A Gardening Weekend!

This weekend is going to be the perfect weekend to do all of those lingering late winter chores in the garden. I wanted to work in my yard last weekend, but it was cold, rainy, and nasty. I just could never make myself get outside. But this weekend, it will be cool and sunny. Yay!

I have a few chores on my list:

1. Get pine straw
2. Prune back the lantana and apply pine straw
3. Cut back ruella (Mexican petunia)
4. Turn compost and harvest any that is ready
5. Apply compost to my vegetable beds to get them ready for spring

Only 5 items, but I can imagine those will take me most of the afternoon on Saturday. I can be a little ADD when I'm out in the garden, always finding another chore that needs to be done. I need to transplant one "Miss Huff" lantana, but I'm not sure that this is the best time to do it. I might wait until early March after it has leafed out some.

Spring vegetable gardening is just around the corner for me down here in central Mississippi. I plan to start lettuce, sugar snap peas, carrots, Swiss chard, and beets in just a few weeks.

In 2010 I neglected my garden a bit. in 2011 I hope to be more involved. I have big plans and high hopes.

Hot June

The weather over the past two-and-a-half weeks has been HOT and DRY. We've either topped or have been close to 100F heat indexes every day. I've been caught in pop-up thunderstorms all over the state, but none at MY HOUSE. That means I've been busy watering my vegetable and herb gardens and my new plantings in the patio and azalea gardens, but I have not yet watered the front porch beds or the lawn. Well, today it looks like I'll have to. Lacecap hydrangea in the shady front bed and shasta daisies in my perennial bed are looking pretty awful. In the spring I planted hot pink geraniums, dark purple petunias, and white sweet alyssum in these pots on either side of the front door. I was really hoping that by the Fourth of July, they'd all be bursting with color, and I'd have a creative red-white-and-blue container. The alyssum did great for a while, but it hasn't put on any new blooms. Any suggestions on how to get it to put on more? It is the lacey plant in the front.

Happy Friday! I can't wait to get out in the yard tomorrow. I've got a few things on my list.

• Replace lantana in the front porch bed. I FINALLY finished weeding and cleaning out the bed, and now I need new lantana plants. Can you believe I haven't been able to find ANY 'New Gold' lantana at the garden centers this year? WTH? Three years ago the garden centers were drowning in the stuff. All I can find this year is some no-label lantana that is lemon yellow. But I want 'New Gold'!
• Pull up fennel plants. Again, they never made bulbs, just started producing a flower stalk once it got hot. This year is the last year I try fennel in the spring. It just doesn't work. I am going to try it this fall, but it seems I never have enough space for it in the fall.
• Plant butternut squash 'Autumn Glow' and beans 'Burpee's Tenderpod' where fennel was.

As hot as it is supposed to be tomorrow (96F is the high, with a heat index well above 100F), I am sure that will be plenty!

Its Friday, Y'all!

Yep, it is Friday. I just made myself a Pimm's cup and decided that it was time to do some blogging! I made my Pimm's cups by filling a glass with ice, filling it 1/3 of the way with Pimm's, and 1/3 of the way with ginger ale; then I topped it all off with cranberry juice and a lemon slice. Yummy!

I am enjoying a short break from all the rain we've been getting. The last time I blogged about my garden, we'd had two straight weeks of heat indexes above 100F with no rain. This time, we've had rain for a solid week with tempertures barely reaching 93F over the past two weeks! It has definitely been a welcomed change, but we really are getting tired of the rain. Chip and I are dying to get our new kayaks out on the water, but rainy conditions do not make good paddling conditions. I promise I'll post some kayak pictures if we get out this weekend. Weather permitting, we are going to paddle up the Yazoo River on Sunday afternoon.

On the garden front, things are going pretty good! I think I'm proudest of some of my containers this year. On the brick patio in the backyard, I've got two containers. Begonias in a strawberry pot and a yucca with purple heart. Both look great. I'm sure that has something to do with all the rain we've been getting.

The perennial garden has filled out beautifully! In the spring I had pink creeping phlox, 'Homestead Purple' verbena, purple irises, and Carolina jessamine. Now that it is late summer, I have lantana, 'Becky' shasta daisy, and echinacea 'Sundown', 'Sunset', and 'Ruby Giant'. The lantana is doing better this week than it has done in the past two years. Blame it on the rain I guess, because it just exploded in blooms this week.

