One of my rock paintings.

2008

...standing guard, while I update all the links at the bottom of my gardening pages to include the current year.

The soldier is made out of 5 terra cotta planters, epoxied together. These are 10 inch diameter ones, so the soldier stands 4 to 5 feet tall, depending on the pots. Did you know there is no standardization in pots? And that it is extremely difficult to find them in the middle of winter? I saw this outside a souvenir shop in Hartland, NB last summer on vacation. "I can make that!" I said and took a picture. The paste epoxy is a tacky mess to work with and the sanding is no fun. The first one I did by hand, then I bought myself a palm sander (a lot faster!). I am on soldier #4 right now (as with all my sculptures, one each for me, my mom, my sister and the cottage). The first one (my prototype) was SUPPOSED to be for the garden but I put him by a cabinet in the dining room and he looks so good there that I knew I couldn't put him outside. So I have to make a #5 for the garden.

Saturday, April 26th - Nothing much new to report, anyhow. Spring started. I got the front garden cleaned up. I picked up all the garbage in the back. And then we had a winter storm this past week, so snow is back on the ground and it's too cold to enjoy gardening.

Friday, May 30th - For a few years I've had it in mind to re-do the edging on the flowerbeds around the house. They were originally edged with paving bricks (placed vertically) that were left over from our driveway. Over (eek!) 20+ years, they had gotten all bent over this way and that and therefore were pretty messy looking. I originally thought I would replace them with landscape timbers, but that would involve a lot more work because timbers are wider than bricks - and would cost money… I already HAD the bricks and bricks never rot. So my new intention was to dig out the bricks and lay them horizontally instead of vertically (because of the years of sinking ground around the house and topping up, it was no longer necessary to have them so deep).

I thought I would START on that on Tuesday as I didn't have to work. Since they are interlocking bricks, I knew the first one would be a challenge to dig out but it was a ROYAL pain and I almost gave up before I even started. I kept telling myself, “Once you get the first brick out, the others will be easy.” And that was true enough. Unfortunately, I kept going and worked on that all day (8:30 a.m. until 4:00). Digging and scraping off caked on dirt and carrying (laying horizontally, I would only need half as much to cover the same area) and replacing and then filling in with dirt. I ran out of dirt and had to go buy a couple more bags and load them into the car myself and those bags are heavy!

And then at east side where our new fence hits the house there was a gap that I wanted to fill in (because believe it or not the fence did not seem to discourage stupid teenagers from cutting through our yard, I'm sure they crawled through the gap and then jumped over the back fence. I once caught one walking down our driveway and ran out of the house yelling at him about private property like an insane old woman). So with the extra bricks I now had, I made a wall. 3 times. Until I was happy with it. And then I made another short wall under the “fireplace” overhang (behind the hostas) in front where I had a timber before (the timber was rotting and ugly).

So, all in all, by the end of the day, my arms felt like they were going to fall off. It wasn't like sore muscles that hurt when you move - my arms, hands and fingers hurt just by BEING there. I took muscle relaxant pills and covered my arms with my heating pad. And went to bed at 9:00.

It all really looks wonderful now. I wish I had taken a 'before' picture, though.

And what else have I been up to? Weeding. Topping off everywhere with top soil. Weeding. A bit of moving around. Oh, and weeding. Did I ever mention I hate dandelions? I remember once reading an article on weeds, something to the effect of how you can determine the composition of your soil by what weeds grew there, so that weeds were actually your friend - or not your biggest foe, anyhow. And all I thought was that the writer had weeds in his/her head. Dandelions don't tell me I have too much something (lime or vitamin C or whatever I can't remember) in my soil - they tell me practically the whole neighbourhood is infested and I have no chance at all of avoiding them.

Disappointments!

Pincushion flower (Scabiosa hybrid 'Blue Diamonds') - New last year; did not come up again. Ha! Of all my new acquisitions, this was the one I chose to take a picture of. How ungrateful!

New Members of the Garden! I think I went a bit overboard in buying new trials, though several are repeats. Oh, well.

Columbine 'Ruby Port' (Aquilegia vulgaris) - Planted in rock garden where the Pincushion was.

Clematis 'Nelly Moser' - AGAIN. This is absolutely the last time I will buy/try clematis.

Cranesbill Geranimum 'Max Frei' - a second time. Planted in Section 1. Perhaps the one I bought years ago was not this variety. We will see.

Bitter Root 'Little Peach' (Lewisia longipetala) - planted in the patio garden.

Sea Holly 'Blue Diamond' (Eryngium planum) - planted in the ex-crib garden. I was excited to run across this plant. When we were at Kingsbrae Garden in New Brunswick last summer, I was checking off their perennials ("Have that," "Tried that,") but this one was new to me and looked intriguing and I wrote the name down on my Palm (Z22 organizer, not my hand).

Joe Pye Weed 'Gateway' (Eupatorium maculatum) - another. OK, I had bought a Joe Pye Weed in 2003 (variety unrecorded) that was planted in the front garden but it hasn't done much of anything in the way of making a nice Pye Patch, so I bought another. Trying this one in the back garden.

Cornflower (Centaurea dealbata) - planted in ex-crib garden.

Leopard's Bane (Doronicum caucasicum) - planted in ex-crib garden.

Alpine lady's mantle (Alchemilla alpina) - planted in ex-crib garden. Hope this does as well as my regular lady's mantles.

Coneflower 'White Swan' (Echinacea Purpurea) - planted in ex-crib garden. Didn't have white variety yet.

Scotch Moss 'Aurea' (Sagina subulata) - originally bought for yellow colour for my front Grass Garden, but planted it in ex-crib garden instead.

Crown Vetch (Coronilla varia) - a second time. Planted in Section 1. The first one I tried was probably 10 years ago, so time to give it another go.

'Cherry Bells' (Campanula punctata) - planted in patio garden.

Pictures, pictures, pictures! Friday, June 13th

LEFT: The front garden.
CENTER: The front not-exactly-a-lawn or non-lawn or as it is now known, the NAWN, where pussytoes have spread so well. (P.S. "Nawn" was my husband's idea and a great one at that; I liked it right away! He says he wants credit or he'll sue.)
RIGHT: The wall.

LEFT: Wild violets in back corner. Warning! These spread like crazy but if you want something that grows in dense shade under trees and is taller, they can't be beat. I love them despite their prolific nature. Their heart-shaped leaves are attractive after the blooms are gone. Can you spot the yellow lady's slippers amongst the violets?
RIGHT: Lady's slippers.

LEFT: Another great plant for shade under trees, this one is very short. A transplant from the cottage, I have no idea what its name is.
CENTER: One of my hops vines came back and is doing its climbing job very well. Brought some more in from the cottage. I'd like to have practically the whole back fence covered in hops.
RIGHT: Wherry foamflower (Tiarella wherryi), new last year for the shade, came back and bloomed.

LEFT: Short yellow hostas. What a spectacular foreground plant this is! And it multiplies so fast, especially if you divide it up each year.
RIGHT: Sea holly, just starting to colour up.

Saturday, June 21st

A couple projects:

Just a small expansion to start to make this back shade bed along the fence less straight. Planted with the short yellow hostas.

And another slight expansion on each side of one end of the kidney-shape garden (where the watering can is in the first of the previous set). Though now it is less a kidney and more a figure-8. Planted with short blue hostas. Nice, too, but they are not as prolific as the yellow ones.

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