It took a bit today to finally get this blog decided on. There was “Envelope, Please” where I started to share about harvesting the daylily seeds, what was looking good for next year’s potential. There was “Very little left to do in the townhome gardens” where I had started to share the pre-fall progression for the gardens over the past couple weeks. There was “A snapshot of this ‘n that” where I had some pretty things in the gardens to share. All of those were started in the past few weeks and then left to sit. Our aging dog with a heart condition took a few continual turns for the worse, a family member got a very tough medical diagnosis, and the US and world news is … horrifying. Maybe things like this continually happen and we just don’t get a view to it. But it has all been heartbreaking. Praying about it continually, and then doing positive things has been the only way. Our dog is now on medicine designed purely to make his life as comfortable as possible. Our family member is undergoing extensive treatment. And the world, and us in the world, continually mourns losses, but most certainly with the hope of peace for eternity.
And we are still in this world, so we have work to do. And work we will do. Sharing beauty with the gifts we have been given. And experience. And wisdom. And sometimes, as other bloggers have reminded me today, just good old belly laughs. In proper time and measure.
So, for today, I will share a lot of thanks and praise. And some experience, and, hopefully, wisdom.
At the townhouse:
The daylily seed harvest is plentiful. Hundreds of seeds. Some self-seed, but even more through intentional crosses. I have no idea what I will do if even half of it germinates. But I’m guessing I will figure it out.
I have finished all my transplanting, and I am truly truly truly out of room. Some stuff will have to go elsewhere with next year’s divisions. I keep thinking up north but maybe something else will come to mind. We shall see.
The townhome gardens are winding down. The sedum is in full bloom. The late blooming hostas look awesome, and soon I will start cutting the daylilies back (but that will definitely be a different blog post :))
At the historic cemetery:
The self-seed I harvested in the “Shirley” and the “Mahala” gardens – 78 Stella de Oro seeds plus the 2 Red Volunteer seeds – if they germinate in spring, will need a home over there. Possibly at the Fischer site.
The Fischer site test garden is started and, so far, is doing well.
Yes, we have lost Mahala daylily seedlings in the “Mahala” garden. Yes, I am sad about that. Yes, I knew it could happen. No, I will not replace them. What did Grandma say? “Ve get too soon oldt and too late schmart.” Which leads me to –
The historic cemetery gardens are ending their third year in their renovated state and I could not be (much) more pleased. Yes, I wish the Mahala daylily seedling situation was a bit better. Yes, there have been some other challenges. But I have learned soooooooooo much about things that are unique to public site gardens. WAY more joy than “ugghhh”. AND – those gardens are now fully in maintenance mode. Self-sustaining for stock through division of existing plants and seed harvesting propagation from the site itself, and only doing self-seed, no intentional crosses there. It is fully self-sustainable with one exception –
It will need mulch topper each spring, but that should be the only spend 🙂
This is a HUGE milestone. I am very excited about that – the joint accomplishment and the ability to confidently call that decision.
And now we can do extras, like the Fischer site, as the ideas and resources present themselves. We truly do have an awesome team vibe established for those types of things 🙂
So today I am not going to endlessly sit in front of our tv watching horrifying things, dotted with advertisements for things I do not need nor want. I am not going to worry about things I cannot do anything more about. I can choose to use that time for more beautiful things, and still know enough to know how to pray, and for what. And that is what I shall do.
We are deep into daylily season now, and I am seeing patterns regarding daylily crosses that will work this year. For instance, the cross that made the Mahala Felton dedication daylily will not have a repeat seed creation season this particular year. One of the parent daylilies is not sending up scapes right now. That happens. It is a healthy daylily, not crowded. It could be that I just overworked it last year. For this year, the Mahala Felton daylily seedlings are doing well and will start to be be planted this fall in various locations in the Oakwood Cemetery garden where Mahala Felton is interred.
I am also having challenges this year with getting the Molly Cowles dedication daylily cross to replicate. 60 seeds last year, and not a single success with that same cross this year. But that, too, is OK. I have so many Molly Cowles seedlings that some will probably even go up north. I will continue to try to replicate those crosses this year. There is still lots of runway ahead. And some things happen for a reason.
