Anteater

I quickly ran outside and poured a bag of mulch around the last of the impatiens, the coleus and a lone persevering hollyhock. I have about 6 more bags of mulch to distribute, but at last all the new plants are mulched and will retain moisture a little better now. I used amending mulch – not the sort that suppresses weeds. I may add bark mulch later, but the soil needed a lot of help and I would rather continue with amending mulch for awhile yet if I can scrounge together the time to hand pull weeds. I also fed the flowers now that they are a bit established. I may use some of the extra mulch to keep the food from blowing away. I have one last section of yard – in the front on the other side of the driveway – that needs attention. It has a lot of nice plants there already – salvias, lavenders and a couple I don’t recognize – but they have been sorely neglected and need a good pruning and feeding.

Yesterday I took advantage of the 50% off sale Joanns was having on ceramic pots and bought a beautiful and large hand-thrown pot to plant a pale pink Helianthemum to put near my front door. I have wanted one of those plants for such a long time. I love the delicate pink next to the sage green foliage. I bought a smaller pot without any plans for it… but realized when I got home that I had a lone basil that needed a home. I popped it in there. I may change it out again and put the hardy fuschia in it if I can’t figure out what to do with that, but I’d rather the fuschia was permanently integrated into one of my yards.

I am feeling pretty good about the yard work. Now I need to sit back a bit and let things grow.

So yesterday I did some kee-raaaazy! weeding, mulching and planting. In the front I added 2 more Cranesbill native geraniums. I planted 3 black-eyed Susan plants—I may regret that since they can get kind of large and the space is small. But I do so love them. I am hoping that if I keep them trimmed down it’ll work. I ripped out a whole mess of overgrown agapanthus. The space is so small and those get so large – these had clearly been there for years unchecked. It was time for them to go. They were full of snails – yuck!

I also planted a culinary sage to form a complete “aromatic” barrier in the front yard. We have a big deer problem here. It is a thoroughly suburban neighborhood and the houses are relatively close together, but the deer are fearless and they walk up and down the street with impunity. They don’t like to venture too close to the house, though. The deer used to eat all of my flowers… even my camellias! I got really annoyed and ripped out the tattered remains of the plants at the front of the front yard and replaced them with chamomile, lavender and thyme. I love those plants. The deer quickly found them unpalatable, and so far they have left the rest of my yard (behind that barrier) alone. I am hoping that they will leave my new plants alone because of their experience with the chamomile, etc.

In the back yard, I had to suck it up and acknowledge that planting that boysenberry cane near the deck was a dumb idea. It is soooo invasive and soooo spikey. So, wearing leather gloves, I dug it up. I put it up high on the hill that is unterraced and not the least bit landscaped. If it takes, great… and if not, oh well. I ripped out the weeds that had cropped up around our lime tree (which is making a herculean effort to recover from last winters windstorm and subsequent frost) and the tattered but large hydrangea. I planted colobrachoa (royal blue, peach and hot pink) around the larger plants, including 2 Rudebeckia “Prairie Sun” plants I planted. Along the fence I planted black-eyed Susan vine.

Near the front door I filled in some of the trailing rosemary with some new small plants from a 6-pack.

It sounds like a lot, but there is still quite a bit to do.

My daughters’ b-days are mid-July. I want to get them AG dolls and sew them some clothes that match. I have achieved a lot of non 43things goals lately, and realized I ought to add some of those things onto my 43things list, which I think has gotten far too theoretical. A few goals that are grounded in the here-and-now might get me motivated to tackle some of the less practical ones, too.