Pooped Out

Shoveling three piles of dung yesterday wore me out. I was moving slow when I came back home this afternoon. Slow through the garden is just fine.

The Kousa Dogwood still has a strong hint of green in the flowers. They are not fully open.

Finally. There is luteum in my trilliums.

Lots of luteum in the iris.

I could have waited. The last two weeks have been quite cool. The roadside vegetable garden is just sitting there waiting for warm.

An orange iris.

Welcome to the ridge top garden.

Things are blooming.

Miss Dinah joins us for an evening stroll.

Phacelia.

And company.

The rhododendron show is the ridge top gardens finest hour.

Nothing else compares.

Phacelia every where you turn.

The big one.

The Melon Department

There is no time to waste in the vegetable growing season at a 4000 foot elevation. It was time to get busy. I spent the morning reorganizing my collectibles, moved the bottle tree to a more forward and secure setting with boulders resting on its rebar feet and started leveling the dung.

One pile done.

Two big piles in progress.

This is going to be the melon department. I intend to grow some of the finest cantaloupe this side of the Mississippi. That's the plan anyway. The dung piles will also be getting some butternut squash since that seemed to be a family favorite.

The lesser squash will be grown in the roadside vegetable garden.

That is some fine looking dung. It grew big pumpkins for me a couple of years ago.

Two big piles done. It's ready to plant. I'm germinating my seeds in trays of four inch pots though. I have less seedling loss that way.

One Blue Ridge Red Salamander, Pseudotriton ruber subsp. nitidus got lucky. I was furiously shoveling poop when it got scooped up. It is lucky not to have been cut in half.

I gave it a bath for its closeup and then put it back in the woods near the compost pile.

One nice tidy melon department with a new bottle tree is ready to go.

A Quick Execution

Yesterday I picked up a bundle of skinny rebar. Now I need to bend it into something.

They were ten feet long and I had nothing to cut it with. I went high. Once the bottles were added, a bit of kinetic turned into completely unstable. Skinny rebar wasn't going to hold that weight at that height.

I did some more bending and made it shorter.

It is much more stable now. Still, I think it would be wise to secure the legs to the ground. It is holding a good deal of weight between the bottles and the pine tree part.

One bottle tree is semi-complete. I need to consider spray painting the rebar black, the pine tree part with a clear sealant to slow decomposition and the bottles could use a proper cleaning. I scraped the labels off for now.

I think it will live off the parking area, maybe not in this exact spot. There is no place in the garden really calling out for it. It can greet visitors and capture any evil spirits that wander down my drive.

On A Rainy Day

Tossed as rubbish, a Caesar's Brother iris lives on.

Very well I might add. It can stay where it is and be used for gifting. Tossed daylilies lived on there too.

Another Objet de wandered down to the basement patio while I was contemplating the construction of the new bottle tree.

It still has some dirt to shed, but already the Medusa Root is showing through.

I sat for a spell while it rained. The wind was a bit chilly. I moved on.

I am most pleased with the robust new growth on my Stewartia pseudocamellia. It even has flower buds and will bloom in another month. I think it likes it here.

The big foliage of Rodgersia makes a statement in the Lush. I need big foliage. I need robust. I need plants that like cool and wet and partial sun.

The unknown with an orchid like appearance that followed me home has an emerging bloom spike. I will be able to identify it soon. This could be orchid species number seven in the wild cultivated gardens.

I startled a Ruffed Grouse in my stroll. It flew off in a thunder. A shorter moving burst caught the corner of my eye. I looked where it landed. A Ruffed Grouse chick was hiding and quiet. I moved on to let mama and chick reunite. I imagine there were more I couldn't see.

The roadside rose is shedding a pink carpet of petals. It is mainly a one shot spring bloomer. I do need to transplant some of the suckers. More would be nice. It's upright shrub form makes it a low maintenance rose that doesn't require pruning beyond removing dead branches. That is a good thing for a thorn bush.

I'll Take It Then

Those warm sunny afternoons with a sweet breeze after a day in the garden when I sit for a spell on the front porch and watch the traffic and rubberneckers pass by.

A garden with a mind of its own where the best I can do is steer it away from obnoxious choices.

Speckled Wood Lily, Clintonia umbellulata, brought in to the garden from deep in the forest.

A closeup of a hosta that followed me home for CC for a possible ID.

Wild orchids of many kinds that actually bloom.

A horribly ugly, over pruned pine offered up as a bottle tree. No? Cut it down then? Now it is mine. I'm thinking a bundled rebar trunk bent at the bottom to form legs. The top may be bent to form a small basket to hold the branches with one or two of the rebar left straight and inserted into a hole drilled in the wood.

How tall should it be? I guess that will be determined by what lengths rebar is sold in. Now I need a few more bottles. Art project.

No Lupine

I don't have lupine in my garden because they won't grow for me. I have tried several times with several species and they never get much past the seedling stage. I think the competition is too much for them.

These lupine have more elbow room and a whole lot less competition. The do so well, they self sow and wander about.

I need to give that Russian sage on the right a haircut.

I don't have Salvia nemorosa in my garden. It won't grow for me. I think the competition with the Lush is too much for it. In proper mulched beds it does phenomenally well. I don't have proper mulched beds.

No lupine for me. I do however have visitation rights to lupine in several gardens where I can grow lupine.

I do have some Giant Fleece Flower, Persicaria polymorpha now. It is supposed to be a large robust clumping and sterile perennial hardy to zone 3 with showy white flowers summer into early fall. I need big and robust to compete effectively with the Lush.

The native Persicaria virginiana is rather abundant in the wild cultivated gardens. It is smaller and not much of a clumper. I love the ethereal flowers though. This new giant persicaria should grow in my garden. That is the theory anyway.

The Roadside Rose

A milder winter and no late hard freezes has many plants looking and blooming their best. It has been a few years since this rose has put on this much of showing.

It's a shrub rose. It's pink. It suckers a bit to form clones. It has to be very road salt tolerant. The grass on the other side of the fence sure isn't. It will be July before that turns green. I have no idea who this rose is. Maybe one of my rose friends will know.

The roadside planting of grasses on the other side of my driveway is coming along. I lost control of this bed a couple years ago. Now I just edit and pretty much go with the flow.

I was up by the roadside in the vegetable garden this evening doing another seed sowing of the things that did not come up; chard, carrots and beets. I sowed more lettuce while I was at it.

The newly planted tomatoes and peppers looked good. The eggplant was looking a bit forlorn like maybe it resented the low of 36 on Sunday morning. The purple strobilanthes in the pot on my front porch keeled over like it was wilted that morning. It picked itself back up by the end of the day.

On our last average frost day of May 15th we had a low of 36. That is only four degrees better than freezing. The warm season crops are only a few more degrees fonder of that kind of low, which isn't very fond of it at all. I hope they are not stunted.

Now I need to get busy on sowing my squash and melons. I do that in flats of 4 inch pots to avoid the seed chewing varmints.