Those daylily seedlings are wonderful, and I hope they will bloom absolutely beautifully, but I knew there was more to come. It was forming in my mind. Something a bit different.
We were “getting there” when one of the daylilies I purchased and planted at Oakwood last fall began to bloom a few weeks ago. That daylily’s name is Red Volunteer.
“Volunteer” has layers of meaning. What a cool daylily to be at Oakwood. And it is stunning. I am hoping for way more blooms next year. I only caught two this year.
But something was still in my mind. It just was still in a “waiting” state. Something with ties to meaning. It finally arrived.
Dedication daylily “Shirley D” is a dedication to my good friend, long time historian and author, and fellow volunteer at Oakwood Cemetery. Shirley puts up with my relentless garden talk, endlessly long texts, and ridiculously ambitious ideas. And Shirley and her husband Mike dedicate uncounted hours of personal labor as well as their substantial leadership to Oakwood Cemetery. They are, in my humble opinion, the primary reason Oakwood Cemetery is in the renovated state it is in today.
Dedication daylily “Shirley D” is from 2022 harvested seed. 2022 was a tough year for me. It was the year my husband and I decided that the little home up in the mining town in northern Minnesota (that we had renovated and planned as our retirement home) was not truly a match. Our plans were upended. We were back to the townhome plan, and I was gutted. I wanted a yard to renovate into a garden. I wanted to be in that area. But it was just too small. My friend Shirley was a dear sweet comfort as I greatly grieved selling that house.
The following year, as I was looking for something I could pour myself into through gardening, Shirley, once again, reminded me of opportunities at our local historical society. While dedication daylily “Shirley Dalaska” was slowly putting roots down where I had planted her the previous fall, I joined the historical society, intending to mainly garden. I took a meandering route, but eventually I found my way (back) over to Oakwood, where I, once again, saw the old, abandoned garden I had seen before. Volunteers are not in plentiful supply, and no one had felt both a calling and the time to address it. And honestly, I too had no interest in that garden. The goats that had been at Oakwood to eat the buckthorn a few years before might have enjoyed it had they had access to it, but it did not really speak to me at all. I was looking at the huge expanse of a raised bed fence garden that so needed love. The old, abandoned garden had stuff that would look great in the fence garden, but the fence garden needed way more than weeding and transplants. What happened next is a testament to Shirley’s absolute genious. While I was working through what I was feeling called to do, Shirley didn’t give me her plan. She let me come up with a “Susan plan”. An impossibly ambitious plan to move the heaving rock and exposed plastic out and go to a mulched garden. I went to the store, bought three bags of mulch, put some in, took a picture and asked what she thought, and pretty soon Shirley and Mike were there doing garden days, sometimes even when I wasn’t there – moving rock, pouring out bags of mulch, putting up with my insistence that hostas would never survive there and that people who were increasingly plopping hosta donations in the newly renovated garden were going to be sorely disappointed when their hostas died. It was, after all, I said, a full sun garden, for goodness sakes 🙂 (Those hostas are thriving – lol) Shirley has stood beside me, even talked me out of really bad ideas, and still encouraged me in my efforts. She soooo gets me. She gets my intensity. She gets that I primarily want to make gardens. She gets that I am so pleased seeing the community appreciate the completed renovation. (Is a garden ever truly completed though? I don’t think so.) Shirley gets that I was pretty driven about getting the garden renovated but now am thrilled that I only need 1 hour per week to weed it because neighbors are weeding as they walk by. So cool!!! And she puts up with me saying, for the 900th time, that I am not going there every day to water plopped plants, which still happens lol. It’s OK, she says. Shirley really is a saint. I think she may be watering plops. I’m pretty sure she is 😉
This year, as the daylilies in my townhouse gardens started to come up and then show scapes and buds, dedication daylily “Shirley D” took her sweet time. Other South Seas self-seed creations were coming up, making it onto my blogs. Still created by our mutual neighborhood pollinators but looking “not Shirley”. And then the first bloom. Does “Shirley D” not have the “it” factor? Understated, yet undeniable presence. Like Shirley D the person, my dear friend.
Among Shirley’s many contributions, Shirley does stained glass work.
Back at you, my friend, with another floral beauty.
