots for the herbs

     Oy, a busy week so far.  I know I'm a day behind getting the blog up.  However, I have started some of the slower growing herbs for this year's garden.  I'm using the biodegradable Jiffy pots with seed mix this year.  In the back is a dish with the oats for the cats so they'll leave the regular plants alone.  Since the seeds are so small for the herbs I did a mass spread and will thin them as needed.  Here's to this year's batch of herbs :)

Chocolate sunflower

     Not only that but I went through all the flower seeds and discovered another batch of chocolate sunflower seeds. *evil grin*  Last year only two of the seeds took with some spectacular flowers that lasted through the summer.  I'm looking forward to planting those come April.  I also have some chocolate violas, columbines and pincushion flowers.  Who knows, maybe I'll set up an area in the yard for a chocolate themed garden, not just in visual appeal but scent as well.  We'll see what boyfriend thinks of that idea....

The newest addition to the houseplants

     On a side note, I found a small plant abandoned to the doom that is known as Walmart's garden center.  They are generally horrible with their plants especially in our area because they built the new Walmart with the garden center in the direction of the wind patterns.  There's a history of said wind taking down hundred year old trees and power lines, so of course it's a genius idea to put the plants on the windy side of the building...The poor plant sat in the back room trying to survive in it's paper cup near other clearance plants such as glitterized trees for the holiday season and wilted ferns.  I repotted it in one of the smaller self watering containers and there's new growth so the outlook is hopeful.  It's a really pretty plant and I need something in the office that can survive low light.