Garden!

[elionwyr]

My grandmother, I'm told, had quite a green thumb.  I've always wished I had inherited that particular trait, but - alas - the only things I could really claim to be able to care for well have been shamrock plants (because those bastards are just too dang stubborn to kill).

I've always wanted a garden, and up until now I've only lived in a few placed that allowed me to play in the dirt, with varied degrees of success.  As a kid, I was pretty good with four o'clocks; as an adult, I've pretty much stuck to annuals, and have learned that gardening in poor neighborhoods is more properly called 'archaeology.'  It's gotten to the point where I'm shocked if I'm NOT finding broken glass, toys and the like buried in the garden-to-be.

Some of my early getting-to-know-you talks with Bones concerned plants and gardening.  He was frustrated by the death sentence his home seemed to be to anything he tried to grow.  So when I moved out here, friends loaded me down with plants from their gardens, and I chose things (like hostas) because I knew he liked them.  What I didn't know was how many plants he was bringing as well!

We had a lot of gardening to do.

I have no 'before' pics, but imagine if you will that the front of our house was full of scraggy shrubby goodness.  Bones tore all that out before I moved in.

This is pretty much what the front has looked like since late June.  Irises and hostas make up most of the plant life.  There's a small peony in the upper left corner; our baskets of petunias are still going strong; the fountain grass is getting established; and my Chinese lantern plant by the skull is just not impressed by life at all.  I'm still trying to figure out what he wants.

Hostas, some coral bells, some fountain grass, another TINY Chinese lantern  (roughly in the middle of the picture), a scraggy looking rosebush that did produce flowers for us last month, and a finally-happy geranium that I have for the symbology.  (There a few hens and chicks hiding in the pot, too.)

What we found as we worked in these beds was that the owners of the house have tried to grow a LOT of plants.  Broken glass, old plant tags, and mystery bulbs were littered throughout the varied beds.  I'm still not sure if that means they took their plants or if they couldn't get anything to grow.

For the first time in my life, I live in a place with a mailbox out front!  We didn't do much with this yet..just some annual grasses, and a hibiscus of a type I've never seen before.

Mexican feather grass and fiberoptic grass (which wasn't such a good choice, but..)

Along the side of the house, there's this huge Sycamore from Hell (TM).  It's the messiest tree I've ever seen - there are sizeable branches in the driveway on a regular basis, not to mention leaves out the wazoo.  The neighbor on that side has told me the owner of the house had intended to take the tree down; when his health failed, he instructed his daughters to do so.  Bones tells me that to take this monstrosity out will cost thousands of dollars...so we're all stuck with the beast.

forget eating kites..the Sycamore from Hell (TM) eats LAMP POSTS

There's a smallish square flowerbox of sorts around the tree's roots, and we've put a fair bit of time into trying to (a) dig out the drainage ditch that was well concealed by spillover dirt and (b) trying to get the flowerbox back into something that's actually functionable.

hostas and columbines start to fill in.. and to give you an idea of how many hostas, irises, grasses, and the like we had? that whole area behind the tree was filled with bags and containers of plants.


Bones' flowerbox rebuilding!
(and yes, it's working at keeping dirt out of the driveway as well as our house!)

We've found that there are larger water issues along the edges of the room.  Most of the gutters seem to be either non-existent or on strike, which has led to some readjusting of the gardening along the back of the house as we've tried to analyze the Death By Floody Doom zones.

HOSTAS!  Didn't see that coming, did ya?  The trellises are supporting what I think are morning glories - I found them in other parts of the yard, and Bones' kidlet really wants to see some in our garden.  The big bushy thing is a yellow mum left by the house owners - honestly, it's pretty monstrously large for a mum, but I'm leaving it alone.  There's a bleeding heart hiding in there as well.  What I didn't photograph is that, around the corner from the mum, I have two kinds of wormwood growing surprisingly well.  One I brought with me; the other two are from a local greenhouse that had a heckuva sale, and is why we have that hibiscus, for example.  ("Awwww, does the poor widdle plant need a home?  COME TO ME!")

In the sorta-middle of the yard, we originally had a huge ol' stump in the middle of yet another raised bed.  Bones took a chainsaw to it, got most of it out, and found some nifty stones to fill in the space.  Version 1 looked like this:

(the Rune in the center is something I made at Brushwood last year)

BUT..then we had a nasty storm last week and the only destruction we suffered was a huge branch that fell square on my bat urn, shattering it nicely.  :(  So this is what we have right now (and I'm not sure the black petunias have forgiven me yet) :

I mentioned the greenhouse and the sale and the desperately orphaned plants, yes? Welllllll..in my madness, I also adopted a bunch of nicotiana, which I have always loved, and added a few absurdly cheap perennials to boot.  Bones was skeptical - and rightfully so, as these guys were root-bound, leggy, and just pathetic.  BUT!  He rigged up another raised bed for me, and I'm so very happy to say that they're doing better than either of us had dared hope!

yay lantana!!!

I finally have some lambs' ear! and I'm finally able to pull my garden critters out of storage and use them!  And that's a not so great example of the nicotiana - I assure you most of it's in flower.


sorta an overall view - there's also Russian sage and catmint in there

this heirloom rose was a goner, we thought - she started out in the front, but had zero growth, so we decided to try her back in this bed, and I'm SO happy to report she's remembered how to grow!!

The final bed is my herbal garden.  Well..almost the final bed.  There's a very rough raised bed around a tree that's become what I'm calling The Mystery Garden.  I found a peony in there, and decided to plant all of the irises we had that were just bulbs, a bunch of mystery bulbs I'd found all over the yard, and assorted seeds that we hadn't had a chance to plant anywhere else.  Some of the seeds have sprouted, and some of the bulbs have drifted back to the soil's surface.  It'll be interesting to see what happens.

But!  Herb garden!  This has been fairly experimental. It's populated with things I brought from Pennsylvania.

how it looked June 14th, the day of our wedding (this was the first garden)

quite a change!  this is, from left to right, valerian, roman chamomile, St John's Wort, woad, and mugwort.  the really large valerian is now 2 years old and I'm going to try to harvest it.  the woad is young, but I'm gonna try that one, too..


another shot of the same part of the garden - woad is being an attention hog

elecampagne is in the middle - two plants, neither of them doing all that well - and yarrow, which is starting to flower.


the plant in front of the praying alligator is ashwagandha, which I'd given up most hope for, but it's finally started to grow, and even has some berries. sorta over the alligator's right shoulder is a very unsure-of-itself witch's broom, which I thought had completely faded away, but..no, it's just barely growing. alas.


this is lavender to the right, and a chevron plant to the left. the chevron plant was a gift, so I'm so happy it's figured out this whole growing thing!


i have a secret love of nettle plants. turns out we have a lot of it in another garden, but these are two varieties that were gifts. the scraggy things are lilies of the valley.  the perky plant to the left of the sun is another lavender - there are three total, different varieties, but this one seems to be the happiest.

Further to the left is a Japanese fern, some woodruff, and some more irises.  Scattered throughout are some brown eyed Susans, and there are pots of stevia and mints as well.

For as many gardens as we have, they all take minimal weeding, and *insert furtive look here* I'd like more plants, of course.  Because I'm an addict.  Not having a container garden is a very strange feeling, and I find myself feeling very unsure about trusting Nature to not kill off everything.  But! I'm looking forward to trying to harvest stuff like the woad! :D