About this time of year I start to make my fall list of garden changes/updates/refreshes. It can get to be quite ambitious in my mind, so getting it in black and white is important. To set healthy limits, I have a moratorium on in-ground to in-ground transplanting from late June to the beginning of September. That timeline gives me time to focus on the daylilies during bloom, and it helps give me a chance to fully assess the gardens’ future needs. It also keeps me remembering that the September heat adds to the transplanting effort and curbs my “enthusiasm”, which in turn keeps the list manageable. So the list has begun. #1 at the townhouse is dividing and transplanting more of the Blue Mouse Ears hostas. This one is already part of a long-term change for the gardens. Those Blue Mouse Ears started fairy ringing a few years ago. I divided and transplanted a few clumps last year and they are doing well, even scaping out and blooming.
The divisions this year will follow last year’s pattern, moving them more into the shade. I want to reestablish a path to the back of the garden again, so the hostas I divide will move into that area, giving more layering, which also keeps weeds down, and then the space where the Blue Mouse Ears hostas will come out of will become a footpath again.
The forget-me-nots are winding down their bloom and getting pulled out. They are biennials so as I pull more and more, only leaving them for a bunny deterrent, they will stay – but in significant moderation. I do miss them a bit, but you can imagine what I don’t miss. I don’t miss how the tall stems cling to anything fabric. So the decision is – they are awesome bunny repellent but they are not going to be taller parts of “bouquets” going forward. They can stay low. A sweet sentimental part of our garden.
The peach asian lilies are done blooming, and they have now been cut back to half height. All except one I missed. I do like that they not only look tidier but that cutting them back preserves their energy from going to seed. Oh, believe me, I am tempted to let the one I missed go to seed, but I researched to remind myself on why I don’t grow Asian lilies from seed, and to get success with bringing harvested Asian lily seed to bloom it takes a series of stratification steps, followed by 3-7 years as a seedling, before bloom. I think I may say no to that wonderful opportunity this year at least. Probably longer.
Speaking of years, 7 years in to my daylily propagation journey, I am now growing enough daylily seedlings, to bloom, to keep me (and the historic cemetery) more than good. This year we have three new daylily seedlings with scapes, and the 2024 seeds are popping up more for the future. The cloches are on the seedlings, and the Mahala Felton seeds that don’t germinate this week are going into the shamrocks with their dirt. They still will have a chance, just not a dedicated space.
And the shamrocks? I don’t know what is going on there. Birds or bunnies or squirrels or something are starting to dig at those pots again, so I am going to do an experiment. I am going to put them in the ground in a spot where we lost a hosta. That spot is already growing some shamrocks from bird, bunny, or squirrel damage I missed collecting earlier this spring. We had a friend who somehow managed to grow them perennially, outdoors, in the ground, here in Minnesota, even though they are not supposed to be winter hardy. At this point they are getting distroyed anyway, and I have plenty saved in the house, so no big. It will be an adventure. Could be I grow them as annuals in our garden forward. Or we could have a new perennial. We shall see.
Finally, I have a seedling from the early years when I was doing uneducated crosses that is baffling me. I have looked and looked at pics and notes, and it sure looks like I successfully crossed Pink Tirza with a tetraploid. That’s what the envelope said (my handwriting) when I planted it. That should not have worked, as Pink Tirza is supposed to be a diploid. Very odd. Maybe something got crossed before I did the cross. We shall see how that matures.
Other than that, Red Volunteer bloomed its first bloom since I planted it last year at the historic cemetery, and I missed it. Hey, that’s how it goes. It has another bud that looks like it might bloom soon – maybe the 4th of July 😊
And finally, July 2nd was the 162nd anniversary of Gettysburg where one of the historic cemetery’s residents, James Akers, was killed in action.
This year I finished up adding purple irises to both sides of the fence garden. I am hoping they bloom for Memorial Day next year.
Wishing you a wonderful 4th of July if you are in the United States, and a beautiful week ahead.
