A year for dandelions

The dandelions are rampant this year. Untreated yards and roadways are full, full, full. It's a rather stunning vista. My yard is treated, so weedfree, but I've been digging them out of the flower beds and rain garden. Ugh.

Last week I forgot to mention that I attended an Earth Day event where two local nurseries were selling natives: Riverview Nursery and Chapman Lake Nursery.
From the former I purchased three culvers root, 3 rattlesnake master, and one spiderwort, and from the latter three common ironweed, three swamp milkweed, and three dense blazing star.

The four Aronia Low Scape Mound chokeberry shrubs, also in the above photo, arrived from Bluestone Perennials. So now I have some planting to do.

I also have some mowing to do. It keeps raining, which means twice-weekly mows. The temps are going to be low this week, which I don't mind as it keeps the spring flowers blooming longer.

On the birding front, a white crowned sparrow hung out with the locals under the millet feeder this past week. They don't summer here, so I don't expect it to stay. A pair of bluebirds are busy with their nest building. I hear wrens but am not sure if they have taken over the wren houses yet.

Around the yard... what I thought might be a mullen patch turned out to be dame's rocket, an invasive that I don't mind as it seems to just come and go with no rhyme or reason.

I severely whacked back one honeysuckle vine that was threatening to run rampant, then wondered if it would recover, and it is. So is the tree that has been growing up through it, but its days are numbered.

After several relocations and not enough sun, the rhubarb "patch" is finally getting established, just in time for pie season. My SO dug up a neighboring goldenrod clump to call his own, which helps with the sunshine issue.

I usually drag planters into the garage over the winter, but just didn't feel like it last fall. The catmint survived despite the frigid temps, so I repotted it (and will take better care of it going forward).

Out of the twelve coneflower cultivars I planted in the bed along the front sidewalk, only one survived the winter - lesson learned. Two ninebark shrubs are dead, dead, dead, along with one of the Canadian hemlocks. I'll give the ninebarks another chance, but that hemlock has already been replaced once, so a gold mop will go there. Some of the winterberry shrubs look peaked, but we'll see how they do. Otherwise, things look hale and hearty. Fingers crossed!

On pause

Sorry for the lapse in blogging. The passing of RBG was quite a blow and I didn't feel like doing much of anything for several days (except eat comfort food). My son and his girl friend visited yesterday (we wore masks and social distanced), which really lifted my spirits. I hadn't seen them since last xmas.

Because of their impending visit, I spent more time housecleaning than I normally do, so less time gardening. And now the temps are a bit uncomfortable for outdoor work, again. I did relocate some coreopsis to the area under the 'Perfect Purple' flowering crab, and mulched there and under the 'Golden Spirit' smokebush.

After not seeing hardly any monarch butterflies this summer and deciding to cut down the common milkweed, I spotted this fellow. I haven't seen him since - probably eaten by a bird, yum! As much as we all love monarchs and want them to thrive, the fact is they are primarily food for other creatures.

I stopped moving transplants to the south side of the house. For one thing, there will be some work on the fence and I don't want new transplants to be trampled. Also, an area I want to move some asters to is not ready for them yet. There is still time.

The area doesn't look like much, but give it a year or two (or three).

Along the fence, ironweed, rudbeckia, coneflower, aster. Along the house, switch grass and northern sea oats, plus some aster to be moved.

I talked my SO into taking some of the extra rudbeckia I had. We positioned six of them along his neighbor's privacy fence. The soil is sandy there, so I told him to water, water, water. He likes Mexican sunflower and can plant those in between the rudbeckia next spring. I'll turn him into a gardener yet!

The backyard has been full of sparrows, at the feeders and in the birdbath and all over the weedy lawn. I've seen robins eating pokeweed berries, nuthatches fetching peanut splits, blue jays hogging the whole peanut "wreath", etc. While a squirrel occasionally creeps along the fence or the telephone wire, I have not seen any perched on the feeders, so either the dogs are being vigilent enough or else the rodents can't get to the feeders.

It's the time of year I get a little burned out on gardening, find myself wishing for snow. I have a list of what I want to finish up this year - it's not that long - so (in so many ways) I must soldier on.

HOT

The weather is not cooperating with my goal of getting all the plants transplanted by June 1. Yesterday the rest of the 'Torch' Mexican sunflowers and all of the 'Scarlet-Red' zinnias went in. The latter mostly filled the edges of the madder bed. I planted madder for its roots, which are used to dye fiber red, but it is not much to look at. Hence, the red zinnias. The balance of the zinnias and Mexican sunflowers went into a raised bed along with the surviving dyer's knotweed. Trays of seedlings have been sitting on the deck for about a month, undisturbed by the dogs, until one of them decided the chew up half the dyer's knotweed, plus a few empty seedling pots.

I have also been weeding. Instead of clearing a whole bed at one time, my MO is to pursue eradicating a particular weed all around the yard. Today, until the heat and humidity drove me inside, it was Canada thistle. This strategy is helpful in areas where I am growing something I am not that familiar with, at it helps prevent me from yanking the wrong plant. For example, while working in the "prairie" area, I was able to identify some lance-leaf coreopsis and asters that I might have pulled had I not been scouting for the thistle. Another easy to spot and remove "weed" is volunteer wheat that pops up where I have mulched with straw.

Speaking of mulch, the pile is shrinking. Despite piling it on thick, some plants like pokeberry and milkweed are breaking through. I let some of the pokeberry survive because I want to use the berries for eco-dyeing. The milkweed I have mixed feelings about. Part of me wants to limit it to the milkweed patch, but I hope the more I have, the more likely I will get monarchs that will lay eggs.

Yesterday I heard a wren singing in the neighbors yard, so I made a point to clean out and hang my two wren houses. Today a male wren started building a nest in one, loudly advertising his endeavors. Such a big voice from such a tiny bird!

Transplant day

Today was GORGEOUS outside: temps in the low 70's, sunny, a light breeze. Just perfect, which worked out well for me and my outdoor plans: transplant ALL the plants I started inside that had not yet felt real dirt on their toes.

The nighttime temps are supposed to stay above 50 (except for one possible 48 degree night midweek), so I transplanted the tomatoes and peppers. I also discovered I cannot count - I needed 12 Roma plants, but somehow grew 14. Actually, I grew more than that, have given those extras away already, so I gifted the extra 2 to my next door neighbor (while standing in a sea of thistle - I'm a good neighbor/bad neighbor).

The cukes, zukes, pumpkins, and squash I started inside all found new homes. For the first time ever, I did NOT plant them in hills. In the past, I would always dig a hole, fill it with uncomposted this or that, build a hill over it, and plant seeds in that hill. While the plant roots worked their way down to the garbage, worms converted it into castings, and you could literally see the difference when the roots reached that black gold. But now my garden beds are full of horse manure, so I don't see the advantage of my previous method. We'll see how *that* turns out.

Quite a few, but not all, the marigolds made it to the garden. I also planted sweet corn, with the idea of later planting pole beans to climb the corn stalks. We'll see how *that* turns out, too.

With the transplants out of the way, I filled up most of the holes in the cement blocks that surround the new asparagus and strawberry beds (ran out of potting soil). I'll let the soil settle a bit before planting, although I did start some zinnias in pots for later transplanting. And I weeded that sea of thistle I was standing in earlier, uncovering some hostas and columbine.

And then I pooped out, which is why this post is barely coherent.

(BTW, the Rose of Sharon is *finally* leafing out, but the butterfly bush looks kaput.)