You are amazing Melissa. I'm planning on weeding and hauling manure, alfalfa pellets and organic fertilizer around to the roses most especially. I have 9 baby roses in my nursery alcove on the patio outside our bedroom. I have 4 cuttings in the shop under lights. I'm vegetating watching "A Place to Call Home" on acorn, and eating a pint of Hagen Daz coffee ice cream at the moment. I am going to be inspired by your posting I'm sure soon.

I wish I could get U.S. ice cream here: DD and I actually prefer it, as less rich. I don't know if that's true for Hagen Daz, though. Supermarket-purchased ice cream in Italy is actually sad stuff, unlike that in the "gelaterie".

I hope you find inspiration: your plants will appreciate it! I love soil improvement.

If you keep on working at it long enough, you'll have a garden. We've been working on ours since 2003, and there have been lots of setbacks and discouragements. The Olive Terrace was begun almost twelve years ago, and is only now fully taking shape; it may need another year for planting. This is not unusual in our garden history.

I planted tulips here, which thanks to their long stay in the beer fridge should do well. We don't get enough winter chill for them, so cold treatment is necessary.

I am digging a new rose garden for modern shrubs at the arboretum where I volunteer. The city would have paid for the roses but no telling what I'd end up with (and when) so I ordered and paid for them myself.

For the arboretum's antique garden I couldn't get Mystic Beauty or Jean Bach Sisley from ARE, so I'll end up making another order to get those. My alternates will be Souv. de St. Ann's and Mme. Lombard. Le Vesuve and Mme. Antoine Mari are new in this garden, and sailed thru their first season with good growth and no blackspot. Oh how I love roses that don't need to be coddled!

At home the deck construction is nearly complete; a couple roses will go in the ground right away, the rest in the spring. I am nervously watching my new G Nabonnand which took off nicely; hope it is winter hardy here. Alister Stella McClain had a rough time the first couple winters but has built up to a nice big plant now. We get nights in the 20s occasionally, and never any snow cover.

My mother sent me an amaryllis which I potted up today. I haven't had one in YEARS and am so excited! Being 99 years of age, she has quite a collection of amaryllis, most gifts from me and my sisters. She just decided to return the favor!

I've really enjoyed reading about all the projects. Thanks for sharing! Maybe it will inspire me to get going. Very long, I'm sorry.

This has been an odd year. It was not without its social drama. DH retired- twice- and DD got a new job in a new state (at least a little closer, only one time zone away this time). Then she got engaged, bought a house and got married. DS and DiL had baby #3 in June. We kept our older grandbabies for the month of June, at first only during the day and then full time. (Need a vacation? Keep an active 5 and 7 yr. old for a month then send them home. The relief and relaxation you feel will be as great as any you can get on a vacation.) Mom lives alone about 100 mi. from us and manages quite well. This year she fell. Fortunately someone was there to help. We were able to get there and take her to the doctor and nothing was broken but it continues to concern us.

Next the weather- a long drought with less rain than normal at the beginning of summer, only a sprinkle or two for the rest of summer and then none at all for fall. Temps higher, at times recordbreaking. Till now. After Thanksgiving we began experiencing wind, rain, more wind, then cold, down to 20's and lately teens; actually not abnormal for early December. However, we had only about a week of fall and we are far behind in our fall chores.

The biggest gardening problem we had this year came from a neighbor who decided to sell some of his wood in late summer during the drought. He cleared the right-of-way that he owned between our house and our neighbor to the NE and cut the trees behind our property and that of our other neighbors. He felled a good many trees that were deemed not market worthy and left them. However, very hungry wildlife, now with nowhere else to go, came into our yards hunting for food and water. The deer destroyed our vegetable garden and a good bit more of landscape and flowers. Even things that deer had ignored before were fair game. The exceptions were native salvias, lavender and rosemary or something deadly like digitalis or hellebores.

So the projects- Drought and less time than needed for gardening have made me realize that I need to plan for these things in the future. With no water source in the front of our house, the bed beside the drive was reachable only by adding a long second hose to the first and then snaking it around to reach the bed. As a result, that bed didn't get the water it should have. The tree removal in the woods behind us didn't seem like a welcome change but it allowed more sun from the east in the back of our house. I am planning on making a new bed for those roses behind the play area/sandbox for our grandbabies. It will be a tight fit but I think it will work. I'll move my culinary herbs to the driveway. That bed is also a place where I planted a lot of my heirloom daffodils and iris, so I want to keep them where they are. Bulbs and herbs are better suited to low rainfall and not much supplemental water than the roses.

