All The World's A Stage

Garden Tour - Pictures from 6/4/05.

This is my humble house.

You can't see much of the flowers from the road, but up close they're popping. I put in the box the roses are in in 2000, I think.

I've been doing various things with the flat to the ground area marked off by the concrete border things for years. It gets overwhelmed with weeds - and the last 2 years school has left me with no attention for the garden. Last fall I spent a day yanking the biggest weeds and throwing down all the seed I had saved - sweet william and foxglove - in the hope that I'd be done with school this spring and I'd be able to garden.

This worked real well, as you can see.

This year my mommy (who can not stand to shop to herself, much to the pain of her checkbook) needed someone to go to the nursery with her. I dug out one old dead rose by the neighbor's driveway and planted a bleeding heart and an azalea.

Over by my driveway I have these blue things Jenn gave me years ago that always spread and do great (she'll have to remind us what they are) and I'll filled in some holes in them with dianthus from my mother's garden.

On the porch I planted the herbs I netted in the nursery trip as well. There is a gerber daisy in the corner, and some of the herbs are not herbs but romaine lettuce and some other salad green. On the side of the porch there, peaking over the pots are lillies. They haven't bloomed yet.

This is my humble, postage stamp of a backyard.

Fi used to have a swingset in the area in front of the siberian iris's, but it died, and we've never replaced it. I'd like to replace it with a fort of some kind that will still be useable as 'escape space' when she's a teenager, or a pool, but it's a 16' across by about the same space, and just not much fits there. Not much we can afford, anyway. If I was confident in my ability to build something it might be different, because I have all kinds of ideas... but I'd probably get her killed first high wind.

The black round thing is the composter gifts from my 29th birthday bought me. It rolls in a circle. Love it. Behind that are raspberry bushes that have overgrown their bounds (cut them back today) and dutch iris that... well, it got too warm and then refroze. About half of them got flowers, but you can see they're real overgrown and it's embarrassing.

Today I spent hours out there weeding, but then about halfway through I discovered there is an injured bird hopping around in the growth. It wouldn't let me near it, and I decided I'd better leave the cover there so the roaming neighborhood cats can't see it. (Although, it was probably one of them that took it down to begin with.)

Back in the corner (very dark in the picture) is the big strawberry patch. It's overgrown too. More hours today cutting the tree overhanging it up, and weeding around it to find the paving bricks again. It needs a ton more work. I'm not sure why I'm growing the strawberries. I never get out to pick them in time, and I'm just feeding the birds. Who sit in the tree and poop all over the strawberries. I hope those fat birds are eating the misquitos too.

The birds also eat these berries in this tree - anyone know what this is? I'm thinking, since it's too much trouble to scare birds away, I'm going to put some birdhouses out there. Anyone know *real* birdhouses I can make or buy cheap?

Immediately to the left of the humble backyard picture is my 2.5 car garage. There's a little former-alley behind it. Behind the garage are the columbine.

Since I took these pictures I weeded and mulched and put down newspapers and filled my flowerbox I made with 14 bags of top soil and 3.some compressed cubic feet of peat moss. I stuck an old bed headframe in there for a trellis and planted my clematis, 4 varieties of hot peppers, a tomato, bush beans and some on-sale flowers. I also did something I swore I'd never do - I paid for rocks. I put down plastic and stuck them over it making a little dry river bed between the lillies and my azalea in the front. The porch dumps water right there when it rains, and it always sent the dirt flying everywhere.

When I recover some energy (it may be months from now) I'll take pictures of the new work too. Prolly when the lillies bloom.

Posted by Liz at June 12, 2005 7:42 PM