It Happens Every Year

Our walkway sinks, our patio pavers sink, our stone walkway to the front of our house sinks, our north side stepping stones sink.  Some of the repair my husband can do with his crowbar and bag of sand.  The long walkway from front to back on the south side we had to have a professional do two years ago and the front ditto.  The stepping stones on the shady side my husband can do, grunt work but no special skills necessary.

On our patio, we have been looking at the leaning fountain for at least three years.  It has been shimmed up at far as it can go.  When one sits next to the fountain, your body leans to the right.  At a dinner party a couple of  weeks ago, my husband was going to ask the guests to help him take apart the three-piece fountain so that he could get at the bricks underneath.  Yikes, I said no way - it weighs hundreds of pounds and screams lawsuit if it falls on anyone.

So, yesterday he hired a professional, they started today, and the men have relaid the bricks, took apart the fountain, replaced a flagstone walk in the back of my garden and added two irregular bluestone walks.  They did all of this in a span of four hours, a job that would have taken my husband at least four weekends.

I will give the flagstone to my daughter to complete her walk on the south side of her home.  I am not a big fan of flagstone and am slowly replacing it and giving it away.  It gets really grimy and dirty, even with power washing it never looks clean.  In a wooded area, it would probably be more natural, but I do not have this type of garden. 

The fountain looks straight again, the pathways allow me into my garden without stepping all over my plantings and all's right with the world!  Oh, I forgot to tell you it's 70 degrees and the sun is out.

Mossing Around!

I received my Oregon green moss from http://www.kinsmangardens.com/ and it is always a process to get it ready to put on the baskets, hayracks and urns.  One note, it has never happened in my garden, the leftover moss I had from last year, I donated to my daughter-in-law's urns and the birds are taking it to build nests!  I am going to take a chance putting it around my urns and hayracks.  Mine is fresh moss, so maybe they will leave it alone.

It comes in a bale all tied with string which needs to be cut away.  The moss can then be peeled away in sections (do not soak what you are not going to use) and soaked in water for about thirty minutes.  It needs to be squeezed as much as possible and then can be torn, pieced, stuck inside of the rungs of the baskets, and layered between the plants if you wish.  This is not like the moss you will buy at Home Depot or the local garden center.  It is so natural, green and brown, almost seems like you plucked it from the woods.

Once used outdoors, it lasts for the season.  If you have kept it dry from last season, it is still good to go, maybe a little darker.  I am going around today to collect the old moss from last year, and I will place it in the middle of my posts between the plantings to conserve moisture.  This may seem like overkill and fussiness, but it really does conserve moisture in those pots that are exposed to the heat and sun.

Go ahead, begin "mossing around."

P.S.  I bought a large basket of pansys (10 pansies in the pot), and will separate them into two hayracks.
Remember, if you buy those small ones in the flats they will barely get big enough when you will have to take them out because of the heat (if you live in zone 5 or above).  I put mine on the north side of my house when they are big and beautiful (around May 1, here in Chicago area).

Things Are Really Slow Out There

What is really going on in my garden?  Not much!  I am looking around and bulbs are poking through and my Early Sensation daffodils are blooming (almost two weeks now - I will certainly plant more of these next fall),, but my Tete-A-Tete daffodils are struggling to bloom.

I am beginning to feel disapointment that many of the bulbs I planted in the fall are not coming up and were probably taken by the squirrels before I could cover them with chicken wire.  I am using a new product (in three different gardens) for me called Plantskydd for Critters.  It is a granular, non toxic dried blood type material.  They guarantee that it will work and also make a deer repellant.  It is expensive, but if it works it will save many of the plants those little rabbits and squirrels (bulbs) feed on.  This is a bummer, I am definitely going to win next fall! 

I am going to begin feeding my evergreens, boxwood (boxwood take a general fertilizer not acid), shrubs and roses.  I used to buy spikes, but I haven't been too happy with the results in the past few years, so this year I am going to do an organic granular.  I have pruned all of my roses and cut down the perennials and the hydrangeas that grow on both old and new wood.  My Endless Summer Hydrangeas look good this year requiring very little pruning.  The Salome daffodils that surround these hydrangeas look good this year, just coming up through the mulch.

Bleeding Hearts have poked through, no hosta yet, daylilies up in the vegetable garden and elsewhere.  There is no Astilbe, no Foxglove, Phlox poking through, no Coneflowers, some Clematis showing buds, no grasses showing any growth, some roses budding, Shasta Daisies lots of green leaves, Hyacinths and Tulips poking through, no ferns, Heuchera showing growth, no Astrantia showing, no Polygonium (Soleman's Seal) , no Peony buds, no  - Why am I doing this?  It is making me so depressed!  I guess I will just have to wait like I do every year.

Matisse In The Garden

I went to my monthly workshop at the Chicago Art Institute on Thursday and was priviledged to view the Matisse collection.  The collection was from a period in his life from 1911 - 1916 approximately, so it was a surprise to me that I was not seeing all of the bright colors that I associated with Matisse.

I immediately began relating his paintings to how I could reproduce them in plants either in containers or in my garden borders.  It is amazing how fast I was able to reproduce the triangles and linear aspects to what Gordon Hayward had spoken about at the Morton Arboretum in regard to Art In The Garden.  I could pick out that important focal point, that object to view from a window (Matisse had several window pictures) and that white that draws your eye into the picture.

Matisse embraced cubism during this period of his painting and actually owned a Cezanne painting of the "Three Bathers" that influenced his paintings from then on.  This was a surprise to me as I never associated Matisse with cubism, but obviously this was a major part of his work.

A Most Unusual Garden

I have talked about my xeric garden which runs along the south side of my house right next to the foundation, but I have not told you about my xeric garden along the back of the fence facing our alley.  My hose barely reaches back there, so I was required to plant only those perennials which needed very little water.

The first thing we did was to have this strip dug out (it was all gravel, clay and asphalt) and filled with good soil which was then topped with a heavy river rock that would not wash into the alley in heavy rains. 

,Along the back I put in Panicum 'Northwind' a tall upright blue-green grass that turns tan in the fall and stays standing until the most heavy snows.  I also used some Sedum 'Autumn Fire' which stays more upright in the winter than Autumn Joy.  Interspersed throughout this thirty foot plus strip is Nepeta 'Walker's Low', Agastache 'Rosita', Agastache ' Blue Fortune', Centhantrus Ruber Alba 'White', and Sedum 'Vera Jameson'. These perennials are all xeric (requiring very little water) http://www.highcountrygardens.com/

It was a challenge planting these among river rock, but mulch would not work in this area because of the water flow, it would wash down the alley.  A few other neighbors have begun to beautify the back of their homes in the same way.  We now get some walkers down our paved alley to look at the garden.  I live in the suburbs but the lot is very citified.