I had a problem with a marauding mammal in my garden that was damaging my peonies, so I decided to simply cut all the flowers and offer them at the end of the driveway to my neighbors and passers-by for free.
What marauding mammal could be worse than the raccoons that have occasionally wreaked havoc in my back garden? Deer? A bear?
It was a human.
I've had this problem every year, for the past 3 years, ever since I put peonies in the front bed near the street. Every year when they bloom, someone starts stealing them, ripping the stems. I let this entitlement go, mostly (whoever it is, they also take Dahlias in the fall), but this year they actually tore a support cage out of the ground and left it at the side of the road.
So I decided to take agency of the problem -- I cut all the flowers at once and gave them away. I considered cutting them and putting them in a vase to be displayed prominently in a front window, visible from the street, but I thought that kind of taunting might herald the beginning of a fight I didn't want and probably wouldn't win.
As I was outside later, watering pots, my neighbor across the street called to me, "The flowers are beautiful! I'm only going to take a couple."
"Take as many as you want! Take a bunch!"
"The garden looks wonderful!"
"Thanks!"
They were all gone by 9:00 the next morning. Whoever has been taking them may have taken some of the free ones I offered, but I don't care about that. I offered them, and I cut them.
I've been trying since the beginning to get foxgloves established in this garden. I tried sowing seeds the very first year here along the back fence but not a single one germinated. I've grown one or two over the years since then, but for some reason, they've never self-sown and established themselves.
Until now.
Last fall I found zillions of babies growing from the seeds left by a couple that I had bought at the nursery and planted in the back garden along the fence. Most of them, of course, were growing at the very front of the bed, so I dug them out and replanted them in a better spot, and now they are flowering in infinite technicolor glory.
So, I think I can now say with confidence -- I AM a foxy lady!
Some of my blogging friends participate in the popular blogging meme "In a Vase on Monday" which involves cutting flowers and/or foliage from your garden and arranging it in a vase, preferably for a post that runs on Monday.
Unless of course, you're lazy, or unclear on the concept, or not particularly partial to playing by the rules (all of which could apply to me.) I posted once before for this meme, having put together a big bouquet of dried flowers and foliage that is still in my living room, sitting in a vase (which I had to go out and buy). Bits and pieces have gradually fallen off the bouquet over the last couple of years, but for the most part, it's still intact. Fortunately since then I've bought another vase from the thrift store, and lately I've been wandering around my garden looking at the flowers and thinking this and that might look good together in a bouquet.
It ended up being enormous! I don't have enough room inside the house for it
Brodiaea have gotten very tall and floppy, and get in the way out in the garden, so I cut several for the bouquet
I left quite a few as well, because as I went over to start cutting, a hummingbird came along and started sipping from them.
Saxifrage 'London Pride' flowers are a good baby's breath look-alike
Pulsatilla seedheads have flopped over the edge of the garden bed onto the grass, and last time the mow-and-blow crew came, they cut a few right off with the string trimmer, so I figured I might as well cut the rest myself!
I don't know if the California poppies will last, but some of them closed up almost as soon as I cut them
The colors at first were too pastel, so I decided to add the deep, dark purple-blue of Centaurea montana
The last of the Pacific Coast Iris
Bright red Heuchera
A pink hardy Geranium ('Wargrave Pink' I think)
It's already starting to disintegrate
Phew! Some bloggers do this every week! I don't know how they manage. I'm now officially creatively bankrupt. I hope you enjoyed the bouquet. It was hot, sweaty, dirty, buggy work.
Cathy of Rambling in the Garden hosts In a Vase on Monday, check out her post here.
Readers may recall a couple of years ago when I was having a problem with Canada thistle taking over a path in my back garden. I took up the pavers, sifted the soil and removed as many thistle roots and pieces of root as I could find, and then replaced the pavers, adding to them to make a better path. I wrote about it in a blog post, here. (That was successful, by the way, there has been no recurrence of the thistle in this particular spot, although I do have it elsewhere in the garden.)
For the past 8 years, since I first started gardening here, I've known there were areas where I should have had paths installed. I have a lot of beds that are much too wide, that require judicious stepping through whenever I need to weed, or plant, or just surveille my domain. So one of the chores I set myself this year was to put in a new path, and redo a couple that were inadequate.