Molly Cowles was the wife of SGT Asa Cowles, an American Revolutionary War patriot. SGT Asa Cowles and his brothers served in the Revolutionary War. One of his brothers did not return. His brother was taken as a prisoner of war and was assumed to have died in an English POW camp. The Cowles were patriots. How do I know this, and why? Well, it is a long story. I could give a short answer, but it really didn’t happen that way. In fact, I never would have researched anything about the Cowles had I not gone on the path I will share. The long answer to why I have this information really started many years ago with a grade school field trip I chaperoned for one of our sons’ classes. That is when history actually came alive for me. Before then I just could not get excited about paper maps being rolled down from the ceiling and wooden pointers showing us war locations and routes. I really tried. I did! But for some reason while math and English kept me wide awake, I kept dozing off in history class. Literally – dozing off. Arrggghhhh. But … I married a historian. Yah, absolutely true story. And one of our sons had that school field trip to a historic site and I agreed to be a chaperone. Well … I loved that site. Way more than our son did hahaha! It made history come alive for me. Next thing you know we were reenacting and doing historic rendezvous, in a tipi and then a wall tent. I know, crazy. So, you see, I was more interested in the everyday lives of the historic people at that point in my life, much more than the war maps in classrooms of my teen years. But everyday life history is harder to find. It is the bigger things that stand out, get documented – discoveries, settlements, births, wars. Sometimes occupation. Fast forward, many years later we moved to our current town, and my friend who is a long time historian got me hooked into local history. But wow, she is good! She got me back in through gardening. Yah, gardening. Probably because she knew this girl was not reenacting anymore. I was pretty clear about that 😉 And there you have it. Regarding history, I volunteer garden at a historic site cemetery and do garden stuff in honor of some pretty cool historic people. One of those people is Mahala Felton, the first white woman settler to our area. As that research project unfolded for me, I realized Mahala Felton’s incredible contribution to local history. I decided to name a daylily for her. And I shared the incredible history I had learned in a four part blog. I was thinking at that point that I would take a break from researching, but it was not meant to be. The answer to how I know about SGT Asa Cowles falls in the timeline at the end of my research on Mahala Felton. About that time my sister shared our ancestry chart. I was intrigued by a very unique name (Sempronia) in our family genealogy. I might have stopped there, and missed SGT Asa Cowles, but somehow the name Tirza popped up. A very unusual, yet very familiar name to me – Tirzah. As in Pink Tirzah, the daylily. Pink Tirzah has a very storied history in my garden that I shall not recount. But suffice to say, Pink Tirzah overcame many obstacles and today she is thriving. She is now knocking it out of the park. Pink Tirzah was my most successful pollen source last year. Go Pink Tirzah! But I digress, slightly. I found Tirzah Cowles but she was not in our lineage. Her brother was. And their father was SGT Asa Cowles. Now stick with me here, because I suspect, as we used to say while sitting around evening campfires at rendevous, telling stories, it will seem like this is a “smoke goes up, heads north, and makes a hard turn right” but it is not. This all ties together, I promise.
My husband and I agree on names for my daylilies. Some of my intentional crosses get female names. That’s just how it rolls. We chatted one morning about all this and agreed. The Pink Tirzah cross will be named Molly Cowles.
There may be more female names from our genealogy. I thought I saw a Civil War reference somewhere along the way but didn’t pull that url. It looks right now like our lineage goes back to Jamestown, but we shall see. We are still researching. I will write more as we go.
Two weeks ago it seemed like the gardens were on hold. This week things were full speed ahead. But today with a rain and cooler weather, I am once again spending my time indoors. No worries. It is a good time to finish this blog post. It is a longer one. I need to cut it off, wrap it up, insert the pics, add the tags and categories, and get it out there. Here goes.
Top of mind is still the prospective “Mahala” daylily seeds – With the seed planting underway, I am trying to figure out what I will do to protect the seedlings when they need to go into the ground. The seedling box is not a season-long option with the small seed starter cups I used for those seeds. I used special seedling cups for them, with little greenhouse style covers. I am hoping that will be very successful for germination, but if so, they will need to get into the ground within a month. The little cups will be too restrictive for their roots.
If they are successful and germinate and go to seedling, where I think I am heading is something called a “cloche”. It is a wire mesh cage topper that is placed over the seedlings to protect them. In our case that protection time would be the 2025 gardening season. The cloche solution would allow any seedlings a full season to grow and mature in the ground. Then in the fall the cloche would be removed and in year 2 forward the “Mahala” seedlings would be just like any other daylily in the gardens.
