Garden Diary - May 24

The transformation of my front yard is underway! Mike slaved away for several hours on Saturday, putting in a wooden beam retaining wall that takes out the major slope in the yard. Now I'll be able to start removing the lawn and putting in perennial plants and groundcover without erosion. I have yet to order the rocks (which will form a path curving around and holding down the remaining slope), or purchase all of the plants, but the biggest step is out of the way. Yesterday I bought two perennial decorative grasses (blue oat grass and maiden hair grass) and a wild blueberry bush, which I hope to plant as soon as I get the soil levelled out and some mulch in place.

Garden Diary - May 19

There have been lots of additions to the garden in the past two weeks.

I brought a number of perennials and wildflowers back from Mom's garden: forget-me-nots, daylilly, bee balm, hosta, fern, ivy, trilliums (red and white), mayapple, jack-in-the-pulpit, sedum, and a decorative striped grass. These have all been planted into the beds in the back (which I have continued to expand with extensive mulching). I also moved a couple patches of a mystery plant in the backyard into some different spots (I don't remember what it is, probably because it was growing in places where it was really overshadowed).

I also went shopping with Mark, who lugged several bags of mulch, compost and manure, and also picked out a number of vegetable seedlings (kale, cilantro, rosemary, thyme and tomatoes) and more packets of seeds. And we made two teepees and one square trellis out of bamboo, so hopefully we'll get some vegetables trained up off of the ground.

I just got the seeds in the ground yesterday as the weather turned surprisingly cold, so hopefully they'll still manage to get going (must try to be more organized about starting seeds inside early next year). I've planted swiss chard, spinach, mache, sweet peas, morning glory, scarlet runner beans, purple pole beans, basil, thai basil, squash, zucchini, nasturtium, helichrysum, oregano, chives, tarragon, radicchio and chicory.

The lilac bushes are in bloom; the shorter white one looks great. The taller mauve one is a bit funny - it's really only blooming on one side. But it seems that lilacs can be so finicky that I'm happy to have it blooming at all.

Last night we ate the first rhubarb of the season: pork roasted with sage (fresh from the garden) on a bed of rhubarb. I added sweet potatoes (a nice counterpoint to the tart rhubarb) and some Ontario asparagus. It looks like my rhubarb plant has been growing for a while, and may be ready to split (there seem to be three sections). In fact, earlier this week it sent up a flowering stalk (which looked like a pink and pale green broccoli). I cut it off because I didn't want it to stunt the growth of the rest of the plant, but it would have been interesting to see what would have developed. I'll wait until fall to divide and transplant it; I'd like to move some to sunnier spots, where it will get an earlier start.

In front the forsythia is no longer in bloom, and the tulips are essentially done. The purple sandcherry bushes (both front and back) are flowering - as soon as they're done I'm eager to start pruning. The peonies look ready to burst sometime soon, and the rosebush has put out lots of leaves. The mystery perennials in the small bed have also taken off; they are overflowing the edges, and are also probably due to be divided. I've added more cardboard under the rocks in the top bed to keep the mint back (and we did manage to put some to good use the other night with some mojitos). But within a week the front lawn will look radically different - on Saturday we put in the retaining walls! Once the lawn has been terraced into different levels, I'm going to be able to get started on eliminating the grass, and putting in perennials and more interesting groundcovers.

Garden Diary - May 4

The mint in the front bed has kept on growing - the rocks hardly slowed it down. Now I'm planning to put some cardboard under the rocks to 'smother' the mint. Crocuses and hyacinths are past blooming now, but tulips are at their peak. The forsythia bushes (both front and back) are still blooming in beautiful yellow. I was also happy to find that I have a few grape hyacinths, which are such a great blue. I finally mowed my front lawn, which was quite difficult on the hill (a combination of awkwardness with the push mower and excessively long grass, which I should have cut long before), which only makes me even more firmly resolved to eliminate the lawn in front!

In the back I am enlarging the beds, so that there'll be more room for plants (both flowers and vegetables). I dug up the old scalloped-edge concrete edging, and dug out bigger beds with large, flowing curves. I'll be smothering the grass and weeds here with cardboard as well, topped off with a layer of bark mulch. Behind the house the rhubarb is growing quickly, and daffodils are in bloom. Lilies of the valley are starking to poke through the dirt, but haven't yet unfurled. The clematis is already twining up the trellis.

At the side, the sage bush is putting out lots of new leaves, the gooseberries and raspberries are quite green, and the lilacs have buds (seems like there'll be a white lilac and a purple lilac; the shorter one was one of my mystery bushes). The remaining mystery bush has nice, shiny leaves. The hollyhocks that I transplanted seem to be hanging in, although they are far behind in growth compared to the hollyhocks that were already in place. The periwinkle that I transplanted to the big concrete tub seem to have taken root, although they aren't blooming like the rest that stayed in the ground (which can hardly be seen under the forsythia anyhow). I'm hoping to get plants to trail over and soften the edges of the tub, although I may move the periwinkle elsewhere, and put something edible (like tomatoes) in here.

I've put up a trellis along the side of the shed, where I plan on growing my purple pole beans. And, perhaps most gratifying, Mark has fixed my shed door (not shown here), which had been hanging from one hinge all winter. No more fears of being crushed while pulling out the gardening tools!