I tell you what! I am absolutely delighted! The care the roofing team took was very evident. A few smooshes where I was not too concerned about covering, but given all they had to work around, amazing end state! Way way way better than I had even dared to hope for. Judge for yourself 🙂
Yesterday the kids all came over and helped put buckets and old plant pots on the hostas, daylilies, and sedum I really want to protect. Nothing else can be done now. We wait and see.
The new roof will be put on tomorrow.
Here’s some “today” pics.
Last year I accidentally grew a sunflower. Whether or not it was from bird seed falling into the pot of daylily seedlings, I cannot say. It was fun for the birds for sure. I suspect the squirrels swung on it and broke it, after which I cut it back and the next morning the cut piece was gone. Bunny?
We had a bumper crop of sunflower seedlings in the rock outside the edge of the patio this spring. I let a small section survive weeding, pending possible transplant.
I have a couple boring areas where transplants would look nice but the shells that get dropped are not good for other plants, so probably a no go there.
Might be adios to sunflowers in the townhouse garden this year. Maybe they can go up north.
The asian lilies are starting to bud out. We have quite a few at the townhouse, scattered through all the areas. The thing about asian lilies is you get one chance. If they get broken, pack it in until next year. They do not rebloom. Fingers crossed.
I shared earlier this spring that we did a test with the Bluebells clematis. We left some of last year’s growth on the trellis to see if we could get it to bloom. If it didn’t work I was going to remove that clematis. But …
It stays!
We are hoping all the clematis survive the upcoming roofing/gutter/fascia work, many of which will bloom next week, but, at least for this past couple weeks, we have enjoyed the Bluebells clematis.
After an intense work day yesterday I sat out on the patio with my husband. As we relaxed, and I looked out over the back garden, the tree seedlings got to me. And two in particular were really getting to my husband. They were getting to him because he is used to my gardening habit of keeping the tree seedlings out of the rock, they were getting quite tall, and I was saying not to pull them. Quite tall for tree seedlings in the rock is over 4″ – lol. The two tall seedlings were from the cherry trees around the neighborhood. I was deliberating trying to transplant them and see if they survived.
After sitting for a while, I couldn’t resist. The hundreds of tree seedlings fell prey to the start of my annual ” next steps” cadence. Despite my intentions to leave them until the roof/gutter/fascia work here is done, the gardener in me was sad. The garden looked sad. So, I went and got my weeding bucket and started the clean-up.
I have shared my experience that gardening is excellent exercise. I must have REALLY needed that yesterday.
Today unofficial summer starts here. It feels good. And more normal. There is no construction noise. The nature sounds are the backdrop to a beautiful morning. A little thunder in the distance. Ahhhhh.
Next week the roof project turns the corner to our area, and it will be increasingly noisy as we are kind of in the middle of the remainder. But that can be dealt with by filling up the gas tank and heading north. For this morning, when the rain finishes up, I think I will get out and fill another bucket with tree seedlings. That would be bucket 2 of the usual 7. Everything in moderation 🙂
I have been figuratively holding my breath, waiting on doing any work in the gardens (even tree seedling weeding and volunteer clematis staking 😦 ) at the townhouse until the roof project is done. If the pattern holds, that should be in the next 10 days. Then I will assess and start my gardening work for the year. In the meantime, the hostas and daylilies and sedum and asian lilies are up and doing very well. I am hoping the asian lilies are not damaged with the roofing project, but time will tell.
Last Sunday our daughter-in-law and our grandson and I went to a master gardener plant sale – an absolute delight! All the plants purchased went into their garden – all veggies that our grandson can enjoy 🙂 and us all too! As we were pulling him around in the newfangled softside folding HUGE wagon, he flashed his baby grin when people asked if he wanted to play in the dirt. Oh yah, I thought! That has been in the minds of Mommy and I for a while. Maybe next year will be the start of that.
So we wait and see what the year holds at the townhouse. Hopefully most of these are not casualties of the roof project, but we shall see what we shall see.
This past weekend I finally felt comfortable putting the shamrock plants out. The are kind of a fixture in the summer garden. The purple one especially draws the eye all the way to the end of the linden garden area.
Since we live in Minnesota, the shamrocks make their late fall to mid-spring home indoors. The night-time temperatures need to be around 40°F outdoors before they can go out in the spring. This year that was late. But they are out now, and the cycle for spring shamrock cleanup has begun. You see, every spring when I finally feel comfortable putting the shamrocks out, I am happy, and sad. Happy because the mat of dead stems that is hard to clear amongst the fragile live stems gets kind of “ugly” by May, and sad because the beautiful live shamrocks will get windblown, die back, and then take a few weeks to get their summer “coat”.
The wonderful part is what I saw first hand today as a robin flew back and forth between the purple shamrock and a nearby pine tree, plucking first big sections of the dead stem mat, and then finishing by plucking tangled remaining dead stems. It happens every year. And it makes my gardener/bird lover heart smile.
Can you see the robin? Another sat nearby and flew right behind over to the new nest location. I am assuming that is one of the pairs we saw “mating” in the past week.
Here it comes – the best garden planting time of the year, some planned time off work, and ideas floating around in my mind.
The ideas mostly involve dividing hostas, but those are all really slow to show this year.
So far the daylilies and sedum have won the race over the hostas to begin to dot the garden with that fabulous color of spring green.
Susan's Daily Garden 