In my yard-en

Its a jungle out there!! We've been getting good rain these past few weeks and everything outside is growing non-stop. We added a new bed on the back corner of our lot. It does make mowing a little more difficult but we are hoping those boxwood and the rose-of-sharon will get large enough to provide a little bit of a break for the wind and snow that howls through the wind-tunnel that is the back side of our subdivision. It is nice to put things in the ground that we won't see reach their full potential. Most of the flowers and many of the shrubs are enjoying their fifth summer with us, so they are plenty full and will need dividing this fall, but the plants in the new bed will grow, grow, grow long after we are gone.

We are working on our second batch of sparrows in the nest box just outside the kitchen window. They peep all day long. The noise of the patio slider makes them pop up to the house hole but if I get close enough to get a picture, down they go. It took me days to get this bitty beak bump in my camera.

How does your garden grow?

Garden update...

I have a slug problem. Argh. They have never behaved this way before - the hosts remain untouched and yet as soon as a flower blossoms, it is slimed and munched. They've gotten the day lilies, the petunias and the pansies. Suggestions?

On a happier note - it's official! We've got our first little red tomato! I feel like everything in the yard has doubled in size in the blink of an eye. The cilantro and lettuce have bolted, but I'm keeping them on as "wildflowers."

It seems we are in the thick of our third round of blooms (daffodils and other bulbs being first, irises and peonies being second). The roses are up and going, along with speedwell, coreopsis, and the first of the asiatic lilies.

How does your garden grow?

{this moment} dewy rose

Joining Soulemama to celebrate one moment of the week worth remembering forever.

In Bloom

Full of loveliness - our little kingdom is. The only problem is that its all moving too fast. I can feel the days slipping by too quickly. Summer is in the air and before I know it, the dog days will be here and we will loathe stepping outside for even the smallest of chores, but for now... for now we will drink it in.

Yesterday afternoon was spent on the patio, under the umbrella where the breeze kept things cool. After three hours, I finally noticed that our baby sparrow wasn't peeping - I panicked! What had happened to him? He is ALWAYS peeping from the inside of the birdhouse, right outside my kitchen window. Later yesterday evening I saw him - a fledgling! He was resting on our patio chair and getting a snack from mamma.

The peas are scrambling up the netting I placed for them this past week. The berries are plumper everyday. Cilantro and dill are taking over and I am pulling them both like weeds. We added sage to the garden this year: common and pineapple. Any recommendations/recipes for the pineapple?

I am anxious for rain and today is promised to give us some showers - but you know how weather goes. We are at the point where we will have to start dragging the house out each night if the plants in containers don't get a good drink soon. We had a quick shower this morning when I snapped some photos of the berries and sage, but the sun is shining bright as ever now. Bring on the thunder storms! Bring on the drizzle. I'll take it any way I can get it.

Seed saving and such

I am happy to report that I'm on the mend and Julian seems to have come through these past 10 days unscathed. Turns out it was "just" a sinus infection but its honestly the most ill I've ever been in my life. I missed five days of work and cut short my birthday weekend in Va. to return to the doctor first thing on Monday morning. The lingering cough is now my only remnant... that and the undone house chores.

Speaking of chores and one that is made particularly difficult by a lingering cough - I've been trying to be intentional about seed saving for next year. I've collected seeds from all over; from the Sarah J. Duke Botanical Gardens (prickly pear cactus and water iris) to South Middle School where our church meets (cosmos, zinnias, misc wildflowers).

In total, I have amassed seeds of coneflower, columbine, redbud, oak, zinnia, cosmos, daisy, butterfly weed, iris, daylily, marigold, cilantro, sunflower, dill, basil, clematis (what a weird seed!), prickly pear, rose, peas, lettuce, and snapdragons. I keep them in bead bags I get from the craft store and them file them away in an old floppy disk storage box. I am always entertained by how the seeds are a perfect fit for the archaic and seemingly obsolete box.

There is no better way to get free plants and often they are colors and varieties that I'm not likely to come by in a garden center. I don't know why but I always seem so shocked at the cost of seed packets - $3.50 for tiny little grains of dust? Besides, acorns are not just nuts. They are FREE OAK TREES, people. Plant them!

In addition to being free, I'm really enjoying that the seed collection process adds a new awareness and appreciation for the season. I grow basil every year but, just yesterday, I took the time to sit down and dissect my browning basil plant to figure out how the plant works and where the seeds come from. Fascinating.

It is tempting to look in the garden and be discouraged by the end of the growing season but this year I am looking out my window and there it is - seed season - happening right before my eyes. Love it.

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Linking up with Little House in the Suburbs .

Dahlias

As is our custom, we were browsing the Lowes dead/dying rack for clearance plants a few weeks back. They had bins of clearance bulbs and tubers in plastic packaging, you know how they do. I saw some dinner plate dahlias, three tubers, 75% off original price. I went back and forth over it, knowing I didn't need more plants, feeling like I'd had no success lifting and saving them from year to year. But, since they are my favorite flower, in my favorite flower color, on clearance I bought them.

Because the tubers had put off new growth already but hadn't been exposed to true sunlight, I laid them out in a shady and protected spot in my yard and left them for a few days to acclimate. This weekend, Julian and I had a huge repotting party - I call it a party but it was really just the two of us in the hot and humid weather, repotting everything we could get our hands on to make sure everything is good to go this summer. (We have lots of rose bushes and berry plants in containers that will go with us to the next place, someday.)

While I was knocking around in the garage, I came across two old dried dahlia tubers that I had lifted but never took the time to pack them away. What do you know? They had new growth on them. We potted them up, and my tally of tubers went from 3 to 5.

We also have about 20 amaryllis bulbs that needed repotting as they are getting pretty big - we started them from seed about four years ago and now some of them are finally big enough to bloom. I was running out of pots.

I went up on the uppermost shelf in our garage to grab the last pot that was big enough, and what did I find? Dahlia tubers. I had actually taken care to lift them, dry them, pack them in soil and completely forget about them... and they were growing, right there, on the top shelf of he garage. Dahlia count? We're up to at least 9. I lost count.

Lessons learned:
1.) take the time to lift and prep the dahlias for the coming year
2.) my clearance purchase was not in vain, because now I may have those peachy-apricot colored dinnerplate dahlias in the coming years as well