Rob's plants
home garden plants wildlife seed photos
plant sale journal topics plantlinks fun guestbook

Garden journal entry

 

May 04, 2013. It's been a busy week, with not so much time for tending the garden. But there's a lot of work to be done, so I've been getting up 15 minutes early every day, just to get out in the mornings before work, and I also used any evening time not taken up by band concerts or soccer practice. So today, I finally finished putting the unsold plants that have no immediate purpose in our own garden into the sale plot – always a big job (and I still have to deal with the big pile of empty pots!). Meanwhile, on my way back from this morning's bike race, I stopped in at the nearly Mennonite nursery. I only meant to pick up a couple of pepper plants (since I hadn't started any jalapenos myself), but found myself looking around their ornamental areas (which I hadn't paid much attention to on my previous visit). And I walked away with a new blueberry bush (the ones we bought mail order are barely alive after several years in the garden – hopefully this one, which starts out much larger, will do better), a mountain laurel (which likewise replaces a previous attempt, in this case deceased), and a blackgum tree. I misremembered the specifics on that tree, thinking it would stay smaller than the 50-80' mature height I found in my references. But it grows slowly, so it will in fact be somewhat small for years to come. It joined the general "forest" area that defines the woodland garden. I like the idea of a woodland area, but for the most part our trees are spaced well apart; in this area, behind the big pond in our back yard, trees are planted closer (a 'Ginnala' tatarian maple, a redbud, a chaste tree, and a crab apple combine to provide serviceable summer shade). So I resolved to add a few more trees to this cluster, so we'll have something a little bigger than the 10x10ft patch to call our woodland.
The ducks have grown to pretty much full size, and now quack instead of cheep. Although we think they're now capable of flying, they haven't shown any inclination to leave – they seem to like our bog filter too much (as shown in the photo here). Unfortunately, they've uprooted nearly all of the watercress (which went on to clog up our skimmer bag), which they've been snacking on almost non-stop. Pretty soon the food sources provided by the Lush Gardens may no longer be sufficient to sustain Cally and Flower. But we enjoy their company while it lasts.


Your name

Your comments

home garden plants wildlife seed plant sale topics guestbook journal plantlinks

Last modified: September 09, 2009
Contact me