I like the cloche idea as a next step. It keeps with “simple”, and it looks nice. It is also a sustainable one-time purchase if I want to continue the early seedling process in future years, for future dedicated seeds. And it doesn’t add another seedling box to be stored over the winter, a definite bonus.
For right now I am still watching to see if we get seedlings. If we don’t get seedlings, we don’t need cloches. But, fingers crossed, we will need them.
In the meantime, the established gardens are popping, so there has been plenty to do.
In the townhome gardens, everything except two late daylilies, a few missing hostas, and two sedum, have popped, including the bushes. One day the ninebark bushes didn’t even look like they had buds. Two days later they were leafing out. And yesterday I noticed the weigelia bush is taking off too.
For daylilies, all the longtime daylilies, including those I divided and transplanted, are back. There are two daylilies from last fall’s order that I am still watching for. In a funny twist, they are supposed to be part of my “control” daylilies to compare against what works at the historic cemetery, and also, an easier way to do and monitor crosses. It is much easier to step out the door at the townhouse and do a cross than get in the car and drive to the historic cemetery. Not that I don’t intend to do crosses there. I do. But it will just be a little more time consuming. Full transparency, though? The historic cemetery garden is easily two weeks ahead of the townhouse gardens. It is an all-day sun, retaining wall, mulched garden. The two control daylilies that are missing from the townhome gardens are already up at the historic cemetery garden. I am kind of bumming, kind of thinking, “can you say extended crossing season?” We shall see what actually blooms. Hopefully both of the missing control daylilies will still show at the townhome gardens as well. One is a tetraploid, and one is a diploid. The tetraploid is one of my faves. It is one of the “parents” that are waning in the townhome gardens and also one of the “parents” of a cross I am watching to bloom this year. I was hoping to use the newly planted one this year, but eras change, and the torch may be passing to a new “rock steady”. Long story short, it will be a bit before I can fully say what we have to work with at each location for 2025.
Regarding daylily seedlings, awesome news … at all of the gardens the seedlings are back. I am especially excited to see one particular set of 2024 seedlings (an intentional cross), and am hoping it blooms this year. As I had also hoped, all of the 2023 seedlings are quite a bit larger. Hello Yello is three times larger! She will be a focus again this year. I think she is a tetraploid, as a tetraploid cross went to pod last year whereas a diploid cross didn’t. But that tetraploid cross pod started to fail, and then Bunimous Rex (our beloved neighborhood resident very large bunny) or a naughty squirrel got it. I know for sure it was not one of the white squirrels. Na-ah. They are very well behaved. Maybe this year some of the shorter crosses also need cloches lol. We shall see.
On the hosta scene, Blue Mouse Ears continue to amaze me. Last year’s divisions are popping up.
I think if I could only have one type of hosta, it would be Blue Mouse Ears. Yes, Rainforest Sunrise and Guacamole and Elegans and Praying Hands and Touch of Class. But goodness! Blue Mouse Ears year after year after year checks all the boxes – sun tolerant, disease free, drought hardy, and they reproduce very well. So well that they got divided and placed all over last fall. They are now coming up where we transplanted divisions – both here at the townhome, and at the historic cemetery.
The Asian lilies are also coming back.
Not terribly strong. They are quite old. But they are returning. And … the clematis the lawn maintenance guy tried to pull last year? Back! Hahaha! I thought it was a goner, but nope. It’s back.
The daffodils I planted last fall are largely a no show. There are a few coming up at the historic cemetery, but most of the daffodils coming up there are the ones I planted in fall of 2023. And yes, I planted them correctly lol. It seems they did deter moles, as was my primary reason for planting them. They just didn’t bloom well. And that’s OK. The bags of 50 are coming to the end of an era. This fall I want to change things up a little and force grape hyacinth this coming winter. They also deter moles. And I can do smaller pots for forcing. If I want to.
And then there are the tulips. Of all the multiple (lots of) tulip bulbs in the townhome gardens that produce greens, only two have buds.
