Hubs has a saying he uses to get me to log off work for the day, and keep a healthy balance. He simply and lovingly says “Time to shut ‘er down.”
8 months/year the gardens then provide a place to enjoy a beverage, chat away together, watch the birds and bunnies and bees and squirrels come and go. And watch the very big hosta leaves dance in the breeze at the edge of the garden while dinner cooks on the Traeger and neighbors and their four legged companions stop by to chat. Yes, a very good practice to keep the balance, and shut ‘er down. And a very good way to do it.
Our gardens are not tiny, but they are small enough that I notice bloom “lasts” for the season. Rain is coming, but thankfully it held off until mid-morning so I could enjoy a couple more “lasts”. Tirzah bloomed her last today, as well as Cedar Waxwing.
I am hoping Tirzah’s baby sister gets to be as tall as she is in the next couple years. She is truly strong enough in her presence to only require one in a space. I cannot find her ploidy, and I have not been successful with crosses. She just may not want kids scattered about!
Work has been crazy busy, family stuff is busy, the up north cabin project is ongoing. Lots of stuff.
Thursday I was looking forward to some self-care days. It was such a treat to log off work Friday, shut ‘er down, and just breathe. No big weekend plans. A chill Friday night.
I was also really looking forward to gardening at the historic cemetery today. Thursday we found the remaining brown mulch we needed to finish the rock to mulch swap. It has been a challenge. A lot of the stores have sold out their open pallets and wrapped their unopened pallets to send back. My friend found some at, of all places, the nicer grocery store in town, and for an awesome price. Between my friend and her husband and my husband and I, we got all the remaining mulch we needed. This year. It looks awesome!!! It was not without a few challenges – like a downpour this morning, but we are there. When the iris transplants are done, I will take final pics and share.
When back at home mid morning today, I went about our gardens.
The raised, covered seedling planter – where I put pots with daylily seeds to grow unbothered by squirrels and bunnies – needed to go back into the garage until next spring, the forget-me-nots and clover needed paring down, the hosta scapes that wrapped up this week needed cutting back, the daylily scapes with no seed pods needed cutting back, and the shrubs desperately needed serious trimming. Back in shape now.
Today was the last bloom for one of the Just Plum Happy daylilies
I will need to get after cutting those scapes back.
But probably not tomorrow. Tomorrow is forecasted to be a rain day. All day.
Time for some non-gardening self care, decluttering, donation drop-off, putzing around the house, reading a book, doing laundry slow and relaxed. Just a non-gardening rainy chill day.
Last fall when we did the transplanting of the red daylilies, I moved some small daylilies out front that were getting trampled. I made a diagram, and thought I captured everything. I planted a very small, very smooshed daylily plant (no blooms) opposite the peach daylily that had been one of my first daylilies. I thought it was a seedling from a seed from a non-intentional cross from Purple D’Oro. I labelled it that way. It bloomed this year. It looked amazingly like a Pink Tirzah. Amazingly like a Pink Tirzah – but much shorter than our other Tirzah. Much shorter.
Today that daylily bloomed for the last time this year – no more buds. I am convinced it is a Pink Tirzah. Which means that it is not a seedling from Purple D’Oro. Drats. Maybe one will bloom next year.
Purple D’Oro has many seedlings from seeds again this year. And many seed pods again this year.
The first few daylily types to bloom this year are now wrapping up. The first to say adios will probably be South Seas. She also hasn’t produced any seed pods yet, so I have cut back the two spent scapes – to preserve her energy to rebuild for next season.
Gardens are an experiment. Things are constantly changing, growing, crowding, needing thinning, transplanting … Sometimes it requires patience, and sometimes we get very quick answers. So it is with the proposed woodland hosta garden at the historic cemetary. The deer have spoken. They, or their buddies the turkeys love them! It was a fun trial, but no woodland hosta garden will be built at the historic cemetery. What survives in the full sun of the fence garden will be it for hostas there.
It is also bunny time at the townhouse gardens. Thinking the last blooms on this hosta will be her dinner in the next few nights.
We think it is a her, as she had a very persistent visitor a few weeks back – that we have not seen before.
Sadly, we are thinking this was also the work of the bunny. Compost time. The daylily seedlings in that pot are ready to be planted so those will be a project in the next few days, along with the other potted daylily seedlings.
And the hostas that are done blooming are all getting haircuts. I made the “no hosta seed saving” decision a while back. We do not need any more hostas 😂
I did an intentional cross with Purple D’Oro, which only had one bloom yesterday. Wasn’t sure if they were a good cross option but I decided to just wing it. I have now found a good source of ploidy and parentage info and have found that Purple D’Oro is diploid and Marque Moon is tetraploid, so the cross I did will probably not succeed. But hey, I am now farther down the path to educated decisions for potential crosses.
Yikes! Yet one more thing my poor non-geeky husband and friends will now endure in our conversations. Hopefully I can pay it back with a successful beautiful cross.
Many years ago when I started the townhouse gardens I was also helping my Dad with his gardens. After one of those gardening days, I was sweeping up from some transplanting. A few baby hosta corms were in the sweepings, and instead of tossing them, I brought them home and stuck them in one of our garden areas. My husband said he doubted they would grow. Well, he underestimated those little corms. Grow they did, and multiplied and were divided … And I bought more hostas then, other specialty types of hostas, like blue hostas varieties, which I fell in love with, and which, to this day I still have, and have divided and gifted – like to the gardens I made at the little house up north.
Gifting hostas is a thing.
Since starting to swap out the old landscape rock for mulch at the historic cemetary, we have had the fortune of lots of gifting. Kind of like, “If you build it, they will come”. And come they did. When mulch went in, plants would appear. Not sure from whom – more of an anonymous donor thing. Most of the plants are sun loving … except … the hostas. Those poor hostas are burning, and making me sad, and so I decided to begin a plop swap. The donations are “plops” – they just appear, and they need a “swap” – to get them into the shade and get the sun loving plants that are in another shady garden into the sunny garden.
I started the plop swap last weekend. Four went into this sweet area with this hollowed out tree stump – so beautiful! I love woodland gardens and things like that tree stump.
That garden, like the fence garden, will be a putz project – very slow gradual progress. Hubs said Yes, All the boulders I want to gradually haul from the land up north can be put into that new hosta garden. I want them to contain mulch and clearly define that area as the hosta garden. But hubs has emphasis on “I want to haul”. This is not his first time to the rodeo. Last time he was hauling boulders in totes in the back of his truck! Yes, one tote cracked. But hey, the gardens looked AWESOME!
So we shall see. I need to see if the deer use the hostas for munchies. And how it evolves for space. The left side of the fence garden only has two hostas left to swap. But the right side – oof!!! Lots of generosity in the hosta plopping department there. That will take a little longer, and I need to see how much space the swap really will take up.
Right now we are headed into the 90 degrees and up part of the summer. Not hauling boulders in that for sure. But maybe in late Sept. For a good cause – the hosta plop swap. And any future hosta plopping rescue efforts 💕
What I thought was the Purple D’Oro pollinator created seedling bloomed yesterday and again today. It sure looks like Tirzah, only much shorter and smaller – like Purple D’Oro short. I used to have a site I could use to identify hosta parentage. I can’t find a site like that for daylilies – so far. So, I need to get my act together and remedy that.
Susan's Daily Garden 