Monday, July 6, 2009

No one cares but me

I love weekends. Long weekends of quality family time.

I felt like we did no work, even though I did. I felt like Sasha was a perpetual joy, even though in true twoness fashion he whined incessantly and started. Every. Word. With the most nasal, whiney “Hey” ever.

We cleaned up the yard a bit. Yes, I planted weeds last fall. Red clover, to be exact. I remember seeing somewhere that it was good for the soil quality. It actually has done a good job of choking out almost all the other weeds, doesn’t really seem to have adversely affected our other plants, and makes a nice, uniform, green carpet so we can save on mulch to keep the bed looking even. As good as Sasha was at playing and entertaining himself by touching every leaf, stick, and blade of grass (can you tell my favorite phrase lately is “Stop touching…” insert item here?) it made life so simple. This purposeful planting of select weeds worked well enough I plan to use it again this fall. I have more red clover for the front yard, and I’m going to plant chickory in the back. The flowers are a pretty blue and it is a useful plant so I’m hoping it works as well.
I also took down some “volunteers” I had been ignoring—for far too long.

We had an ash tree sapling that must’ve been 10 ft tall and a sugar maple that was about 6 ft. They were mixed in with my assorted lilacs (I only planted them about 4 years ago, and they are up to the 2nd story windows) so were easy to overlook. And since I’m not someone who even knows how to properly prune trees or bushes? Yeah, everything was left to go wild until just this weekend because a friend had shown me how to get everything trimmed nicely. The side of our house still looks like a fairy princess took to gardening with the towering lilacs surrounded at the base with blue hydrangea and hot pink peony. Apparently, those 3 are the only things I’m good at because everything else I plant looks pathetic while the lilacs, hydrangeas and peonies grow to ginormous proportions (although, our house does smell FABULOUS in spring with all that perfume floating around). Apparently I also do well with bulbs because we have a TON. They're not planted with any kind of organization, but I don't care. They're all the same colors so the mix of various purples, pinks, and whites (front yard) or reds yellows and oranges (backyard) looks good no matter what.

Even our strawberries have some sort of blight. I probably need to till the patch over, grow something else, and start over.

I do like the idea of food plants for the backyard (in addition to the lilacs I have back there too). Trees are out since the Hound has made my repeated attempts at an orchard huge failures by digging them up and chewing them to smithereens. But more bushes may be an answer. I’ve seen thornless black and raspberries, wild plums, and of course blueberries. Also wonder if a kiwi vine would work grown up the deck supports and railing?

Or should I go with my current fairy princess garden theme? Wisteria? Roses? Lavender?

2 comments:

caramama said...

Mmmmm. I love the smell of lilacs! I have requested a bush under our bedroom window someday. But my husband is the gardener, not me. Not me by a long shot!

Burgh Baby said...

I love Wisteria, but it's a pain in the ass. If it takes hold, it can be almost invasive.

I'd be all over the fruit, but that might be because I spend a small fortune keeping the short person knee deep in berries.