The Garden Diaries, Part 1: Planning and Report
"What time is it?/ Summertime/ It's our vacation!/ It's time to shout!/" -High School Musical 2
I'm out of school and home for three whole months! To pass the time (and since I can't find a job :/) I am wholly devoting myself to the garden. I started yesterday and am pretty jazzed about getting started!
There is a little plot of dirt on the side of our house that we've never really planted in before because it doesn't get good water. All that's there now is a few rows of strawberries that do pretty well (when we remember to pick them), a rhubarb, and last year's failed sunflower seeds. I spent a couple of hours in there pulling up all the grass and dandelions and some incredibly frustratingly deep-rooted clover. My plans are to put in some partial sun/shade wildflower mix seeds in there and really monitor the water that gets over there.
Last year we potted some peppermint cuts from my aunt's garden in a box in the herb garden. I didn't think the plant had survived the car ride in the whipped cream carton and interment in a shallow grave (half and inch of dirt on top of some plastic plant carriers), but now I am glad we have it contained it in that herb box. It's thriving! I took out all the plastic I could and replaced it with mulch, and I expect that little cutting to really explode this year. Yay! It's super fragrant, which is awesome- when it doesn't mix with the also thriving chives right next to them. (I love those chives- they're yummy and pretty! but they make everything smell like onion.)
Another pleasant surprise this summer is how well the blue lobelia I planted last year underneath the tree is doing. Again, I thought most of the little plants died last year, but this summer they are all over the place and spreading. They'll stop blooming before I get any perennials in, but it's nice to have some spring color in the shade. It'll look really pretty there once we've got the ivy trained up the stairwell. Also doing great are the vegtables (lettuce, beans, peas, and the tomatoes are already starting to bloom!) and the lemon thyme is going everywhere. The wisteria ivy on the front porch is blooming on last year's growth- smells sooo pretty- and by next year we'll have those purple flowers all up the side of the railings.
Next up is to finish weeding the grass out of my mom's Bishop's weed (ugh ugh ugh) and re-soiling the front garden (my garden- my own, my preeeccciousss), and pulling up all the ivy ground cover in the beds around the front of the house and replace them with some shrubs. Mom and I are going to spray and kill everything in the mum beds in the backyard and start over, cuz it is a jungle in there. That'll be a big project.
Yay, summer!
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