The Purge

It was a mad house on the scenic byway yesterday morning with a bicycle ride that took two hours for all the riders to pass, a huge number of motorized support vehicles, regular motorcycle rally and rubbernecker traffic and a live auction of good country junk just down the road. A mad house.

I edited while the world rolled by.

This is the year. No more thinking about it. A purge of the more aggressive goldenrods is well under way.

Left alone the goldenrods will dominate the Tall Flower Meadow at the expense of so much else by stealing all the sun. Their numbers are being drastically reduced. It is simple enough. I grab individual stems close to the base and pull. Maybe I get a little root, maybe I don't. I have set the plant back big time by stealing all the energy that stem represents.

Now another plant, hopefully an aster has the chance to shade out the stunted goldenrod crown. That is the theory anyway. One thing I know I don't need is a lot of bare ground. That is the favorite haunt of thuggish first responders.

My aim is not perfection or total elimination, it is to nudge the meadow in a new direction and away from a one note golden domination. The Tall Flower Meadow is filled with a huge array of characters just waiting to be featured.

My big bold foliage plants are getting bigger by the year.

I prefer they be shown off to best advantage and not ensnared in a clump of smothering goldenrod.

The skylight making for the planted plants of the Under Garden is easy and ongoing. Now I just grab lots of goldenrod as I make my rounds.

My eyeball surgery induced staycation is over. Time to go back to paying work. It was nice while it lasted.

I'll be ready for the debris flying path whacking next week. By then my eyeball shouldn't be half bloodshot. The time to whack the Great Lawn into appearance is near.

In The Wild Garden Next Door

I may not be lounging quite like I am supposed to. Monsoon like rains with work cancelling eyeball surgery is keeping me home, but I can't sit still for long. It is not at all hard to find things to edit in between showers when I wander outside. This is an opportunity to play in my own gardens that I can't pass up.

I wander and edit. With two more days of lounging coming up, I expect to reach the wild gardens next door.

There will be a slight change of focus. There isn't so much need for me to remove the thuggish and unwanted anymore. Years of editing have reduced their numbers to below PIA levels.

I will instead try to focus on making skylights for the planted.

Bulbarella is 90 years old. She can't tend to the gazillion plants she has planted over the years very effectively anymore.

It is time for me to expand my planted plants tending range. I have already made my way to her garden door.

Native or not, the number one thing any plant needs to thrive in the exploding jungle of the wild cultivated gardens is sunlight. Every photon counts. Let there be skylights.

Nature will hide my tracks in the blink of an eye and those skylights that feature the planted and the wanted will make a garden look ever more civilized.

The lounging part comes with me moving at the slow deliberate pace of a sloth. Did you know your eyesight and sense of balance are intertwined? At least my feet have managed to move up from the basement pretty quickly.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

In The Jungle

The cataracts are gone. My vision in the first twenty four hours has been ebbing between freakish clarity and blurry. Clarity is slowly gaining dominance. My eyeball was sliced open after all.

I am supposed to be resting. The current monsoon weather is helping, I don't feel so bad about missing work. It hasn't kept me completely still. In between showers I put on my rubber boots and take a wobbly walk in the baby jungle. Minor editing happens.

Big bold foliage that will stand out in the growing Lush is rising.

Nature has provided some of its own bold foliage for the shade.

In moments of freakish clarity, the ability to discern all the different plant species that constitute the Lush confirms my knowing that I could not abide living with cataracts. They had to go. Now.

With new eyes for spring I am seeing many of the shrubs I have planted over the years from rooted twigs and sticks bloom well for the first time. The garden part of the wild keeps gaining substance.

My eyes do get tired being on the computer. That does not happen looking in the jungle for all that lives there.

The Last Days Of Monet

There were some late freeze knock downs, but Ku'ulei 'Aina rocked the house this spring. Mother Nature played the staring role.

The meadowlands are the gardens in the time of vegetation. They begin blooming at first inception and continue non-stop to killing frost.

I nudge the meadowlands with my editing and additions. One discarded 'Bird's Nest Spruce' is being given a second chance.

