more hard work

Posted on April 7, 2013 by paridevita

I finally had a chance to try out this nifty new Victorian trowel that the people at Garden Tool Company gave me. It’s one of the nicest trowels I’ve ever used; good balance, beveled edge to dig into awful soil, and a blade flat enough to dig out a big chunk of dirt.  It will probably replace my old Yo Ho as an all-purpose trowel. (Update to mention the trowel’s manufacturer, which might help: DeWit.)

040703

Yes, I did some work. More rocks added, and some warm season grasses (and two ‘Boulder Blue’ fescues) moved from another part of the garden. The cool season grasses, Poa annua (annual bluegrass), etc., are all too evident in this picture; I want to get rid of them, but that means getting down on my hands and knees and scraping out all the tufts of grass between the flagstone and elsewhere.

I wouldn’t even try to spray the grasses because they would just come back from seed next year, and besides, there are some tiny pieces of Festuca thurberi, which I planted, among all the annual bluegrass. (My wife liked to spray weeds but my one experience with such things led me to conclude it was a waste of my time; I’m not a garden chemical type person anyway.)

The rectangular shadow at the right is from the bird feeder hanging in the tree.

040701

A border collie’s eye view. All the white in the rock garden is Corydalis angustifolia.

040704

In the rock garden itself, a nice color form of Pulsatilla vulgaris, which was more open when I went to get the camera, but it’s supposed to snow a whole bunch and get down to 12 or some equally asinine temperature, so I figured carpe diem florae pulsatillae. It was supposed to be ‘Budapest Blue’, but isn’t. Bluer than purple, but not enough Budapest. I’ve wanted that particular color form for quite some time, and all the plants I’ve acquired with that name have turned out to be something else.

040702

Also, Crocus rujanensis. I could have removed the spent flower in the front, but I didn’t. In a normal year no one would believe I have crocuses in flower in April (what’s next, lilacs in July?), but I do.  This year, so far, weirdness abounds.

040705

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

when in doubt

Posted on April 6, 2013 by paridevita

When in doubt, I cover a problem area with rocks. The bigger the rocks, the better. No worries about watering, or winter hardiness.

The southern third of the native-grass lawn has turned into one of the ugliest areas in the garden, made even uglier by the persistence of stupid Poa annua (the green stuff), and the bird feeder hanging directly above it. I hit my head on the bird feeder just today, and half the seed dropped to the ground.

I happened to have some extra rocks handy, so I carried them over to this spot. “Carried” is an exaggeration; judging from the way my body responded when I tried to lift them, they each weigh over 150 pounds, so I rolled them by their edges.

See? Instant beautification.

040603

The rocks had served as edging for yet another hideous area of the garden, the pool. Aside from the fact that, as I mentioned a while ago, it’s covered with algae and smells most of the year, having a pool in a climate this dry now just seems odd to me. I try desperately not to be odd.

I dug the pool and installed the liner; my success in preventing creases is quite evident in the picture below. The sides were too steep as well. I’m not sure why my wife let me do all this; maybe she felt sorry for me, since she did all the construction in the garden. The dog, who was raised on a farm and came to his new home reeking of goat poop, jumped into the pool minutes after his arrival, but he hasn’t shown any interest in it since then.

040602

I guess the metal dragonfly can stay where it is. I was going to drain the pool tomorrow, using a bucket, but now I don’t feel like it. If it ever stops snowing (two feet predicted next week), the water will evaporate in no time. That leaf visible under the water is an unhappy variegated Iris pseudacorus, which spends the winter lying on its side at the bottom, in a slime-covered pot. The whole thing reminds me of the tar pits in Los Angeles, which I used to love to visit when very young, except that the pools of tar were even more sinister looking.

Back to the rocks, I set them in a manner reminiscent of a similar formation I saw while on holiday in the Julian Alps many summers ago. That’s how I do everything.

040601

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 8 Comments