Baby steps towards the future gardens of Beebe

[Lily left the valley]

I gave Shoobie a little booster treat yesterday, by planting a single banana skin not too deep near to him to help feed him some potassium and calcium as spring starts arriving. We didn't cut him back at all, but he's not very high yet either. I'm still debating trying the espalier on a few of our berry plants, but I've come to accept that using the chain link fence we share with out back yard neighbor isn't a great idea, especially if they spray again for ticks this year. We have plenty of fallen wood and oodles of saplings we'll be pulling out we can use for early weight staking, though.

I need to pull out ye old graph paper and do a quick yard sketch of what's where so I can seriously start to figure placement plans in earnest. Every time I see our holly bushes, I feel guilty because we didn't prune them last year and they are so leggy now. We also have loads of berries leftover, which surprised both Sean and I. It's not like we have a dearth of birds here. Maybe it's because so many folks around here have backyard feeders set up.

That reminds me, I still have to work on the wee metal bird bath I got last year. It's small enough that I'm actually thinking about making it a bee bath. The dragonflies would probably like that too. I really have missed the dragon flies. They always brightened my day last year.

I've still been plugging away with my garden blog, which is helping keep bits in mind as to what I should be doing very soon if the snow ever stops visiting this spring. I'll be fine with once more for my birthday, but after that... I really did enjoy walking home in it the other day, though, since I knew at this point any snow might be the last for this end of the year.

I let some of the milkweed seed pods seed naturally, but I took a lot of the pods in and brown paper bagged them to overwinter and plant early indoors in pots (which I need to get moving on) because I've read that sometimes with a cold spring, they can bloom too late for the main migration. I thought I still had a milkweed seed pouch a grocery store gave away, but I can't find it, and I don't recall what variety it was (if it was even marked. I seem to recall the label was just "Milkweed", so it's probably more common. I had read about that one tropic variety that is bad for them when grown up here because they can get parasites (I have it bookmarked so I won't plant that even if offered.)

I am trying really hard not to write everything I think of down on a ToDo list just yet. It would be frighteningly long. So instead of been trying to do what little I can in prep for when it'll be safe to plant.

I am a bit concerned, because my one bag of potting soil that I thought was sealed was not, and it smells a wee bit mouldery. I had read about baking soil to sterilize it, and I need to look that up again and will try it before I start trying to get ahead with the bits that should have been in the ground last year, but didn't make it. All of the seeds and pips and bulbs were poorly stored for a bit, so I honestly don't have high hopes for anything, but I'm still going to try!

I did happen to see a Craig's List ad today with a bunch of "free in yard" stuff, and I noticed a rather hefty roll of coated wire fencing in the pile, so I'll need to see if it's still there today.

I hope we get some flower on our velvet plant this year. Do people offset when they plant biennials so they have flowers every year? I haven't had time to look that up yet.

The partial shade mosses I transplanted near it last year had mixed results, so we'll see what happens this year. As the snow keeps coming back and receeding, the moss is just so alive and eager all over the yard.

So much that needs doing, and I'm trying to remind myself that a lot likely won't get done again this year.

[Lily left the valley]

Before the rains picked up, I did a bit of winter fallen branch and such cleanup.

We have lots of berry travelers that are showing their height now that the snows seem to have receded. One thick thorny traveling was low to the ground, and I need to go back out later to find out where it ends.

I need to get moving on all of the variations of berries we have, really, before the rest of yard starts exploding with growth again. I made that mistake last year with the raspberries and blackberries. There's still a lot of plants back in the woodsy edge corner that I don't want to just rip out before I ID more.

I also poked about in the the trash pit corner (from the prior tenants), and that's where I was when the rain picked up. There is a lot of work to do there, still.

Depending on the weather, I'll just keep trying to get out there even if for only 15 minutes at a time. Every little bit helps.

Oh. And I saw the tick spray flags pop up at the neighbor that borders us along the 50' on the south side of the property.

I have to revisit my garden bookmarks on plants that absorb toxic stuff to help form a barrier between that neighbor and and food crops this year.

[Lily left the valley]

I have been trying to get into the habit of spending at least a half hour a day when weather allows on the gardens overall.

