The Roadside Flower Bed Begins To Bloom

Summer arrived while I was weeding. The self sowing Canterbury Bells are the first item to bloom in this roadside bed. I've done a little weeding in here. Mostly pulling out seedling New England Aster when I check the mail. Too tall. Too floppy. It has to go.

This roadside bed is mostly self functioning with very little weeding now. What I want crowds out what I don't want.

I saw the first chicory blooms this morning. In another two weeks it will be a roadside bed of blue sky chicory backed by the the silvery white Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light'. Other inhabitants like Ox-Eye Daisy, Fleabane and Echinops bannaticus will be joining in, in their time.

I have been so busy or so obsessed with weeding the garden becoming that my enthusisasm for the roadside vegetable garden may be lacking. The St. Patrick's Day sowing of lettuce, peas and what not was largely a failure. Winter wouldn't let up. The lettuce and radishes that did come up I haven't even bothered to harvest. The box turtles may get most of the strawberries before I get to them.

The roadside vegetable garden is planted and seeded for the summer. There isn't much weeding to do with the wood chip mulch

I've been weeding like a madman in the garden becoming and super busy, as in fully booked with work. The slow leisurely act of harvest has been put aside in favor of other things.

I may get a little help with harvesting when the tomatoes arrive. The tomato monster next door must have her tomatoes. She might even be willing to fetch them herself.

I weed for wild flowers.

They oblige by filling the empty space I leave behind in my weeding.

Summer is rising to the mountain top and a whole host of wildflowers is about to burst into a cacophony of bloom.

Weeding My Way Towards A Garden

I really have lost my mind.

I came home from work after toting heavy, soaking wet mulch, bag by bag down a mountain and thought, it stays light until 9. I'll go pull weeds for half an hour. Two and a half hours later I finally stopped. I have become obsessed with making a major dent in the removal of the unwanteds from the garden becoming this year. This year, not this decade.

Areas that have received more regular attention over the years are already showing signs of gardenhood. I ventured further out this afternoon and concentrated on a major nemesis, the steel rooted Clematis virginiana vine.

The steel rooted clematis is everywhere. There is a ton of it on the slope below the roadside vegetable garden. I'll get to that eventually.

I started weeding by the back service entrance and ended up much lower down the slope near the Creation. The clematis is so thick down there it forms a nearly pure stand. By the time I was done stomping through and weeding there wasn't much left in my wake.

Are you nuts? Am I really going to try to weed this whole slope of this obnoxious steel rooted vine by hand?

I think I am ready to surrender. It is time to kill these pure stands chemically. I can start editing this section again when the new crop of Lush returns. There is no shortage of clematis around that will still need hand weeding.

I'll keep weeding because I am nuts.

I am making progress though. The composition of the tall flower meadow has already begun to change. I want to have more wildflowers like this Silene virginica that was dug out of a gravel driveway that is regularly mowed. I want less to none of the Clematis virginiana that climbs on top of everything and smothers it.
 

I want semi-tamed slopes with interesting groundcovers and self seeded Joe Pye weed coming up through it. The Joe Pye was left when the cotoneaster got weeded.

I'll keep weeding. I am making progress. Come fall I can infuse the sprayed sections of clematis with seeds collected from the wanted wild flowers. The Ox-Eye Daisies are loaded with buds and are quite good at self sowing.

Across the path from the pure clematis stands I noticed the Black Eyed Susans have been self sowing behind my back. They have been filling in where I have weeded out the unwanted on a more consistent basis.

I'm nuts, but only slightly nuts. There are times when mass murder of a formidable foe with chemical weapons is the best option for my sanity.

The hand weeding will continue unabated.

Just Weed

Right about now as the Lush leaps into growth at warp speed is when I begin to think, have you lost your mind? What are you thinking? Do you think you can ever selectively weed this tangle into some semblance of coherence?

But I am making progress I tell myself. The composition of the tall flower meadow has already begun to change.

You're nuts. 

I am making progress.

Just keep weeding. Ignore the fact that this is a herculean task. Keep weeding.

You're nuts.

I did use some ornamec, a grass killing herbicide, earlier this spring. That got rid of a major portion of the remaining tall fescue that had been used to hold the slope during the cabin construction years. There is no easy selective chemical solution to remove the other unwanteds. Chemically you can kill just the grasses, just the non grasses or everything. It doesn't get more refined than that. In this jumble of the tall flower meadow the rest must be done selectively by hand.

It is true I have long dreamed of a garden filled with wild flowers. On Maui they were few and far between. I collected what few there were and brought them into my garden there.

Here in North Carolina wildflowers are abundant. This piece of land in particular came fully supplied. The two long time resident gardeners nudged the wild flower population along with new additions for 25 years. I want to preserve and enhance that. Starting over with a blank slate would only allow the more aggressive things to take hold.