My rose garden isn't looking too shabby either. I've got one more shrub to move from my house in Oxford: Evelyn. I've got a great place for it since one of my junipers decided to bite the dust. Perfect - I say - because I don't really like the junipers anyway. The spot I have is in the front of Golden Celebration. I think this should be okay since Evelyn is only supposed to be 4 ft x 3 ft.

Molineux:

Tamora:

Golden Celebration:

And Ambridge Rose is still hanging on even if she isn't blooming right now. The roses are flanked by 'All Purple' Mexican bush sage. I love this plant! I divided it early this year and it has multiplied just like I hoped it would. It fills in with beautiful green foliage all summer, then in September it puts out long, purple blooms. Just perfect. If you look closely you can see the lamb's ears that border my rose garden and the snail statue that keeps a watch over the entire bed.

In the spring, I divided my shasta daisy and moved some Russian sage into the middle of all that Mexican bush sage. I think the Russian sage is too short to thrive here, so I'll probably move it again. I am thinking that next year the shasta daisy will pop up vigorously and will keep right up with the Mexican bush sage. We'll see. Remember my gardening mantra: There are no garden mistakes, only experiments.

I've gotta update my banner with that!

My Front Porch Sitting Spot

On Sunday evenings Chip and I love to sit on the porch with a glass of wine and enjoy the last few daylight moments of my weekend. When we got home from our vacation, I was excited to see how pretty the front porch looked. Here is my favorite porch sitting spot.

The 'Bridal Wreath' Spirea has a few tiny white blooms left - not many. The 'New Gold' Lantana is just beginning to bloom. Knockout roses are really rocking my world this year. I love all of that color! Verbena 'Homestead Purple' is blooming like crazy, but the foliage is turning brown. What's that all about? My last two irises are beautiful. On the other side of those I have gladioli, echinacea, and 'Becky' Shasta Daisies getting ready to bloom.

I'm so glad that all my hard work in this bed has paid off in blooms. This was May 15 last year:
What a difference!

My Suffering Lantana

What happened? My lantana used to be so pretty. Endless tiny yellow blooms loved by butterflies and hummingbirds.

July 26, 2006

Look at it now.

July 29, 2008

Waaaah! Boo!

It came back this year like it has the past two years, but this year I've got plently of lush green leaves and no blooms. What should I do? Should I cut it back? Should I start over every year with new plants? (Please, say it ain't so!) I am feeling like such a failure because I see gorgeous blooming lantana all over the place, and mine is so sad. Help!

The perennial bed is looking great this year. Such a transformation. A photo from each year, starting in 2006:

October 22, 2006

May 10, 2007

July 29, 2008

I've worked extremely hard on getting this perennial garden to look the way I want it to. So far so good! I can think of a few more things that I'd like to do:

• The Carolina Jessamine is eating that tiny iron obelisk alive. I want something like this to replace it. I'm pretty sure my grandfather can make me one.
  Photo from http://www.ehouseplans.com/.


• I've got some bare spots on the right side where the mimosa tree shades the perennial garden most of the day. I want to plant foxgloves. Anyone have experience growing foxgloves and advice to give me?
  
• I planted four pink creeping phlox plants in the front and three of them died. Yep, I didn't plant them quickly enough after purchasing, and they just dried up. I'm going to replace them because I think they'll look fabulous in early spring.
  

In 2009 this perennial bed should be totally rockin and gorgeous!

The Perennial Corner Begins to Bloom

The Perennial Corner has really come together. These are photos of it from today, just before a quick shower. The glads my granny gave me are really coming up. She gave me 12 bulbs, and at first only 11 of them came up. The 12th one popped up this week. The Mexican petunia bloomed its first bloom today. The lantanas have been blooming their heart out for about two weeks now. I haven't seen a bloom yet on the shasta daisy, but I plan to see one in another week or so. I'm really happy with the way this is coming together. The Russian Sage plants are getting pretty bushy. Just like I wanted.

Oh, and can you spot the turd? The neighbor's dog left that little present sometime today. I don't love it when it leaves little gifts on the lawn, but I can deal with it. But on the porch? That is just rude!

Lantana

I love the lantana in my front bed. I wasn't sure about it at first. When we moved in (March 06), it looked terrible because the previous owner just left it after the frost got to it instead of cutting it back. But, wow! It has really become one of my favorite plants at the house. I get lots of butterfly and bee visitors. The purple desert petunias on the side of the porch attract hummingbirds, but I haven't seen any in the past few weeks. Maybe hummingbird season is over? I was hoping to be able to snap a photo of a hummer. I snapped some photos of a pretty butterfly today. Enjoy!