Editing

There are piles of editings all over the place. It has to be having some effect, preferably a long term effect. I know I will be editing for the duration. I just hope it gets easier over time.

I edit for wild flowers. The Mexican Hat, Ratibida columnifera are starting to bloom. This is a perennial, but they did not show up in the same numbers this year as last. Annual, perennial, the wild flowers are not a stable lot in these conditions. They are forever rearranging themselves.

Some are more durable and aggressive like the Gooseneck Loosestrife, Lysimachia clethroides. Even this thuggish plant was set back and thinned by the late freezes last year.

The Gloriosa Daisies are a weak perennial at best. They don't last long, but given a smidgen of bare earth they will set seed and spread generously. You never know where they will show up.

That is where editing comes in. It creates those smidgens of bare earth that allow the good weeds to multiply.

Today I found a Verbena bonariensis way down in the bottom of the tall flower meadow. The only verbena here are all the way up top in the roadside bed. I like seeing things like that. My editing must be having an effect.

Something Will Be Blooming Next Week

I can only do so much in one week with little time on three acres of ground. My main goal is to get the paths open. With all the rain we have been having that now involves trimming branches of trees and shrubs in addition to weed whacking the paths themselves. I imagine a few weeds will get pulled. The rest is out of my hands.

What will be blooming will be blooming. What looks good will look good. What looks like a mess is indeed a mess.

All this rain has kept things cool. We haven't been above 80 since who knows when. The diagnosis is for cool for the rest of the week. That means the flowers won't be in any hurry. There's plenty of back up anyway and new things continually coming into bloom. Something will be blooming next week.

Unless we have a heatwave after whatever this thing is that is stuck on top of us, I won't be having any okra. This may not have been the best year to test out sweet potatoes as a replacement for the raccoon's sweet corn either. We will be eating something out of this garden if I ever get around to harvesting anything. The chef has essentially refused to harvest. We'll just see what happens when the tomatoes start ripening.

The wild cultivated garden is what it is. With limited time spent in a garden that could use a full time gardener, it is a miracle that I am making any headway at all. If I had more time it would just be a tidier and more floriferous wild cultivated garden.

At least something will be blooming next week.

Wet Foliage

It has been raining non-stop since noon yesterday. There was ample rain in the days before that. I was forced to clean house and it has now forced me to rest. And a miracle happened. I gained back some of the weight I couldn't afford to lose. Apparently I should sit around more and take a lot more two hour naps. It seems you can't gain weight by eating large volumes of cookies and baked goods alone.

I went out for a very short excursion in a section of mist before another downpour began. I kept waiting for a real break in the rain so I could plant my new Rudbeckia maxima. It never happened. They'll have to stay in the pots for another day.

The rooted twig of the Dappled Willow should be loving all this rain. This is good weathers for planting many things.

One of the other Green Fringed Orchids is blooming now. This location is where I first found them and they ended up getting crushed in my weeding last year. They have returned, but it seems they moved a couple of feet upslope from where I remember them being. I have no idea what this means in regards to their biology and status as a perennial. I just need to be more mindful when I weed there.

I already have a fair number of hosta in the garden becoming. Most of them came from the wild cultivated gardens next door. A few fell out of the ground and followed me home as tiny little sprigs. It is going to take a lot more hosta to create the six to eight foot wide, one hundred foot long arc sweeping across the garden becoming that is in my mind's eye. Maybe next spring I can begin dividing some of them.

A trickle of Japanese Blood Grass has started to flow. They say this stuff is supposed to be invasive. I'm still waiting.

Big Jack in the rain, arms in the umbrella position. I do get some pretty big Jack in the Pulpits. This one is a whopper.

Incessant Rains

My covered front porch is a very good thing. I can at least step outside when it is impossible to go outside. The rain has been unending. The contours of the land allow me to gaze upon pretty much the the entire garden becoming from the front porch. I can contemplate things, plot and plan. It's gardening light, the planning processes, the next best thing to being out there pulling weeds.

