hard at work again

Posted on August 13, 2012 by paridevita

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be less boring. Not an easy thing to do for someone like me, but, in the garden, I can at least fake it. I just took the shovel to an area in the North Border that was nothing but old-fashioned roses and irises. It was interesting for about ten days a year, and the rest of the time, just served as a reproach to my lack of imagination.

The partially cleaned-out area (I left some asters so I would have something to look at later this year) looks full of promise. Just like you see in magazines.

Likewise the soil. (Move over, Victory Garden.)

The North Border is bounded by a hedge of mature New Mexican privets, or desert olives (Forestiera neomexicana) which no doubt suck all the water out of the soil, but I like them a lot.

In other news, while I was well aware that the handsome cage of rebar and rabbit wire I made for a clematis was supporting a healthy growth of bindweed (keeps the sun off the clematis on hot days), I was completely unaware that a plant of prickly lettuce was growing in the cage, flowering at about five feet tall.

Naturally I gave the thing a tug, and the clematis was pulled to pieces, but at least the top of the prickly lettuce is dead. (Hanging down in defeat, on the right side of the cage.)

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things to do in August

Posted on August 12, 2012 by paridevita

“And so, to the amateur gardener’s eternally repeated question ‘When should I?’ and ‘What’s the best time to?’ I’ve concluded that nine times out of ten the answer is ‘When you’re thinking about it; when you’re in the mood.'”

“This, I realize, is the last thing he wants to be told, because it is an adult answer and the amateur, in whatever the subject, will long remain a child, seeking advice and guide-lines in the form of clear-cut, black-and-white answers to his manifold doubts. To be told that it doesn’t matter is unsettling. The kind answer to ‘When should I?’ is ‘Do it on 31 March.'”

This is the late Christopher Lloyd writing in The Well-Tempered Garden, making fun of gardening columns (something that would not go over so well in this country) and even though, as I said just a little while ago, I do try to make a habit of planting out seedlings in August, most chores in the garden can be put off until you feel like it. (Watering is a glaring exception.)

I believe that it’s now time to give serious consideration to taking down the oriole feeder. The birds have left. Someone into birds said September 15 was the usual last day for orioles in Denver, but the orioles disappear from my garden about this time every year.

And no wonder. Another creature has found the grape jelly, one I suspect not very much concerned about sharing.

pigs at a trough

This is the white-faced hornet, Dolichovespula maculata, really a yellow jacket (North America has no true hornets), and not small. They seem to think it’s funny to buzz the person who puts the jelly in the feeder, or chase him into the house when he takes the feeder in to clean it.

I almost got hit in the head by a sugar-crazed hummingbird earlier this evening, but sugar-crazed hornets who take a strong exception to being photographed while they swill grape jelly are a different story altogether.

I’m not really afraid of them, but I did decide not to take up hornet photography as a hobby. The feeder will come down tomorrow.

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