Yesterday after the greens of a few got stepped on while we cleaned the windows, I tested digging one out. I had kept my hand shovel out after digging and transplanting Blue Bells clematis volunteers.
I thought I might be able to dig the non-blooming tulips and consolidate them to one area (or bring them up north to naturalize or be deer food). Well, I probably should have gotten out the full-sized shovel. Instead of the bulb coming up, the stems broke off first. At which point I thought, “Why are you doing this? Pull the other stems and be done with it for another year.” I would like to say I did that immediately. I did for one more bulb. And then I remembered the next one I went to pull actually bloomed last year. They can fade back. Maybe next year I will feel differently.
To wrap up the afternoon yesterday, while I was in a cleanup mood, I tested to see if the variegated sedum (that it looked like we lost) was really a goner. It pulled out super easy, but wouldn’t you know it, there were little green sprouts. Dang! So, I searched around for a place where I could put it to give it one last chance. Aha! A swaparoo! A two-for. I moved the small Pink Tirza I want to use for crosses again this year to a more accessible spot,
and the variegated sedum went to a more secluded spot to R&R and hopefully come back stronger next year.
With that done, I called it quits. I was kind of still working off a crummy mood from something else. (What is it that makes normally sane drivers turn road risky on rummage sale days? Yikes!) I got myself a sweet tea and sat and looked at how nice the newly relocated Pink Tirza fit into its new home. That was a very good choice 🙂
And then, this morning on my walkabout I noticed … we did not lose the Guacamole hosta, as I feared. It is slowly coming up. The two Elegans, not looking good. Oh well. The circle of life.
Have a great weekend. I may take some time off early next week to put the finishing touches on something I will be kicking off next weekend – the Mahala Felton historical blog series. One post per week will be devoted to getting all the Mahala Felton research I have done out into the public domain. It has been a worthy endeavor, and I really want to share. The tie in is to the historic cemetery. More to come on that.
The rock to mulch conversion is complete at the historic cemetery! I lost count at 80 bags of mulch. I think it was in the high 80s.
What began as my (crazy, maybe 😂) brain child soon became an incredible team experience, and there is still more to be done – filling in with transplants and donations – but the rock to mulch conversion is done, and now we can play a bit. And maintain.
The neighbors, to a person, say it is so nice, a huge enhancement, and very enjoyable to walk by. Very rewarding to hear!
I hope you enjoy the view too!
And that is only one side, the shortest side at that! But first, a view of the resident turkeys
And now, the gates and the other side.
Almost there!
Still some more weeding and then fall trimming to be done, but the initial bedrock of mulch is laid, and now we can play.
I hear some more sun loving plants donations are on the way, and also ground plaques for every soldier.
What a treat to work at this site, along with so many others before and during, and Lord willing, to come!
The seedling planter is off the patio. It will soon go back into the garage until next spring. The seedlings are looking more and more like daylilies and are in pots in the “pepper garden” area, with the lavender. Oh yes, and a stray sunflower. Doggone bird seed! 🙂
They will stay there until fall and then find their new home. Their new home will probably not be the seedling garden from last year, as that does not get as much sun as it seems they may need. Hubs got a bigger grill that casts a larger shadow, and I need that area for hostas that are burning – with the tree gone in front and the clematis removed in back. Change, change.
The hostas are also getting love this weekend. I have made the decision not to harvest any hosta seed pods this year, so the ones that are done blooming got a haircut. Here’s an example.
The bees so love the blooms, so I left the few that were still in that category. But soon.
Trimming the hosta scapes as they go to seed will help them preserve energy for the plant. Not sure that is needed – hahaha – as they are getting huge, but just in case. And I may divide a few, if energy allows. We shall see.
The second side of the historic cemetery fence garden also got lots of love this weekend – 32 bags of mulch. Lots of love from way more than me – WAY more!
Removing rock, pulling plastic, laying landscape fabric, sourcing mulch, which is rapidly disappearing. Incredible effort!!! It looks SOOOOO good!!! This picture doesn’t even do it justice. It just goes on and on and on down the hilly slope.
7 more bags of mulch are in storage – in the back of my husband’s truck, which he wants back haha – to go on that side, and then quits for the season there. Mulch is getting harder and harder to find, and $5/bag is not my jam. Hopefully, fingers crossed, the 7 bags will do it.