Path #1
When we had the front garden redone about 3 years ago, we had a handful of bits of recycled concrete left over from making the wall, so I used them to improvise a crappy, not very good path to serve as a shortcut to the street. I supplemented the concrete with a handful of stones, so it ended up a combination of concrete pieces and cobblestones, that slowly sank into the soil over the course of the last few years, and then got buried under plants, until you could no longer see that a path had ever existed there.
A couple of months ago I started digging a wide trench, pulling out all the old concrete and stones. I realized the new path was going to need a short wall to keep the soil from falling into it, so I decided to use a combination of big rocks, the broken concrete, and wine bottles that Portland blogger Loree of Danger Garden had been saving for me over the winter (I picked them up from her the last few times I visited Portland). I didn't have enough of any one element to make the wall entirely of concrete, or entirely of bottles, so I decided on a mix. I wanted to use the rest of the random bits of concrete, both to use them up and to give the new wall some continuity with the recycled concrete wall that already exists in the front garden.
Digging the trench
The trench from the other direction
Concrete chunks
More concrete chunks
Yet more concrete chunks
Rock stash
A couple of trips to Lowes for flagstones
I ordered gravel from a local stoneyard, and one weekend, Nigel wheelbarrowed it from the driveway over to the trench and filled it in. That was followed with flagstones, and then more gravel to fill in around them. After that I went to work on the wall, which was slow going, given my old lady muscle aches and our cold, wet weather. About a month later, it was nearly done.
A week or so ago, I finally got the last few bits in place. A few years ago, I bought these jugs for a few dollars from someone on craigslist, and I've left them out over the winter. This past winter, one of them cracked neatly in two, so I incorporated the two halves into the wall. I also used two cases of wine bottles plus half a case of the blue ones that I bought last fall from Amazon.
A few new Sedums, some brightly colored Oxalis, and a Yucca 'Color Guard' that had been previously lost much further back in the bed got planted along the top of the wall.
The other half of the jug on the other side of the path
I was briefly stymied about what to do about this access pipe to our main sewer pipe. The bed was built up around it, and the soil level has always been higher. I didn't want to cover it with the wall because it needs to be accessible, so I made a niche around it.
A potted Agave 'Blue Glow' on top hides it, but keeps it accessible enough.
This 'Blue Glow' is just a baby, so it's wearing baby-size sunglasses. I actually have a second, larger 'Blue Glow' that gets moved around with a dolly.
At the end of the path inside the garden, behind the greenhouse, there's a step already built into the wall right where the path begins, to make stepping up onto the path easier.
Finished!
Path #2
The second path that I've been working on is brand new and goes in back of the stream. Over the course of a few days I dug out another trench and lined it with rocks.
On Memorial Day weekend, Nigel moved and spread almost half a ton of gravel into the space that I had cleared.
New path!
Much nicer to have access to the back of the stream
View of the new path behind the stream, from the back porch
Exhausted Nigel takes a break lying on the enchanted pile of gravel. Enchanted because it never gets any less no matter how much he takes from it!
Path #3
The third path is one that was installed when we had our back garden put in 8 years ago, but it has gotten progressively overgrown, weed-covered and debris-strewn over the years. There have never been enough flagstones there to suit me, so it needs an overhaul.
See the path? No?
See it now? There are more flagstones beyond those two, as well as underneath that bigroot Geranium growing beyond.
To be continued in Part Two. When I get to it.
***********
Also, here's Elton John singing The Circle of Life, from The Lion King, just in case you're wondering where my blog title came from. I think a lot of what he says in this song also applies to gardening. There's always more to do than can ever be done!
The Circle of Life
From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There's more to be seen than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
Some say eat or be eaten
Some say live and let live
But all are agreed as they join the stampede
You should never take more than you give
In the circle of life
It's the wheel of fortune
It's the leap of faith
It's the band of hope
Till we find our place On the path unwinding
In the circle, the circle of life
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with the scars
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round
The vignette I have to share today is from a recent visit to Old Goat Farm in Orting. They have a wonderful shady, leafy display garden there, and I made the rounds with my camera looking for interesting shots.
