Our irises

When we bought the house we raised our kids in, my mother-in-law arrived one October day with a bucket of 40 iris tubers. 3 years later – I kid you not – 3 years later when I went to split them out there were over 400! I did that again 3 years later! And they bloomed like crazy! One long full row of purple.

Here, not so much. My sister gave me some of her irises. No blooms – lots of greens but no blooms.

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I bought some from a local gardener – one year of blooms and no return the next year. I bought some from a local, very reputable garden center – no blooms the second year and no greens at all the third year.

So I have a plan, and a very good one I hope! I am going to dig out the irises from my sister that don’t bloom here at the townhouse, and plant them at the land up north. I think the soil up there is more like at our old house – rocky, gravelly. Maybe they will bloom there.

First I have to solve my deer grazing dilemna up north, but then we should have a good test.

The Weigelia is blooming

The weigelia is blooming at our townhome. Every year it puts on a fabulous show. 16 years old and it just keeps going. It was a very long, tough winter and not surprisingly this spring I am seeing some bare spots. Hopefully they will fill in. After it is done blooming I will give it a good trimming. That should help for next year.

Plum trees and raspberry bushes and strawberry plants and ferns galore

When we were last up north at the land, things looked very different. The nice winter clean look has given way to a jungle-like appearance!

We are learning more about what we have up there now. If I was a bird or an animal I would be delighted. The place is overgrown with raspberry bushes, strawberry plants are everywhere, and there are small plum trees. A friend told us we may not ever harvest the strawberries and plums. They are small and the birds and animals get them pretty quickly. As for the raspberry bushes, I did not feel bad about cutting some of those down to get a clearing. They are all over the land!

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Just like the tall ferns that now line everything! They, too, need to be tamed a bit.

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I think it’s going to be a very gradual process. Taking some from the land so we have a place to be without a crazy amount of ticks and mosquitos and black flies, yet leaving a whole lot in its natural woodsy state that we fell in love with.

Snort!

Funny story …

A month ago we were up north on the land, eating lunch out on the trail. We were just chatting occasionally. All of a sudden we heard a loud snort! I couldn’t place it. A weird bird?

My husband asked if I heard that. Yup. Did I know what that was? Nope. Well, it was a deer very close to us, just up at the turn of the trail, who heard us/caught wind of us and was not pleased. It was warning its buddies “Danger, Danger” and probably trying to fend us off. An hour or so later we wandered up the path. Wide open, very fresh deer tracks could be seen just beyond the turn. The deer was running when it left.

I doubt I will ever get bored there. There is always a new experience!

The clematis are starting to bloom

The tulips are done for the year, and now we move on to the next wave of blooms. This lovely pink clematis is usually one of the first, and this year was right in order.

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A mini forest

Every spring I pluck out literally hundreds and hundreds of tree seedlings from our rock.

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A lot of them are from the amur maple. There are also dozens of clematis volunteers.

This process is super tedious, but I don’t use chemicals so hand plucking is the option. Section by section I take my little weeding bucket and go at it.

Apologies little seedlings.

Whirlwind

Every night I think, “Tonight I’ll blog”, but it’s been a four week whirlwind of activities. Tonight’s the night. There is so much to share!

My 15 yr old purple tulip bunch that I have truly enjoyed each and every year faded this year to one small purple tulip. (Plus one the bunnies might have enjoyed)

I have wonderful pictures over the years and will always remember spring mornings relaxing on the patio, looking at their gorgeous blooms swaying in the breeze.

Besides these giant new tulip “bouquets” I planted last fall,

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Last fall’s planting also brought a new, delicate bouquet of pink tulips out back. At our family gathering last week someone thought they were artificial! I reportedly gave a funny look and said, “Go touch them!” – lol. They were, admittedly, pretty “perfect”.

Right next to them, the bunnies had a munch-fest, so having them spared was awesome!

The amur maple out front flowered last week. It smelled glorious for two days, and then I got a cold. But I trust it still continued to smell wonderful for a few more days at least! Hopefully our family enjoyed it a bit!

Now the pink tulips are starting to fade, the asian lilies are starting to show buds, and the daylilies and hostas seem to have doubled in size this past week.

The days have been full. The sunsets have been incredible.

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We have also spent time up north, where the sunrises were awe inspiring.

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And we saw the sunset reflect off one of our very old old pines. We think this one is over 100 yrs. Notice it’s size compared to the other 20ish yr growth!

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Quite a difference from “Charlie” who we moved to get the camper situated.

Grow, Charlie! Grow, Charlie! He has a companion “Lucy” who we will also need to move. They will both be in decent proximity to “Linus”. You get the theme?

The seeds are half planted up north. Lifting 440 pounds of dirt into a raised bed garden was enough for me for one weekend.

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And that was 2/3 full of branches (see hugelkultur post).

Unfortunately, there is a center support that it turns out bends pretty easily when you push down on branches. Oh well! Live and learn!

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I still have one more (identical) raised bed garden to do. And I have milkweed plants to get in the ground, and stakes and chickenwire to put up once the seeds sprout, plus daylily seeds to try. It’s all so much easier to have “scope creep” in the winter when planning! But slow and steady wins the race. I keep reminding myself my gardens at the townhome are years of putzing – changing this, moving that, adding “one more thing”. This is the Year One Test Garden up north.

Tulip update

The tulips I planted out front last fall came up beautifully.

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A single survivor out front from years past and another bunch out back were mysteriously cut off. The ones that were cut off out back totally disappeared. Bunnies? I did see a deer wander through the neighborhood very early one morning a few years ago.

There are a few more bunches still coming up. We’ll see how they fare.

Gorgeous days

We’ve had quite a few gorgeous days in a row, and the landscape is starting to sing.

The cherry trees are starting to flower, and they smell soooo good!

The lindens finally leafed out.

And the tulips are starting to bloom.

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Kale, kale, and more kale

Oh my goodness! I started the first of our up north test garden veggie seeds last Saturday (May 4). 5 days later this is what we have.

I suspect we will have plenty of kale and pickling plume lettuce this year. Still waiting on the asparagus. I might have messed those seeds up. I didn’t soak them ahead of time. We’ll see.