Next up for the cemetery garden is iris transplanting. But talk is not do, so I will wait to share on that til I have pics of the completed pieces.
I will wrap up with more daylily love. Yesterday the Purple D’Oro had 7 (!) blooms.
Today 3
Today South Seas is also blooming.
Yesterday morning also brought early morning bloom pretties Tirzah and South Seas.
It has been a bonanza time for me in the various gardens. I have an oft-used saying – “Talk is not do”. I have soooo been in the flow of “do” I had no momentum to “talk” much. On the blog at least – lol.
The gardens at the townhouse are starting to approach their very full time. The spring blooms, even including the clematis, have wrapped up. The pine trees candled out, the linden is about to bloom, the weigelia is blooming, and the first hosta is blooming.
The “clover”, which I think is Yellow Wood Sorrel, has lived it’s usefulness as blooms for the bees, and has been plucked for the season. The bunnies do not eat those flowers like they do the white clover.
The Asian lilies are about to bloom.
There are now 20 daylily seedlings sprouted from last year’s pollinator created seed, all of which will need a home in the seedling bed this fall. The daylily seedlings from last year are all growing, and the 2-5 year daylily seedlings (that didn’t go to the little house up north we owned for a couple years) all need to go to the (camping/hunting) land up north, or to the historic cemetery fence garden. (The daylilies in the iris bed appear to be bunny food there.).
At the land up north, the camper will be moved next weekend to make way for trees to be cut, ground to be levelled, class 5 to be laid down, and the incoming shed to cabin conversion to be moved into place. Yikes! Here we go again with a build out. I am told that from the (shed) cabin I will have the view to the garden that I requested. I may have some thinking to do on a strategy to keep the ferns out. Plastic may be deployed. We shall see. One thing is for certain – the “I wish I had that money back” steel raised bed gardens with expensive black dirt on top of hugelculture turned to ferns 😂 is out. It has to be, as that is where the camper will be for a year or two while retired hubs builds out the interior of the (shed) cabin.
What else is going on?
The long fence garden at the historic cemetary is getting a rock to mulch makeover. The old rock is slowly being hand-picked and removed to a pile for donation, and bags and bags of beautiful mulch are replacing the rock. Sweaty work for all, and no lawn chair relaxing like at the townhouse, but wow! Looks awesome! Many hands are at that work through the week, which is absolutely heartwarming! We garden for fun, but also for our neighbors, and I seriously have lost track of the number of people who are complementing as they walk by. The other ladies have exactly the same types of stories.
Little by little. The hostas are all now protected, as well, and the work is beginning to finish and fill in the remainder of one side.
The iris bed at the historic cemetary will be a fall “stretch” opportunity. Those can go into the fence garden too, little by little. And we keep getting offers of divisions as donations. All in good time and proper sun/shade planting. That garden has such potential, with all the offers of divisions donations, to be a wall of beautiful season-long perennials.
We do have an unfamiliar to me weed there. I downloaded an app to try to identify it, but what the app is returning doesn’t seem right. It is a clumpy upright weed with bulblets. This coming week, on Juneteenth, a plant expert is coming to the historic mansion for the annual rain garden consultation, and I hear they can identify weeds. I plan to ask them. For now, we are plucking that harvest. I doubt they were intentional. See below for my rationale – this dandy is growing between the sidewalk and the base of the retaining wall.
What else?
We miss the front tree, kind of. The daylilies we transplanted from the shade to the sun last year are loving the full sun. We will wait to see what the association does – replace the tree or not.
And the rain gardens at the historic mansion are so full I have just put that on hold while I work on the fence garden at the historic cemetery. All that really can be done there right now is weed the perimeter, which a few of the ladies are doing when they have time. Those will be a next year and following deeper dive. They do have potential, but will be on more of a late fall and very early spring cadence for those opportunities.
The jalapenos at the townhouse had a bit of a squirrel issue which is being resolved, and I am rooting 3 wiegelia cuttings and some clematis cuttings just for kicks. We’ll see if they take.
So that is the “gardens all over” catch up.