Today I decided to pick up sticks on the 5' strip where I need to regrade on the west side, and did a mostly gentle rake over to gather mostly oak leaves that fell over the winter.

As soon as I started, I realized I should at least try a before/after, and I had to grab my cushion kneeler anyhoo because of all the berry suckers with their thorns at the ready. I really need to buy a new pair of leather gloves that actually fit me.

The gentle raking was to not disturb all the lovely moss. I'm still trying to decide if I want to do a one spade size at a time lift off the top level to preserve as much moss as possible when I start digging down. I can use the moss wherever later.

The basket of leaves in the after shot, showing all the branches as well, is fill #3. The new leaf bin we made had already almost halved down in size, so I have been dumping all mostly leaf piles in there. I'm trying to keep bigger woodsy bits out, though I don't mind if a few smaller pieces sneak into the leaf bin.

[Gothichome]

I think the weather been crap for most of us in the east. Every here in Chatham is about three weeks late. Only thing thriving in the gardens and lawns are weeds and creeping Charlie.

[mjt]

One advantage of getting 15" of snow over the weekend is that we can't see the creeping charlie.

On the bad side, the rabbits have enough to stand on that they can reach above the trunk wrap on our new trees. And our 8-month old chocolate lab is getting high-centered in the yard...

[Lily left the valley]

I think the weather been crap for most of us in the east. Every here in Chatham is about three weeks late. Only thing thriving in the gardens and lawns are weeds and creeping Charlie.

I actually strolled back in history on my Beebe house thread. I think on the 20th of April was talking about how there was still snow recently, but finally melting enough that neighbors were starting post winter yard cleanups and how I should get started on that too.

So although it feels like this is still dragging on forever, it was at least white on the ground similar last year. I don't think the night temps were quite as far below freezing as they have been this year, though.

One advantage of getting 15" of snow over the weekend is that we can't see the creeping charlie.

On the bad side, the rabbits have enough to stand on that they can reach above the trunk wrap on our new trees. And our 8-month old chocolate lab is getting high-centered in the yard...

This reminds me of a "free" ad that I keep seeing on our local CL. They are giving away vinca--if you dig it up. And by that, they mean ALL OF IT. Yeah...there's a reason that ad is still up.

I've seen snow prints that could be rabbit, but still have not physically seen any actual rabbits yet.

[Lily left the valley]

Oops. Kept thinking about posting updates here, and distracted by life.

If I didn't mention it before, sparrows moved back into the soffit "birdhouse" before we had a chance to fix the growing gap properly. I did a temporary fix so the gap wasn't so wide that an egg could roll out in a worst case scenario. I added "fix failing garage soffit" to my Fall ToDo list.

We did get started last Sunday on one of our driveway side projects (I forgot to plan my before/after picture taking spot. The arrows show which fence post is the same for reference:


The greens you see are day lily transplants from that section where I pulled up the rough cut stones last year, and we'll be making a walkway alongside the driveway on that side. I have some other older bulbs and pips I'll be planting this week and next, some will go here with the lilies. Some of them were stored poorly for a time (during the moves), so I'm not sure what will grow or not. I'm still planting them all because, why not?

Oh, and the long wood edging piece (cannot recall what the name of those is for the life of me right now, but it's not an old railroad tie), that came from the backyard where we think the playset used to be due to the swing seat we found and the rubber lined area with the aggregate on top that we still have to remove. (Finally have a wheelbarrow, I think I mentioned, to move the stones towards where the dry river bed will be.)

Speaking of water management...We also put our rain barrel back out this week as frost time seemed finally over, just in time for three days of rain. I also hope to regrade the safety glass bed for the short term so we can pick up our second rain barrel within the next two weeks. Even without guttering back there, both will help the water intrusion we're getting from that bed, as it's the worst of the water intake in the cellar. I even put a mini countdown for myself on my garden blog to encourage myself to stay on target with that project.

Today, it is gorgeous and sunny. I am a still a bit groggy, having woken up from too little sleep for one of my hobbies, but hope to continue progress cleaning up the backyard after posting here.

I had picked up some garden related books last weekend, and I have decided this week to try to use the steps in The 2 Hour Garden, even though they assume frost free starting the first week of April, so I'll have a bit of catch up there.