Left alone, a very short list of truly dominant species would take over and smother everything else. Diversity and the length of the bloom season would plummet.

I tell myself that selective weeding keeps bare ground to a minimum and prevents the thugs from rampant self sowing when they are not allowed to bloom. With less competition, the wanted will fill in the empty spaces.

Just keep weeding.

You're nuts.

Just one flower on my Kousa Dogwood this year. One.

I'll have to be satisfied for now with the fact that it is one of the plants that has quickly gone into the leap phase of growth. So many others still creep.

With store bought wild flowers, self sown wild flowers, gardener sown wild flowers and wild flowers that follow me home, plus a rigorous program of editing, the season of vegetation can bloom from beginning to end at a more reasonable mature height of five feet. A feeling of coherence could creep in over time.

That is the plan anyway.

You're nuts.

But I am making progress. The composition of the tall flower meadow has already begun to change.

Just keep weeding. Forget that it is a herculean task.

Deja vu

I saw this pretty little aster at my local independent garden center so I bought it. Aster tongolensis 'Wartburg Star' is a short mound forming plant that sends up foot high lavender flowers. I looked it up online to read more about it and thought this all sounds so familar.

Have I bought one of these before? I looked in the collection of plant tags I keep to see if there was an existing tag for Aster tongolensis. I keep the tags so I can find the names of the plants I've bought when needed and to know which ones have permanently faded away into the Lush.

Yes I had bought Aster tongolensis before.

So where was it? Where did I plant it? I certainly had not seen it blooming anywhere. I pondered this for a day and finally remembered where maybe it had been planted.

And here it is, Aster tongolensis, a tiny remnant of its store bought self, still alive and looking meek. It had even been planted in a prime, low Lush competition location. Well this won't do.

I need vigor in my plants if they are to successfully settle into the lush. We need Ox-Eye Daisy vigor in the aster 'Wartburg Star'.

The first one was planted in the front bed near this patch of Veronica officinalis. This creeping veronica is a  naturalized alien weed that forms a rather pleasing evergreen ground cover with pretty blue blooms. It is one of the weeds I like so I leave it.

This veronica could creep right over the Aster tongolensis and smother it for sure. I better keep an eye on it now that I remember where it is.

My new aster 'Wartburg Star' waits to be planted. I don't want to put it in the same place where shrinkage has occurred. It needs to go in a different location. I'm thinking in a place that has less drainage and more moisture.

There are days when I look out on the garden becoming and don't worry about whether it will fit in with the natural surroundings. These are the beds I planted from scratch. They contain what I planted, many of them nearby weeds and the weeds that showed up on their own that I like and didn't have the heart to pull just yet.

Maybe I can fit the aster 'Wartburg Star' in there some where.

The New Hydrangea

Hydrangea angustipetala 'MonLongShou'.

The yellow Louisiana iris looking fetching.

The Black Iris while it's still here.

The Black Iris Turns

I don't recall the Black iris being so infused with purple before. There was always a hint ever so slight, but not the overall purple cast I am seeing now. It could be the lighting.

The Black iris next door looks blacker to me. I don't think the camera can see the difference. The camera is seeing the same purple infusion.

Does this mean the Black iris is not black after all? Is it a fake, a poseur, a purple iris in black drag? Oh well. We can pretend it is black.

I may have come home from the garden party with an Objet de. We will go for a walk in the garden and see where it would like to stay.

Who invented these peonies? They are all just a bit too flamboyant, so big and so unreal. It is hard to imagine nature going this far overboard. On second thought, not it isn't. Nature goes overboard in design extravaganzas all the time.

 Then the gardeners push the boundaries even further. Black iris and giant peonies.

I Went To A Garden Party

In the garden of Christopher Mello, a local landmark at the entrance to North East, East West Asheville (NEEWA).

The Louisiana iris 'Black Gamecock', not 'Black Knight'.

An orange tree with hops.

After the rain stopped.

Texture in red

Shovels ready.

The Blue Pearl poppies on the other side of the fence.

Red texture in the other direction.

The Head in the garden.

A real blue bottle tree.

It is always a delight to explore Christopher's garden, to see it change and grow. A black iris lives there now. Next year I may see it bloom.

Mostly Iris

Siberian iris 'Caesar's Brother', the agapanthus of the iris world.

 The yellow Louisiana iris.

Baptisia from seed.

Where some of the yellow Louisiana iris live. One gifted piece has already become many. I even found it coming back up at its first home where it was moved from. They are just starting to bloom.

Lorelei, the prolific.

Behold. the Black Iris.

The Black Iris was rescued from smothering by the Lush about two years ago. Last year everything got froze. This year spring is making amends.

Dutch iris.

Button behaving.

The rhododendrons are still blooming.

Lorelei and friend.

In the new iris patch there are many other colors of the tall bearded kind.

Tiny rescued pieces have become happy Black Iris once more.

In the new iris patch.