Pulled out dandelions, put down some compost and mulch
and always check around to see what is coming up.

I've been quarrying. The end result should be a rose hole and a patio. Everything else is getting out of hand, but there are a lot of projects on hold until I get this hole dug and filled back in.

What's going on? I planted perennials on Monday, only to come out this morning and find them all dug up, covered with mud (from the heavy rain) and their planting holes totally excavated with piles of soil all over.

@#$% skunk smelled the freshly turned earth and thought it would be a perfect place to dig for worms and grubs. I was out in the pouring rain this morning scooping up handfuls of mud and trying to salvage thalictrums and hostas.

My Bluestone order arrived yesterday. So, looks like I'll be planting for the next couple days. Nice weather for new plants...I got lucky!

My (very soon to be) 11 year old daughter continued work on her walk...I am so proud of her. She still has more stones to lay, but together we planted some flowering thyme, dwarf catmint, english daisies and verbena along the sides of it. She wants things very low so as not to obscure her view of the actual walk from her window.

My son and husband removed the second of three huge stumps from the yews we removed. This one was incredible. We believe it to weigh over 250 pounds!

Mostly I just walked around and pulled crab grass out of the beds. But I did add some of that liquid bio-tone to my beds and moved some heuchura and lily of the valley around. Also, I turned an old rocking chair into a planter and put in some nemesia and black eyed susan vine. Then I worried that it was still too cold to do that, but oh well, then I planted a couple other containers because...

"It's May! It's May! The lusty month of May. The darling month when everyone throws self-control away..." even in the garden.

Patty

Pulled up dandelions, dead nettle, and some other invasives. I'm going to win that battle, really!

Started pulling out grass for the bed where I planted bulbs last fall (I was lazy last fall and just stuck the bulbs in the ground. So this year when I decided I actually want it to be a bed I now have to pull and till around the blooming plants.)

Mulched some.

Put in gladiolus bulbs that wintered in the basement.

Went the to garden center, discovered that our favorite garden center went bankrupt last winter (sigh).

Bought stuff: cherry tree, bleeding heart, hellebore, viola, petunia, allysum, phlox, lobelia, fuchsia, and more....even put some of that in! Planning on picking up another forsythia and a wiegela.

Enjoyed the lovely weather, which was too brief!

Cjsmith wrote: "Planning on picking up another forsythia"

By that, do you mean that you will pull over to the side of the road with a shovel and dig up a sucker or two or two hundred? That's is what you should do.

Now that blooming is just about over, everyone will be pruning their forsythia so DO NOT buy one...just go to someone's house and help them prune by digging up suckers. (I'm in CT, but I know I will personally be digging up several, some even over 5 feet tall, to thin out my huge forsythia.)

Patty

hmmm, good thought. I'll look into it.
Thanks!

pulled weeds, weeds, and more weeds! Mulching is in store for this weekend. Planted a few winter sown seedlings...they ought to love all the rain and overcast days. I may cover them if the temps are supposed to drop, may leave a couple as a test.
I'm trying to stay away from the garden center until all of the winter sown plants are in the ground - wish me luck!

Last week I found out the town is planning to repave my street soon. Hopefully tomorrow I'll find out just how soon. We don't have sidewalks and I garden right to the curb which is being ripped out and replaced. So...I've been digging up perennials that I want to keep and tucking them haphazardly here and there until the street is done. I'm short on time as it is so this is one distraction I could do without. Any one need any Walker's not so Low Nepeta?

The weeds are loving this current stretch of cool, damp weather. I'd better order mulch soon for the wildish shrub border I have next to a field or the garlic mustard and bindweeed seedlings are going to take over. Tonight I moved a mountain laurel into that border-I think that is the last of the woody plants that need moving.

Today our new hot tub was delivered. A month or so ago I had to dismantle a garden to make room for that. Now I can start putting that area back together.

It's time to start designing and planting the containers...all 50 or 60 of them.

It will all come together eventually, right?

Sue

Not much going on in my garden due to other things butting in to my gardening time this week, but I did get all my winter-sown tomatoes planted out, and started planting out some other seedlings. I also cleaned up a few more beds and added some amendments. Planted out my sweet peas and morning glories, as well as some of my Bluestone order.

I moved some of my potted perennials around the yard to see how they would look in certain spots, in order to get ready to plant them (did you hear that Sue, lol??!)

I'm hoping the weather clears up by this weekend. Have a big gardening weekend planned, not to mention I have to split and stack the wood from three oak trees.

Still trying to figure out exactly what to do with the huge pile of woodchips in my yard...

