I was actually looking forward to two full days of rain, and
the clearing of the humidity but I was gypped. Sure there were showers, but
nothing could pull the wetness out of the sky enough, and as I donned my white
cotton bee suit to add two more supers onto my original beehive and my swarm
hive, the sweat rolled down my temples – and it wasn’t even 10 am. I have a lot
of work to do in the garden, but the humidity is melting me and making me
cranky. I did rip out the lettuce that bolted last week and I did harvest my
garlic. I probably should have left some of the smaller heads in for another
week, but I knew if I didn’t do it now it wouldn’t happen.
Lots of things in my life are like that. I need to do it
when it comes to mind, or it won’t get done. I need to pay the bill the day I
receive it (or within the week) or it will be buried in a pile somewhere. I
need to weed the beds when I notice they are getting overwhelmed.
Hmm.
Well I didn’t do that with the pear tree bed and now that I
finally ripped out all the Hesperis (Sweet Rocket) I am left with a few really
gaping holes. I love Hesperis, in both its purple and the white shades and I adore
the way it fills the beds in my garden, but it always seems to swamp its
neighbors and suffocate them. This year it’s done in a couple Nepeta ‘Joanna
Reed’, a Platycodon ‘Fuji Blue’ and a number of Echinacea ‘Milkshake.’ You
would think I’d learn. I am torn
over Hesperis – like the English, I’m quite mad about the flower – but in my
garden they can become the most hideous of invasive thugs and they suffocate
anything that’s on either side of them with wild abandon.
What I really should be doing is only allowing them back in
the shrub gardens I’m just starting in the back and use them to keep the other
weeds down. How brilliant would that be? So, since they are biennials, I need
to gather up the seeds of the plants I still have remaining and scattered them
into the far back beds. Those beds have the most dismal of soils, pure orange
sand and rocks, with a layer of wood chips on top, so I’ll have to lay down
some purchased soil for my Sweet Rocket to start in. I’m actually going to have
to do the bags of soil thing anyway since Marders cornered the market on Asclepias
Incarnata (Swamp Milkweed) plugs for a job that never happened and now they are
selling the trays for ½ price.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, plants from the
asclepias family are where Monarch butterflies feed and lay their eggs, and
since the Monarchs are in deep trouble, we all need a patch of Asclepias for
them to find if they venture into our backyards. I have the cultivar ‘Ice
Ballet’ in two of my beds already, and it’s white (deer resistant) flowers are
perfect already, but I’m going to use the pink in those back shrub border beds
in large swathes.
I am always telling people that they need to plant things in
large masses, and I am trying to follow my own advice, but I’ve been bringing
home sick and broken plants and using those to fill the back beds. It’s a bad
habit I can’t seem to break. This is how one ends up with a hodge-podge, and If
I’m not careful it’s going to look terrible. Luckily I’m also shopping the
half-price table, which means that if I do find 10 of something it’s priced so
that I can bring them all home (hello Uvularia Grandiflora!) The Asclepias Incarnata
I’m getting at half price is a really good clear pink, not the dirty dusty rose
of the Common Milkweed and it can handle wet feet which means it’s more
versatile then the Asclepias Tuberosa that must remain dry. You get fifty plants in a tray and I’m
thinking of bringing home three. How’s that for massing?
And speaking of things that need doing when they come to
mind, what I really should be focusing on is digging up all the daylilies from
the front bed that have become or reverted to the common roadside daylily. I
don’t remember ever planting these flowers, instead I remember buying expensive
clumps right out of the fields of the daylily grower that used to live in Watermill.
I choose my daylilies for their rose and pink and melon pastel colors. But
after years of heavy deer pressure those are all gone now and all I’m left with
is this orange I don’t want. I should dig them up while they are in flower so I
know I’m getting rid of the right ones and keeping the few sorbet flavored ones
I have left. Not that it’s going to happen anytime soon, but I did just go out
and buy my lottery tickets for the month on the off chance that I could quit my
job and just read and write and paint and cook and garden. Sigh.
Oh well, I’m off to harvest the handful of haricot vert
beans that are ready. For some reason only a few of the seeds took. I’m quite
unhappy about it, but we all know how bad I am at starting seeds, so I will
have to put a chunk of those lottery funds into the most marvelous of
greenhouses so I can do better. That’s if I win, of course.
Paige Patterson found a dead baby possum that was so incredibly
beautiful, she wanted to paint it, but it was way too smelly to bring into the
house and her painting studio is still a pipe dream.