They have lots of animals at Old Goat Farm -- chickens, ducks, turkeys, peacocks, dogs, and of course, kitties.
I wanted to pat him, but wasn't sure he was friendly. I might have gotten bitten, and that would have turned him into catnip.
Anna at Flutter & Hum hosts Wednesday Vignette. Check out her post here.
One of my favorite PNW bloggers, Erica Strauss of Northwest Edible Life, recently started a new feature -- the weekly report, in which she reports in a simple bulleted list (for the most part) what she has accomplished on her homestead for the week. I think it's a great idea, but I don't know if I'm up for doing it weekly. So I thought I'd do a quarterly one for the year, even though it's May and we're midway into the second quarter of the year already.
(As an aside: I'm not sure I can explain my affinity for Erica's blog. At first glance I have very little, if anything, in common with her. She's a young mother who home-schools her children and grows a lot of her own food, so her blog focuses mainly on edibles, cooking, and urban animal husbandry. She just came back from taking a year off from blogging and gardening because her head wasn't in it -- which was true of me for last year too. She lives with mood disorder/depression, which I do too. I've been into her blog since she started it.)
Anyway, here's a list of my accomplishments so far this year:
** Did a ton of weeding and cutting back (which hadn't been done anywhere in over a year)
With the weeds pulled and everything trimmed, you can actually make out the shapes of plants again
** Got the stream running again
View from an upstairs window of the now-running stream
** Planted water-loving plants into the gravel of the stream bed
Water Hyacinth
Two black gamecock Iris
At the base of the waterfall, a combo of chocolate creeping jenny, bloody dock, and purple pickerelweed (Can you spot Huey and Dewey?)
Huey and Dewey (Louie is all by his lonesome is on the other side of the waterfall)
** Planted new plants along the back of the stream
Cyclamen, Corydalis lutea, Hellebores and Thalictrum ichangense have been added to this area, but it still looks rather bare
** Planted new plants in the Northeast shade bed
New gold-leafed Hostas and other perennials have added bright spots to this dark corner
That empty spot in the bed on the right might be the future home of a fern table
** Started seedlings in the greenhouse (now being hardened off outside)
Too many Castor bean seedlings
Unhappy Tithonia and Cerinthe seedlings that want some heat and to get in the ground
** Pulled out plants from the front bed by the street that were inappropriate (got too tall and flopped) and planted shorter, more appropriate plants instead
** Moved the Brugmansias out of the garage onto the driveway
** Put in a new flagstone and gravel path to serve as a short-cut through the front bed along the street (photos to come in a future post)
** Took out the lilac bushes (technically I hired a strapping young lad to do this, but it counts)
Empty hole where lilacs used to be
Still to do:
** At least three more beds still need weeding and cutting back
I ignored this bramble last year when it appeared, now it has popped up again this year as well as 10 feet away and even more vigorous than before
** The Great Migration of Plants
** Plant onion starts in the raised vegetable beds
Six pots of onion starts -- why didn't I bring a couple of pots to the swap? Now *I* have to plant them all!
** Freshen the soil and fertilize the Brugs
** Plant more new plants in the front bed by the street
** Plant new shrubs and perennials where the lilacs were removed
** Renovate the gravel garden
The gravel garden has gotten wildly overgrown and weed-infested
** Install two more gravel paths
One gravel path will go through here and continue in back of the stream
A second path will curve around this tree and to the left
** Plant, plant, plant
** Stop hoarding plants
I have too many trays of plant starts set aside for use "some day"
While weeding I found a bunch of self-sown red-leafed Euphorbia, but I couldn't just toss them into the yard waste bin like shotweed
When I pruned one of my rosemary shrubs I found three branches that had rooted, so I had to pot them up
Two of those trays contain Pacific Coast Iris divisions, which have been hanging around for a while now (I bring them to swaps in groups of threes and sixes, I'd be embarrassed to bring them all at once)
These daylily clumps aren't even in pots! What's wrong with me?
So, how's progress in your garden? Are you as anal-retentive as I am?