The premise is starting with a "typical" 25' x 30' urban backyard that is likely not much but some fencing, beat up grass, and maybe a walkway patio or single tree. They assume their readers will have at least construction debris buried in the yard and will need other soil amendments, and a few other factors like heavy soot fall (remember the acid rain days?), and so on.

What I think is neat about the book is that it's a two year process they lay out in fortnight steps. You'd think that'd make the book super big, especially with all the illustrations. Yet it isn't. They did a good job, I think, of keeping the information manageable and not overwhelming in their organization overall. There is a lot more they could have touched upon, but when reading it, I can also understand why they chose to focus as they did.

They also worked with six households of various member sizes and house/land layouts, and they show how each household used or refused what they liked of the proposed possibles, and applied that to their own projects. There are accompanying lists of possibles as well as color blocked and numbered reference overhead plans to see the exact shape of each yard, directional orientation, as well as a short blurb on what that household wanted and why certain choices were made.

It's a neat book from 1976, hard to find even online, though there is one library that loans out a virtual copy that I've found so far, so I'm happy our library had it to find here!

[Lily left the valley]

Got more done in the hour and a halfish I spent outside today than I thought I would. Especially since a chunk of that time was looking into black contractor bags in the garage and figuring out what was garbage that should have gone out long ago, and what was weed seed bakes. (None were bake bags.)

Also had one sad surprise that startled me. I grabbed the watering can to see how bad the rust was looking (it's really, really bad. Never buying that brand can again.) Saw a shadow (I'm still in the garage with the big door shut, so not much light), and though with the recent temps, I'd had an algae bloom in what little water was in there. So I walk outside without looking back in and dump it out on the garage bed. It was a drowned mouse. Really recent too, given a few factors like lack of overall stiffness to said demised mouse.

I planted the Dutch iris and the alliums I super sale bought end of last summer, I think it was. No idea how they will fare, but I've decided to plant whatever I have this year and if it grows, then I'll celebrate. If they don't do anything, I'm only out a few bucks. I think I maybe spent just over $5 for those plus the gladiolas, freesia, and Syberian irises. I put a few of the alliums among the transplanted day lilies. The rest and all the Dutch iris were split between the two top level front yard beds. Unlike the lily of the valley I had recently planted, these looked a tad less dead. So who knows?

I did spot one surprise, though, when planting them. A seedling that looked familiar, but made no sense to me. Last year, I had planted some old sunflower seeds too late, and most of them did not even grow. Out of the few that did, only two I think flowered, and one of those was at least near a foot high. Given that, I assume there was little to no chance of any seeds dropping to start a new generation. Yet here I was staring at what looked to be a sunflower seedling. Then I thought of something...what if it was one of the seeds that just didn't start growing last year? I'll find out in time if it's even a sunflower or not...but here it is:


I edged the east half of the top layer where we'll be putting in more beds, regrading for the walkway, and widening the porch edge bed to make room for a ladder when we need to get at the gutters.

I started pulling turf up along that layer, using a fork. Then I'd shake it out, maybe use a hand trowel to bang the really thick ones, then I either tossed them down the slope or carried them and started filling in where we'd had erosion at the bottom most level where the street runs off into our yard. As I've mentioned, I think, we have no curb nor sidewalk. The property west of us is the apex of the street hill, so we do get some erosion from water heading downhill, but more damage is done by the plows in winter, really. I don't care much if the dense matter grass lives or dies, for now, the root system will hold the dirt that remains in place. I stopped about a third of the way as I realized the angle of the shadows, and started gathering my tools.

I did do some cursory leaf clean up on that one bed we had started last year. The mullein seems to be waking up and growing. I picked the base level of leaves off because they were starting to go. I found a really thick worm as I worked, but it didn't mind me, so I didn't mind it. It was probably at least as thick as my pinky--no joke. I have realized that the bed will be too small for that mullein, but I was planning to deepen the bed anyhoo. The mosses I transplanted last year seemed to still be doing ok, so they are partial sun tolerant for certain.

I also did a bit of quick weeding near the bed we worked on along the driveway as I slowly took bits I had brought out to work with back to the garage. All the leaves I had gathered went into our leaf mould bin, which continues to surprise me with how quick it is breaking down. The rest of the yard clean up bits went into the compost.

