Not quite what I expected

Sorry for my absence. A dear friend passed away from melanoma (get those moles checked!) and I came down with a bug of some sort (Covid test was negative). So besides recovering from surgery, I am also recovering from illness. At least I was able to abandon the brace this past week. While I can't do much yet, my shoulder is loosening up.

I received a first draft of the yard design. Even though I told the designer to treat the yard as a blank slate (except for the trees), I initially was not comfortable with the design. There are a lot of plants I am unfamiliar with (mostly ground covers), so had to research those a bit. Now I feel mostly okay about the front yard (except for the placement of a white oak where I don't think there is room), but the backyard looks like a lot of work to maintain. Also, I was hoping for more shrubs and vines in the back. We'll have a chance to sit down and discuss my misgivings, then he'll do a final draft.

There are a few new houseplants inside now. I purchased some cacti for a coiled pot and my son and his girl friend sent me a planter of plants for my birthday. I had to repot the latter, as the container they came in was not very practical. Also, providing the names of plants seems to have become a thing of the past, so I can't tell you what any of these are.


Speaking of plant names, I could not find the name of the arborvitae in the backyard. Apparently, I never entered it into my blog. Fortunately, I found it in an old spreadsheet. Just for the record, it is Thuja occidentalis 'Techny'.

Viewpoint

As I wandered through blogland, I read about a gardener who was getting a new window over her kitchen sink. She was naturally concerned about what the view through that window would be. The view out my kitchen window is a bit limited, but I began to consider just what people see when they are in my yard.

Just as one doesn't always see the household clutter or dust except through a visitor's eyes, I don't really SEE my yard. So I strolled around with my camera, taking shots looking this way and that. This exercise was quite revealing - things look worse than I realized.

For one thing, there is clutter born of convenience: garden hoses laying across the lawn, a potting table piled high with empty plastic containers, garden carts hither and yon, etc. While individual plants or small groupings of plants look fine, the lawn looks rather horrible, the beds look rather horrible, almost everything looks rather horrible when taken as a whole.

So I've been considering some improvements. As an example, here is the north side of the house, where the hosta bed grows. (Please excuse the crudity of my illustrations. I'm sure there is a tool somewhere than can do what I am trying to do with Paint.)

Not bad, when one's eye focuses on the hostas. BUT what if I mixed in some different plants, like black cohosh along the siding and a shrub at the end of the bed. Would a privacy fence help frame the view? And let's get rid of the forsythia just opposite the gate.

This looks more inviting to me. Garden art or planted pots could be hung on the fence. I don't want to get too fancy but maybe an arch over a gate of wrought iron would work here? And a suggestion of a path using flagstone?

Opinions? Suggestions? Low interest loans?

Not hip to be square

I recently checked out a satellite shot of my property from Google maps. The last time I looked, it showed the raised beds being constructed in the middle of the backyard. Now those all are done. There are a few things missing, like the newest trees, but all in all, this is a fairly accurate snapshot.

I am very left brained, and my mind favors grids, square corners, symmetry, etc. (The concrete guy who poured the driveway had to talk me into adding the swoop to the front walk.) Yet when I consider the many gardens we saw on the Garden Bloggers Fling, rarely were these design concepts employed. Instead, there were curved beds and meandering paths and visual surprises. Stuff was layered - plants, hardscape, houses. The gardens looked both deliberate and casually constructed.

I also have a tendency to position plants in a patchwork of singles (maybe because of quilting?) In the Fling gardens, I saw instead groupings of odd numbers along side the larger singles. A designer from Toronto (sorry! I am so bad with names!) explained that with singles, there is no place for the eye to rest, whereas groupings and masses draw the eye.

My yard includes almost all these plants, but not arranged like this.

When I saw the sedum below, every which one I have, I immediately wanted to drive home and rearrange the plants by the front walk.

When I did get home and looked at that bed, I made some interesting observations: the Dragon's Blood had migrated to one end of the bed and some of the Purple Emperor looked great while other plants struggled (the bed gets variable amounts of sun), the Autumn Joy and Lemon Ball were positioned willy-nilly, the coreopsis did not "work" with the sedum, etc. I didn't want to risk moving plants in the midsummer heat, but I'm making mental notes for next spring.