From the front porch view, high above the garden I can contemplate the bigger picture. The repetition of major plants like the Miscanthus 'Morning Light', yellow Louisiana iris, and variegated Red Twig Dogwood bring flow and coherence to the larger garden. I recently added two rooted cuttings of the Dappled Willow, Salix Integra 'Hakuro Nishiki'. One day they will be nice small trees since I want to train them to that form. Right now they are twigs.

I have quite a bit of white variegation going on. Breaking up the monotonous green of the forest and the Lush before it blooms is another key to making a garden stand out in this setting. Hiding behind the trees is a large group of yellow leaved hosta. These add a strong element of color in the shade and also help break up the ocean of green.

My hosta vision from the front porch is a 100 foot long arc that sweeps from the trees at the top of the garden closest to the driveway, all the way down to these golden hosta near the Creation at the bottom of my little valley. There is some dividing and acquiring of hosta in my future to bring this vision into being.

Having color in the foliage helps when the wild things aren't in bloom and in the shade where the wild things don't bloom as profusely.

I am in the middle of planting a rather extensive woodland garden at the Posh Estate. This involves me going to my favorite local independent nursery and filling my truck with whatever plants I want for the new garden. It's fun. It also has a slight drawback. It seems for every two dozen plants I buy for the Posh Estate I end up buying one for myself.

I have been wanting to add some of the Rudbeckia maxima to the Lush for a couple of years. Today I got two. This fall I will get seeds. Then I will have more.

Last time I was at the nursery I came home with a Lacecap Hydrangea. It was planted on the edge of the Great Lawn. There really is a garden starting to take shape out there now.

In Hiding

I have put a hurting on large swaths of the Lush. There is stomping, breakage and mangling involved with prying the steel roots of Clematis virginiana out of the ground. It is to good purpose. Next year there will be less of it. Weeding will become less destructive.

In places with more mature plantings, where weeding has been more routine over the years, less of it is needed to remove the unwanted, the Lush is as it should be, perky and filled with blooms.

The few weeds I do have in the roadside vegetable garden are actually self sown perennial flowers I have weeded around with the intent of transplanting at some point. At some point they can be moved some where else; some time. I may get to it eventually.

My weeding leaves the good things. They may get mangled this year, but since so many of them are perennials, they will be back next year without the smothering competition. I now have areas looking the way I want and haven't had to weed them at all this year.

I'll keep weeding and planting. Hiding out there in the Lush is an amazing array of good things. I just need to find them and set them free.

Now That It's July

The wild flowers are really getting their bloom on. My intent is to expand the area covered and increase the duration of this kind of bloom with additions on the front and back end of bloom times. Wish me luck.

Now that it is July, the roadside vegetable garden is finally starting to grow. I think this has been the slowest take off for the vegetable garden ever. We have no hot. My poor little okra still don't know what to do.

July, August and half of September at best, that's all we got left of serious growing time. Not that I want it to get hot, but some regular 85's would be fine.

Rawhands

Weeding, weeding, weeding
With chiggers, ticks and buzzings
Rawhands

Keep weeding, weeding, weeding

Yank 'em out
Toss 'em far
Keep on going

Pulling, pulling, pulling
Rawhands

Whacking, whacking, whacking
It's Lawn B for the heiau

Get a shape
Feel it out
More whacking?
Maybe

The good weeds they are a waiting
For me to weeding, weeding, weeding
By their sides

Rawhands

The flowers are there a waiting
At the finish of my weeding

Rawhands!

I Get Orchids

When I weed.

I have found two populations of the Green Fringed Orchid, Platanthera lacera, in my weeding now.

It is discoveries like these that make me cringe just a little when I have to bite the bullet and go for wholesale slaughter.

But it is my weeding that allows the smaller things to grow, safe from the overshadowing thugs.

Between adding and subtracting, the species diversity has increased substantially. The thugs are great in power, but few in kind. Removing them has allowed things like the orchids to appear.

If I should find something new or unusual coming up in a path or in the Great lawn it can easily be moved to a safer location. In the eight foot tall tangle it was before, there was no way of knowing what else might be hiding in there.