Spring accelerating!
Yesterday and today have been very warm and humid here and everything is starting to make a big leap forward. Hostas, in particular, seem to be off to a slow start this year but they're making progress now. The white redbud trees are well budded, but still not in flower yet. The young dogwood down by the shed didn't flower last year but is flower now , although the flowers are still a bit small. The rain in April and the first week of May has resulted in nice lush green grass - although the back lawn is very patchy again as we did a lot of dog-sitting this winter and there was very little snowcover to protect the grass! Another round of reseeding will be needed soon....!
We finished a little project over the last two days to attempt to fix an issue that's been bugging me :-) We have one of those outdoor clothes drying racks beside the patio - functional but very utilitarian and the silvery frame and white wire is always so intrusive in pictures of the patio area! So I decided to paint it one of the green colors we used on the shed and replace the white wire with a darker color (blue was the best option we could find for the wire....) The frame is always going to be somewhat noticeable but I think this is an improvement:
I tried to find a comparison 'before' picture and the best I can do is this one from June 22 2015:
Next project - raise the height of the air conditioner screen to screen the new, taller air conditioner that was installed last year.....
We (and the neighbour to the north who can see it from their family room...) are enjoying the dogwood by the shed:
Hopefully the white redbuds will be in full bloom soon. There is one just outside and to the left (SE) of the picture above, and this one back by the pines in the beds to the north (right side) of the back lawn in this picture taken a few days ago:
In the front garden we're closely watching the development of the wisteria flowerbuds! They really started accelerating in the heat yesterday! We took a couple of feet off the top of the Chinese one last summer to make it shorter and easier to prune. Most of the flowerbuds are on the surviving older wood so, while we're going to get a flower show from it this year, it will be considerable less impressive than it's been in the past! Here is how it looks in a zoomed-in view from the front porch this afternoon:
Ahhh.... spring - I love it! What are you folk up to out there in your gardens now?
Comments (14)
GardenHo_MI_Z5
6 years agowoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
6 years agoThanks, GardenHo. The backyard is our favorite part of the garden. Green and serene was the objective and, after the rain we've had in April and early May, green is in abundance out there! The grass looks well in the pictures - but not up close! Too much dog-applied high-nitrogen fertilizer :-) With very little snow this winter, there wasn't much protection available for the grass. Once it's warm and the garden hose is out, we can flood the pee spots, but that's not possible in the winter and early spring. We put down grass seed a couple of weeks ago - and promptly got a heavy rain that washed most of it off (and birds feasted on a lot of it too!) These are the main culprits of the lawn damage:
The poodle is ours; the other two are regular visitors... The routine that leads to damage goes like this - poodle pees; Boston Terrier pees on top of it; Collie mix pees on top again! But they're cute so they get forgiven :-)
It's windy with a thunderstorm watch here too. It looks like we might get some rain soon.
You said you're 'putting down border' - what are you using? One of the best things I did here was put the path around the lawn, which minimizes work involved in keeping grass out of beds. The shady conditions in the backyard helps a lot too as the grass is always quite weak so is easy to rip out if necessary. Every now and then I'll use stakes and string to re-establish the lines of the lawn - cutting along the string with an edging tool just takes a few minutes and the grass pulls out easily. If we stay here much longer - and we intend to! - I am strongly considering removing the grass paths in the front garden - which would eliminate the need for the metal grass barrier along the brick edging (the metal edging heaves with the frost and drives me crazy!). DH rolls his eyes at the idea :-) I'd hire someone to do the work at this point and I'm in the reduce-work stage here too.
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6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoGreen and serene...you nailed it! and I'm green with envy having full sun on an acre, with the exception of two maples.
The only time I've had a problem with 'too much nitrogen' was when I had a female. With just my boys (following in line :) it's never been an issue.
The border I chose is rubber and should last a long long time. It was pricey but well worth it as I can no longer keep up with so many beds. Hiring someone to do the work would have been wonderful, but unfortunately not an option as I have a bath update in the works.
Having the border is now a constant reminder to stop buying...and that I WILL NO LONGER expand the beds! I'm done...with the exception of shuffling things around occasionally :0)
Here is a spring bed, the first bed I made (before the border), it runs along one side of my driveway...many more followed.
woodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
6 years agoGardenHo_MI_Z5
6 years agowoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
6 years agoCockapoo - cuties indeed! A neighbour behind us has one - a very old gentleman now :-)
The white redbuds are mostly in bloom this morning. Some pictures from morning walkabout....
Redbud near the pines, with brunnera at the base and Black Jetbead shrub blooming diagonally across the path to the left: (you can see how patchy the lawn is when seen in the closer view!)
Other white redbud diagonally across the lawn:
Dogwood by the shed viewed from across the trillium patch:
princeton701
6 years agowoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
6 years agoThanks princeton. My ambition is to have trilliums spread around the backyard beds to produce a look much like that in the nearby small woodland in the picture below. There were a few trilliums in various spots when we bought this place 18 years ago. I have tried to give them conditions as close as possible to what they receive in the nearby woods. Most are still only individuals or small clumps, but that one bed has really gone nuts, with lots of offsets and seedlings that are now starting to bloom. There's a trunk of a dead apple tree that I left on the ground there. I think that has helped a lot in that area. The trilliums are just finishing blooming now. They fade to pink as the blooms finish.
princeton701
6 years agoprinceton701
6 years agowoodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada
6 years agolast modified: 6 years ago
davez7anv