I've also been looking at garden design books from the library. These are visually frustrating, as the photos show what one can do with ACRES of rolling countryside. I find it difficult to translate the sweeping vistas to something I can use in my rectangle of a yard. But I am picking up some useful knowledge. We'll see how it manifests on my third of an acre plot.

Last snow?

Last year, when it came time to take the lawn mower to the garden center for servicing, I had to drag it through the snow from the backyard shed. Today, when the reminder popped up on my phone, I considered a repeat performance, then decided if I wait a couple of days, the snow will be gone. That's how it has been this winter - cold and sometimes snow, followed by ridiculously warm temperatures. But now spring is near, so maybe we will just have the latter, not the former.

My SO and I attended the annual home and garden show a week or so ago. I may have found a source for the gazebo I envision. Also, I picked up some flower seeds from the Allen County Master Gardeners, including Cardinal Climber, which hummingbirds are purported to love. I was hoping to hook up with the guy who will help me with a new design for my yard, but we missed each other.

I'm starting some of the annual pre-planting chores, like rooting coleus transplants from the mother plant overwintering in the den. I also placed an order with Outside Pride, for some miniclover. I dislike treating my lawn, but occasionally succumb to my embarrassment over all the weeds. Also, the soil is compacted heavy clay. I'm hoping the miniclover will perform as described: aerating the soil, fixing nitrogen, tolerating drought (I fear we will have some dry summers ahead, thanks to El Nino), and in general, improving the health and appearance of my lawn. I'll test it in the backyard first.

I also ordered some Thunbergia (Black Eyed Susan Vine) and Cypress Vine seeds. Meanwhile, I meditate on how best to grow some of these annual vines on my pergola. I anticipate imitating the Chicago Botanical Garden, protecting the wood with flashing while growing the plants in wire baskets. Unless someone has a better idea? I'm open to suggestions.

My heron looks like a snowy egret today.

Fall cleanup

I'm not one to do a thorough fall cleanup, but this year I did less than usual while waiting for plants to go dormant. By the time they did, the holidays were upon us, so that job fell by the wayside. Today was not a particularly nice day to be outside, but I needed some fresh air. The 'Betty Corning' clematis is now cut back to about a foot off the ground.

My gardening ennui is lifting. Today I actually placed an order with Pinetree Garden Seeds for the vegetable garden. As for the rest of the yard, I am thinking and rethinking this idea and that. I expect to flipflop more than a politician by the time I finally make up my mind.

For example, last summer I was gung ho on moving the above mentioned clematis from the corners of the den to the base of two redbud trees. Now I'm thinking I'd rather leave them in situ and build a sturdy trellis for each. Then I can plant annual vining flowers like morning glories (or something) to climb the redbuds.

Another idea rolling around in my brain is to add a small, screened-in gazebo to the backyard, so I can sit outside in the evening without being eaten alive by mosquitoes. The exact location is in flux, but currently I favor tucking it into the orchard area.

A definite "must" is to get some help with designing all this. Another "must" is to hire out the heavy lifting. Despite the help my SO provides, to get things into shape in a relatively short amount of time will take more brawn than we two sixty-somethings can muster.

Not feeling it

Usually this time of year I am pawing through seed and plant catalogs, drooling over the saturated photographs of all things gardening. This year, my gardening mojo seems to be on hiatus. It feels very strange, and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

During the summer, I feel this way about knitting, but once the weather turns cool and crisp, the needles start to fly. So maybe, once spring begins in earnest, the urge to get down and dirty will return. The only problem with patiently waiting for that to happen is I need to be at least thinking about ordering what needs to go into the ground NOW.

As I mentioned before, I have been contemplating reducing the vegetable garden. Maybe I should take the whole year off, grow nothing but green manure in my raised beds. There are farmers markets almost every day of the week around here, so I anticipate no shortage of fresh produce. AND I would not have to do battle with sparrows, rabbits, and woodchucks.

What has been brewing in the back of my mind is a total redesign of the backyard, to introduce that "charm" I have also mentioned recently. And I may even outsource the heavy lifting - I'm getting too old to dig holes in solid clay. This will require some thought.