Second project- On our own property, we also had a couple dead or dying trees removed that were likely to fall on our neighbors' buildings since the other trees between us had been removed. After clearing out some of the exotic invasives, we have some room to add a few natives; a sourwood, a carolina snowbell, a native smoke tree, cinnamon clethra, maple leaf viburnum and a couple of Guthrie chickasaw plums on the edge of the clearing. Someday they should bring in pollinators, provide food and shelter to some of the birds and forest creatures and be a delight to the people who live here. I don't know if we'll see much of it but it won't happen if we don't get it started. I will need to make wire cages to keep them deerproof. The weather has cooled and we have some rain so time to get started.

Third project- I start most of my garden from seed or cuttings. I need to be getting my milk jugs ready for all my winter-sown seeds ready to go. First I have to finish planting everything that I couldn't get into the ground earlier this fall because of the weather. And somehow I have to get ready for Christmas. <Sigh>

Change is the order of the day. Kes, clearly you've been gardening in a dynamic, that is to say, changing, environment this year. It can be a shock when the neighbor cuts down all his trees, or you come out in the morning to find a section of ground has dropped three vertical feet in the night. But there are all the new opportunities. I love looking into natives.

Sounds like you're spreading a good deal of happiness around, Barbara. Good luck with your volunteer project and your own garden!

Great job! Loving the photos!

It sounds like you're making a happy garden! What's your weather like? Annual rainfall?

Melissa, I have cold winters and lots of rain in fall and spring. Frost is not deep or persistent. The lowest temperatures that can occur can be -2 / -5 ° C. Maybe someday some lower. But only in a timely manner.

The problem for gardening in my area is summer. Temperatures in the months of July and August often exceed thirty degrees. Many days we arrive at 37 / 38º C. But the worst thing is that the atmospheric humidity is very low. The weather is very dry.

So I try to protect my floor with quilts. Irrigation water stays longer in the soil because less evaporation occurs.

I then put a map to see what part of Spain I live in. It is what is called Central System (mountains) I am about 900 meters high. My town belongs to the province of Madrid.

Location

Location · More Info

Location · More Info

Kes, my soul shrinks as I read you. It's tremendous what you tell !!

Have you thought about building what they call a "Hotel for lonely bees"?

This year I did one in a few hours. The bees have occupied many reeds.

So much work going on with many of you. I truly admire your dedication which inspires you to go on year after year to improve and beautify your properties. My only "project" has been to order another rose 'Marie van Houtte' since Carefree Beauty has been a great disappointment. It was bought from a local nursery and that may be the problem. At any rate it was planted in Tea Rose Row and MVH more properly belongs there. Now that Belinda's Dream is gone every rose there is a tea rose.

El jardin, I love the description and pictures of your garden. I hope that you will continue to post pictures and keep us updated. I can't wait to see what it will look like in the spring. Your trees and shrubs look great and will provide an excellent backdrop for your garden.

I will look into the bee hotel. I think I've seen them before. They are made of bamboo here. People use them to attract a certain kind of bee- mason bees, I think. They are wonderful for pollinating fruit trees and orchard owners welcome them. Many of our local honeybees seem to have disappeared but our native large, friendly, gentle bumblebees have moved in. They especially love flowering herbs but are happy to visit our vegetables and fruit also.

Melissa, if part of our land dropped 3 feet overnight, I don't know what I'd do! I don't think I have a Plan B for that one. Have your plantings helped prevent that? We lose soil here due to erosion but never anything like that.

Barbara, what a wonderful opportunity, to be able to choose roses for your local arboretum's antique garden. I love your choices. Maybe you can post a picture or two when they mature. I hope that they will tempt a few people to give them a chance in their own garden.

Kes

Building this hotel for bees only took a few hours.

It can be made from recyclable materials often found in the garden.

Since I did not know if it would work, I did not use cement. This way if I had mistaken the location I could easily change it from siege in the garden.

The truth is that almost all the reeds have been occupied by "guests". The bees liked my hotel !! LOL

I think that for next year I will build a new hotel of a slightly bigger size and I will put it near the orchard.

If you are interested in seeing the process and explanations of construction you can visit this article of my blog:
How to Build a Hotel for Bees. Step by Step.

The bee hotel · More Info

The bee hotel · More Info