I did walk around quickly with Sean before taking some pics, measuring the height from the ground to what's likely the sill given where the siding stops. I'm getting ready for the regrade mentally now that I have an idea of how far down I should be going, and how deep my swale on the west side should be as well.

I'm still debating doing a two tier rain garden set up out front. Partly because gravity, and also partly because of the lack of curb. We can't really afford to put in our own, which the town would allow. So we need something there to help filter what's coming off the street from rain. My turf move is really just one stage towards that eventuality.

I am feeling a growing dislike for the sight of the plastic rain barrel, but I think since we extended the bed edge, it will be easier to hide with plantings this year so it doesn't stand out so much.

I did try to capture some pictures of very small thin dark flyers hovering around the holly bushes, but they would not stay still, and the one picture that at least got one in frame--it's just a blur. I have no idea what they are. We do have a lot of dried up darkened dead berries, though. We don't know why the birds didn't eat more. We had at least two varieties of flies that I noticed on the dead berries. They did not bother the ones that are still plump and red.

Oh, and I had a visit while turf wrestling by the one orange tabby I thought one neighbor had adopted (the collar is newer, but still no tag) is either reaching old age, or it's a different cat because the overall color seems lighter to me. Very coy kitty, trying its best to be cute, but I lectured it the entire time about not killing the birds and chipmunks. It stayed with me about 20 minutes before it decided to mosey elsewhere.

[Lily left the valley]

Slow but steady progress continues in the yard. We had some unexpected showers today, so I wound up only spending about an hour and half outside. I did end up spending a good part of that time moving things around in the garage. I think I had mentioned before that a lot of later in the year items all wound up in the garage. Well, they were all clogging up the door areas and today for some reason I had enough of that!

During that clean up, I found the sunflower seed packet, only to find the bottom had been chewed through and no seeds remained. My fault for not storing them better, but I'm still bummed because our seed budget is so tight. Now I'm more hopeful that perhaps some other sunflower seeds might also just suddenly decide to grow this year too.

After that, I went back out front and started in again on the turf removal/transplanting to street level. Unlike yesterday, it was quite damp and chilly out. So I only made it another foot or two, almost to the middle of that side before calling it quits so I could do two other things.

One of which was continuing to plant what I had left to plant so far, I managed to get the freesia and the glads in the ground, but again, they don't look very good so who knows if they'll grow. I put the freesia out front, and the glads around the single coreopsis we had put in the new bed we started digging that runs along the driveway nearest the garage. The squirrels had planted many acorn bombs in that mini bed this winter.

By the time I was going to plant the Siberian irises (the last of anything waiting at present), I had about had it with the damp. So instead I filled the peach basket twice with stuffed down leaves, filling our leaf mould bin to the top again. When the weather dries up, I'll check and see if there's any bits I can rake out of the bottom or not.

I'm trying to get the entire yard raked well at least once before I start in on the regrade of the safety glass bed.

Oh, speaking of rakes...when I was organizing the garage better, I found out we have some near dupes of tools. I'm still not sure how that happened, honestly. I may take a picture later in the week.

[Lily left the valley]

So the seedling pic two posts up is not a sunflower. I got suspicious when I saw the stem turning reddish today, and seeing them in places I knew I hadn't planted sunflower seeds last year. It's a maple tree seedling. Found quite a few of them today, actually.

As yesterday, the rain tapered off after 3 which was good because I was done with my in town errands by then, and Sean was home.

Got a bit further with the raking until the bin was full again, but when I mentioned building the second bin, he said he'd rather do what he didn't get to on Sunday and scoop out at least the worst in the gutters. So we shifted to that. What a mess because of the recent rain. But it's really good leaf mould mix with moss, so it will be great for the beds if I sort out a few oak leaves that of course are still barely rotting.

So some raking, the gutter at least bearing a lot less weight for now, and I got a few more flowers in the ground that who knows if they will grow or not? I may start covering what I'm planting better because the squirrels or cats or both keep trying to dig out what I just put down.

Saw a downy woodpecker today, but I was busy spotting Sean cleaning the gutter, and so didn't get a shot of it.

I'm happy that so far I've managed at least an hour outside any day that hasn't been rain sun up to sun down. The progress does feel slow, but I'm so over the notion of getting everything I want done in short order.