Category: Hostas

Hostas!

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 💕

We can do that

It all started with our now 2 year old grandson. I am not very schmaltzy and I never envisioned I would be utterly taken in by one very little person – haha – but it happened. Turns out grandparenting is WAY more indulgent then parenting. Who knew? Days where daycare backup was needed, events where he (absolutely adorably) sat in his wagon and charmed everyone we met while we shopped for vegetable plants at the University Extension plant sale, neighborhood walkabouts, and eventually sleepovers. And that first birthday where Grandpa agreed to make ribs for 40 people. What??? Grandma said Grandpa needed a much bigger grill for that! So here it came, on a delivery from the hardware store, in all it’s techno gigantic (to me) glory. Grandpa cooked those ribs and they went like hot cakes. And then it was time to incorporate that new grill into our patio area. Yah. But it is awesome, we use it a lot, and I love the smoky taste and even start-up ambiance. Hey, you do stuff to make great experiences, right?

So the new grill moved into the older smaller wood fired grill’s space, and I cringed a bit, but “it was worth it”. The features! It can be started from hub’s phone! Who wouldn’t love a grill you can start from your phone??? But a grill that casts a much larger shadow on the garden?

We moved some overcrowded daylilies that were now in much more of a shadow, and I made a daylily seedling bed. Seedlings need more protection, right?

I have had 4 garden season months to assess. I do not like the seedling bed at all 😂 Not one bit. It looks like a weed patch 👎 I like seedlings mixed among other more mature plants. Soooo … Enlist the help of hubs, reassess, and rearrange to fold in the requirements of our ever changing life. Weed patch (er daylily seedling bed) out – they need more sun anyways – and hostas that also need to move anyways, in, to that newly shaded area.

In a way it will simplify my life. Big, more maintenance free hostas close to the house, and daylilies farther out where I can enjoy them while sitting on the patio after a long work day, enjoying a beverage with hubs, winding down as the smoke from the grill starts up and our dog asks to come up and sit on my lap.

Yah, we can do that.

And on Saturday I will get after that clover – again 😉 But I kind of like the Linden leaves covering up the rock. Looks more natural, “path-y”, right?

decisions, decisions

Under the linden there is a wonderful garden of hostas and daylilies. The hostas are getting very mature and are encroaching on the very polite daylilies, who are saying, “Alright, here are some greens, but not many flowers for you. Get me some new digs, please. Or maybe just get that guy out of here, please.” Hahaha! I cannot decide on the message. Move the daylilies, or move one very large (5′ wide) hosta. Hubs says move the very large hosta. He may win out. But not sure what I would do with the hosta. No good shady place at the historic cemetary. Deer will eat it up north. It’s almost like I should make a new shade garden. But where?

Seedlings, hosta haircuts, the historic garden, and more daylilies bloom

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.

And Just Plum Happy was, well, Just Plum Happy!

Move candidates

The hostas under the linden tree are at the mature stage, and are now covering up portions, or sometimes all, of the Purple D’Oro daylilies. That was an error in planning on my part. When I planted those hostas a decade ago I truly did not believe they would get that big. I think they look great in that area, dancing in the breezes, but the daylilies do not care for the new developments one bit. I will need to move at least this one this fall. I have a spot for it. There is a hosta that used to have more shade from a clematis on a trellis but now needs to get out of the sun. A little reorganizing this fall after a good rain softens the soil should do them both good.

Back to it

I took a couple weeks off garden work when our 2nd grandson was born. Yesterday was “get back to it” day. 4 1/2 buckets of clover and forget-me-nots left the gardens and it looks great again.

As the Asian lilies wrap up

and the Elegans hostas stand in the background

The Blue Mouse Ears are starting to steal the show

The big Just Plum Happy daylily is getting it’s scapes

The daylily seedlings are starting to outgrow the seedling box and are gradually getting exposed to the wider world

And the lavender from the old seeds is standing guard as a deterrent to bunny munching

Oh yes, it’s a thing

The coneflower in the back is completely gone, and this is what remains of the one in front.

But it is a cute little one, right?

Note to self – buy more lavender seeds next year.

While We Were “Out”

Our second grandson was born last Friday! That whole week was a non-gardening week. We absolutely were in the gardens, but with our two year old grandson. I watched with sheer joy as he followed the garden path wearing his cute little camo Crocs, pausing to pick up rocks, and dump them on other plants. Wait!!! What is happening here? Has my brain turned to Grandma mush? Perhaps.

While we were “out”, the daylilies got scapes. The South Seas is the one that first caught my eye,

but the Purple D’Oro and the Just Plum Happy are not far behind

We are getting some bonus clematis blooms.

And the Asian lilies are already in mid-seaon.

The hostas deserve a blog post of their own (coming up).

Baby is doing very well, 2 year old grandson already has our next “date” on our calendar, and somewhere in between work, building out the cabin up north, and grandchildren time, I need to pull all the forget-me-nots that are done blooming and are going to seed.

If I catch them early on in the seed casting process, I get just the right amount to bloom two years out (they are biennial).

Updates download

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 💓

That’s ok, Gramma still loves you

We are Grandparents to one sweet 2 year old, another on the way, and 4 very sturdy dogs. The kind of dogs where they do not, at all, get the “garden” concept – lol. When you are a dog, plants are targets, and, to be successful, getting the right footing to hit the target just right is pretty dog-gone important! Right? Sometimes they have to step on stuff. Sometimes it doesn’t spring back, and then later gets hits by the mower.

That’s ok. Around here we love our Grand-dogs wayyyy more than a hosta leaf. For absolutely sure! And now the baby bunnies have an opening to quickly identify a place to run and hide when the raptors visit.

All is good.