:)
Dee

I cleared grass from a 16' circle and built 4 raised beds (using Gardeners' Supply corners...very handy!) to go in it. Each of my daughters will have a cutting garden with winter sown babies, and I'll have a small veggie bed and a nursery bed. Maybe I built those last week? Maybe we'll put the seedlings out this weekend?
Then...rearranged a bunch of perennials and a couple of cotoneasters and planted new bluestone babies and 3 verbascum from Russell's on Monday. Also started digging seedlings for the plant swap.
Now I need to do some serious weeding before my 4 cu yds of mulch arrives this afternoon from Boston Bark. I am hoping to spread some shredded leaves before I mulch, too.
And...I am still seeing signs of voles (new holes) (they've devoured mostly sedums, it seems), even with that castor oil impregnated clay granule stuff all about, so fear that the mulch might worsen problems?
But, truth be told, I am off to Avant Gardens with a girlfriend today, after we drop the kids at school. How much weeding/leaf spreading/mulching will I get done...???
Enjoy the day, everyone!

I used old bricks and a heap of inexpensive tumbled pavers from Home Depot to make a small patio in the upper garden. (My yard is in two levels - the lower street level, then a stone retaining wall to an "upper garden." I just made sure the ground was compact and clean, laid the bricks and pavers in a design that I liked, then filled the cracks with builder's sand and then gravel. I swept away the extra gravel and voila... a level area that is just big enough for a few outdoor chairs and some nice flower containers.

Mind you, I couldn't stop just because it was raining... I was out in the drizzle the other evening doing the finishing touches. It felt good to carry off an actual project with a start and a finish.

The ducks arrived - always great entertainment. They adapt to whatever they find, as long as there's some water for them. I imagine them being surprised by what they find when they get here, always a little different from the year before.

They've been coming to our small back yard since our kids were small, so every year it brings back more fond memories for the whole family.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1072481}}

I spent the week remembering with the help of quickly sketched plans done last Fall in the rain. (I'm not much on tags ...) Started moving nurseried babies from last year into their homes, then moved several again with the vision just wasn't there.

Edged all beds. Moved winter-sown petunias, tomatoes, peppers and several kinds of cuttings outside. Fertilized roses. In between raindrops and just before dark made a dent in planting the wonderful surprises from last week's swap. Arranged cemetary containers for delivery today.

It's beginning to look like a garden, here! The neighborhood kids are convinced we're building a park. Maybe we are!! :-)
Martie

Moved the wood pile from the east side of the garage to the new wood crib on the new farmerÂs porch. Turned over the now naked soil that was there and planted hybrid tea and climbing roses, euonymus, dwarf mugo pine, Asiatic and hybrid lilies, dwarf reblooming daylilies and some annual  marigolds and dusty millers. Roses will probably get moved, as I rethink my garden plan in light of the changes in the construction of the addition on the house.

Divided the three, ancient giant clumps of hostas that were where the new addition is going and made 20 smaller clumps that I planted in front of the farmerÂs porch on the north side of the house and the rest of the north wall. They should do well there and will be supplemented with seven Ânamed hostas and some astilbe (the led zeppelin plant) on the way from Bluestone.

Moved some giant, ancient phlox from the construction site and moved to the south side of the main part of the house.

Moved some basic, orange daylilies from in front of the house to along the drive, on the hillside, and down by the mailbox on the road.

Used the blade on my heavy duty weed whacker to cut down about 100 sumac trees that had grown up under my power line. Did it two years ago and some of the new ones were already 15 feet high and getting into the wires. Also cleared out a lot of wild rose and have the cuts to prove it.

Retrenched both sides of the drive on the hill  clearing out the old leaves, weed and collected sediment and rebuilding where the rear tires of the farmerÂs tractor smooshed my ditches. My Kubota does most of the heavy lifting, but thereÂs still a fair amount of shovel digging.

Went out in the rain yesterday and transplanted about 50 clumps of sedum onto the bare slope above one of the ditches, which is just under a stone wall near the top of the hill, to keep all the dirt from running back into the ditch.

Planted various perennials that had arrived in the mail.

Weeded, weeded, weeded.

Smacked at black flies.

narcnh

Wow, narcnh, you're making me feel lazy, lol! I went out today during a break in the rainy weather we've been having the last few days, did about an hour's work, and wimped out because it was windy and cold.

All I did today was pot up a few dahlia tubers, pot up some fringed kale seedlings, opened up more winter-sown containers, and repotted a bamboo I got at a plant swap. This should be interesting - I was told the bamboo gets to about ten feet tall, and when I googled it, I found it grows to 65 feet tall! Although since it will be living in a container on my patio, I doubt it will get that high... right?

:)
Dee

Oh Dee...Yeah, I'm sure you're right! rofl

Even if you split the diff..that's going to be some bamboo! You'll need a panda to keep it in check...??

Tricia

Redid my planting bed alongside my deck; bought and planted sandcherries, viburnum, variegated red twig dogwood, flowering strawberry. also in the bed are autumn clematis growing along the fence, and climbing roses. I also planted a plant I bought at Agway; it has remarkable light brown bark; looks almost tropical; starts with an "e"? something like that?

Also planted a few planter boxes with mixed annuals and potted 2 nandinas to put on my deck; nasturtiums sprouted and are growing in my strawberry pot.

It rained.

LOL, chelone, you stole my line!

Tricia, perhaps when I visit my mom in D.C. this year I should bring home one of the pandas from the zoo, lol!

:)
Dee