Eight years? Ten years? I waited a long ass time for this azalea to bloom. I was expecting yellow. It must be spite. I had been warning of a hard haircut to see if I could get them to send up sucker sprouts that might try blooming or even growing robustly. That is still the plan.

Orange! I'll have to live with it now.

The meadow did an astounding job this year with the spring blooming Golden Ragwort, Packera aurea. It is said to be a perennial, but it behaves more like a biennial. It is in constant motion. It is certainly not a long lived perennial.

There are hundreds of trilliums, a full showcase of spring ephemerals and more blooming weeds than I can count.

It is awesome to behold.

When you find a spot they like, a patch of Iris cristata can become a stock source for further travels. One day I just need to dig a bunch, go for a walk and plant them along the way.

That is sort of how Garden Blogger's Bloom Day works, planting flowers along the way.

I have been visiting/editing in Bulbarella's garden of course. It is another world unto its own. The plant community there is completely different. The rhododendron and blue Phacelia purshii are about to rock her house.

The Lady lives over there. Three perfect blooms. My wish did come true.

My right eyeball is getting sliced open tomorrow. You can see right away, but it takes about two weeks for your eyeball to heal and not be sensitive.

I sit on my front porch with a half set of cataracts contemplating learning how to see again. What will my collection of seeing eyeballs do this time? I'm getting distance vision lenses. Reading vision is up to me and my other eyeballs.

These are the last days of Monet. I see the beginning of sharp edges. I can see the tiny weeds good enough to ID. The Under Garden is getting absorbed. Lush.

It may be time for Rousseau.

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

The plant nerd went for a walk in the spring meadow. Despite the visible tracks and editing carcasses, the meadow was still in a state of sublime. It is too soon to whack, he thought.

The maintenance gardener was following behind casing the joint.

What to do? What to do? My other eyeball is getting sliced open next week and I am supposed to relax and take it easy through the weekend. I certainly don't want to get flying debris into a freshly sliced eyeball.

The Sisters are coming the following weekend and I need to get to Bulbarella's boyfriend's house for his once a month on a weekend haircut. If my meadow looks like this, his semi-wild pollinator garden is surely due for some garden making definition. I am completely booked. There is no wiggle room.

The maintenance gardener forged ahead. His schedule rules.

I gave my self two evenings and a Sunday to cover three acres of goat paths. The maintenance gardener had to remember how and warm up to another season of weed whacking. He doesn't like doing it all at once anyway. No need. It is his garden.

The whacking went well. Fast and simple. It's like riding a bicycle. Decades of practice have taught the maintenance gardener how to use a string trimmer like a fine musical instrument. Some people can make great music. Others can't, no matter how good the instrument.

The fidgety plant nerd was following behind. The maintenance gardener knows what he is doing. The garden was still in a state of sublime. And now easier to get close and fondle the plants.

The Sisters will be just fine with old mowed paths.

I can refresh them while they are here.

The plant nerd did put his foot down about one thing. The Great Lawn would have to wait. Maybe it will still be doing fun things when the Sisters get here.

A Walk In The Spring Meadow

Before the first path mowing.

I've been out walking.

Editing. Inspecting. Looking for the returnees to come up bigger and stronger.

Now is the time to nudge the Tall Flower Meadow in a new direction.

While it is still short.

I've been on the hunt for Goldenrod to pull. Got plenty.

I like yellow. I'm fine with that. I don't like thuggish. Goldenrods lean thuggish. It is time to push back.

I have been running a plant rescue mission of late. A number of poorly performing conifers that had to leave client's gardens have followed me home the last couple years. Some are worth giving a second chance in a better spot of ground.

It will be many years before I know if any of it was a success.

The maintenance gardener begins to get a little twitchy when the paths are hard to follow. I know where they are. If the maintenance gardener thinks a visitor would have trouble, it is getting time for the first whacking.

The Great lawn can wait. I just whack a path across to start.

Where things come up is important to their survival. These trilliums are safe.

Out there in a spring meadow all kinds of activity is going on.

And it doesn't take long once things get growing that a good whacking is in order. One strong element of civilized is enough to turn the wild into a garden.