Things may be a bit spotty as we are also on the one month watch and hang close to town ask before grandbaby two arrives. You know how that goes – grandbabies trump gardens for sure! Gotta keep our priorities straight 💓
The rain gardens at the historic mansion are coming alive! The main work so far has been clean-up. There are a plethora of black capped raspberry vines, not part of the original plantings. The birds must have “gifted” them. They were scattered throughout both rain gardens. Last week and today the primary job was to cut them back to a contained area.
Other jobs today were putting mulch around transplanted shrubs, and cutting back ornamental grass.
At the historic cemetery, this week’s work was minimal – digging out a 2 year old clematis volunteer from my garden and planting it at the fence garden. Daily watering checks are showing it is doing well.
Back at the townhouse, planting our veggie garden – two jalapeno plants – lol – was job #1.
Then trimming the weigela, and trimming the ninebarks.
In a recent post I shared a volunteer opportunity that came up through work, and one I still REALLY want to do, but is quite a distance to drive.
Something else came up last week as well.
I have a friend who regularly invites me to historic site events, and I finally went to one this week. The lure was a presentation of historic pictures of local sites.
I knew the event was part of a historical society meeting, and I knew there were probably volunteer opportunities. I say I “finally” went, because it was a “peace with this decision” moment.
We have done historic reenacting, with our kids, albeit a different era than this local site, have travelled around to some very serious reenactments – ones where a camp inventory with pictures is required to apply to stay in camp. We have toured historic homes and of course, sites. We have toured and camped as participants, in our tipi, cut our own tipi poles, my husband peeled them by hand, and I used the bark in my garden for mulch. Later we changed to a wall tent, and, truth be told, we still have it. Haven’t used it in over 10 years, but we’re hoping to do it again, someday. And in my office still sits my camp kitchen – that I bought at a reenactment and took home and sanded and poly-d and will not let my husband bring up north, yet. Memories. I feel so good being outside at historic sites. I am not sure what it is, but IT IS. But I was not sure I was ready to jump back in, yet.
I was looking for “something bigger garden”, but not necessarily connected to historic. And, of course, at the meeting a call went out for garden volunteers.
I am proud of myself. I did not sign up to be a member right at the meeting. I took overnight to soul search, because I knew I would dive deep. At the end of the next day, after work, I filled out my form and brought my dues over to my friend. It was a happy moment. I am approaching it respectfully, thoughtfully, and very excitedly.
I am not really a serious historic food gardener. EATING, oh yah! Fry bread, yes please! But they do have other gardens – even a “rain garden”. Yes, I too immediately thought, “Were rain gardens a thing in the mid-1800s?” I looked it up. They officially became a thing in the early 1990s. Not 1890s, but that is still super cool they have one. When a tree fails after an ice and snow storm, as the Amur maple out in the front of our townhome did, and as two historic trees at that site did, (same storm), you don’t get out your hand saw and then haul the fallen trees away in a horse cart. So a rain garden benefits the site, is an awesome solution to purify water runoff, and no one is “tending” the rain garden right now (I am told). So there is that. I need to sit with the garden committee and see if there is any documentation on the history, what is in there … so I can do it justice.
Additionally, and not any less anticipated, will be more dedicated garden time at another historic site – the historic cemetery I have mentioned in some of my posts. My husband and I have both been there a number of times to visit events. That was the site that had the goats in the woods a couple years ago. And when we came into a bunch of daffodils and other bulbs a couple years ago that a new neighbor of our son and daughter-in-law was digging out, those bulbs went to the cemetery. We have been there clearing branches, resetting pavers … It is a GOOD place.
Today I went over to the cemetery with new eyes. What could be done there with my surplus plants, seedlings, fall divisions? For sure, my friend already said the tulips from the blog a couple days ago. And we have been talking about what to do with the area between the retaining wall and the fence. I thought it was a planter. It is not. So it will be safe for daylily planting. Maybe a daylily seedling trial? My mind is full of ideas for that site, and I know I can do those things with much less research, right away.
So a good development. A long available set of options, but now in its time. The scope is right, and the commitment is right-sized and a match with the full “me”.
And it is sooooo keeping my mind off having the front Amur maple tree gone 😔
Susan's Daily Garden 