I am having a devil of a time finishing this post about how I not felt like blogging much lately. lol I have not been feeling the love towards blogging in large part because I'm not feeling the love towards my garden over the summer. I have been working in the garden more this year than for the past 5 and yet at the same time I'm less satisfied with it. I'm noticing the flaws more this year, the unfinished parts. Those would include:
1). The field up top. The Bidens were mostly a bust up there this year and the few asters are only knee high.
mid-April 2012 The pink flags mark the locations of Aster 'Miss Bessie'.
August 26, 2012
I'm so envious of the beautiful artistic grasses that grow in the Dordogne region in France with the wild orchids that Rob has shown on his blog. Here we just get tangles of bermudagrass and some tall blooming grass that's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. When the mess gets bad it's time to bring out the tractor and mow it down.
2). The view from the corner of the drive to the house. It's dominated by the shavings pile with the gray tarp and lacks a visual focus, a "punch". I've held off doing anything much because we plan to build a hay shelter and two new stalls adjacent to the paddock. Then I can landscape.
early March 2012
The best I can do to screen the shavings pile for now is to allow a couple of wax myrtle volunteers to grow up above the pile. Might add a couple of sweet bay magnolias too. A shelter for the shavings would be impractical at this point because we don't have a tractor that has an attachment that could easily move the shavings under a shelter after they are dumped.
August 26, 2012
3). The garden east of the house. Love it late April through mid-May, but after that there are gaps. I want more summer phlox in there, but am having some trouble getting as much going as I'd like, due to both winter losses (voles?) and summer losses (some sort of white fungus at the base of the stems). The daylilies need to mature more into clumps and I want to add more purples like 'Indian Giver', 'Blackjack Cherry', and 'Catherine Neal'.
late April 2012
late May 2012 The (clumsy) hay edging is my attempt to correct a
curve I've had trouble getting right after moving the rose 'Blush Noisette'.
curve I've had trouble getting right after moving the rose 'Blush Noisette'.
A riddle: why is the answer to a bed that needs something
and already has daylilies always "need to get more daylilies"?
and already has daylilies always "need to get more daylilies"?
4) The beds north of the well, between the house and the big perennial bed. At least they don't just look like compost piles anymore, but they still have some filling in to do. I recently added more seashore mallow and Hibiscus moscheutos to the bed nearest the drive and will add more to the sister bed as well. My favorite part of this part of the garden is the sweetbriar rose (Rosa eglangeria) and a white-and-blush pink hibiscus. The foliage of the sweetbriar is very strongly fragrant every morning and evening with high humidity (which is most mornings and evenings in summer) and after a rainstorm. It smells like honey and apples.
late May last year
August 26, 2012
I think I'm just ready for the landscape to come together more as a whole. Granted, it does come together even now when everything is sized up in late summer/ early fall, but I'd like for it to be more together over the whole season.
