As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


Neglect

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I’ve been off work since the beginning of December due to a Crohn’s flare. I thought that since I was home I’d be able to putter in the garden and that it would look just lovely this year. However, I’m still not feeling all that well and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been in my garden anywhere near as much as I’d like to be.

I purchased a number of annual flowers to plant in the garden at oh, the beginning of May. These plants are to fill some baskets – hanging and otherwise, containers and a few are to fill some empty spaces in my flower bed boarders. I purchased well over 300 plants! Just little ones, you know the ones that come in containers of four? Yep …. 300+ in total.

I managed to plant 9 hanging baskets, and put some marigolds around the border of our boulevard garden bed but that’s it. I still have many containers of plants to be planted.

My garden also needs some tidying. The roses are going wild since they are so much bigger this year due to our mild winter. I have to get out there and put some stakes in the ground and tie those unruly plants so they look tidier and straighter. I also have some red cedar mulch that I want to put down on the beds.

I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me and I hope to get most of it done this week before it starts to get too hot.

Wish me luck!






Roses and more roses!

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The roses are blooming, the roses are blooming!

It all started sometime at the end of May when we noticed that little Stanwell Perpetual had a single bloom. Two days later Theresa Bugnet was bursting with pink scented blooms that only she can produce. Then Morden sunrise followed shortly after that.

This week we have massive blooms on:

Stanwell perpetual
Therese Bugnet is just about done
Morden Sunrise
Breath of Life
Souviner de la mal maison
Just Joey
Jacques Cartier
Baron Prevost
Sunsprite (most blooms ever and they are huge!)
Compte de chambord (heavenly scent)
Sympathie
Prince Napoleon (must have 200 blooms and it’s 7 feet tall!)
Love and Peace (Gigantic gaudy colourful blooms)

The peonies Karl Rosenfield and Pecher are blooming too. Pecher is huge and is full of off white full blooms that smell lovely. Karl is stuck behind the huge Prince Napoleon climbing rose and only has a few blooms. I’m going to have to move it so it can bloom it’s head off next year. (I hope).

There are many more plants that are about to begin blooming. I can’t wait!

2006 garden winter protection

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I haven’t really begun to work on this site. I had planned to write in it daily and I do still plan to do that, but I’ve been busy with securing the domain name that this site will be placed under and I’m still looking for a good theme that I can convert into a wonderful garden layout.

It’s been cool this week so I haven’t been doing much with the garden. After last weeks blast of heat, then rain and now the slightly cool weather the garden has really taken off.

Actually since we had a very mild winter with very little damage to the plants I’d say that the garden is about a month ahead of itself. Many of the roses are already 6 or 7 feet tall. I’m used to having to prune many of the winter damaged branches down to one or two foot stubs but I didn’t have to do that this year.

Ironically, this past winter we winter protected better than we ever had before. We gathered leaves from our neighbors as we usually do but this year we must have gathered twice as many as we normally do – perhaps 50 bags of leaves! The garden beds had an approximately 3 foot cover of leaves on them. On top of that we had mounded soil around the base of the roses as usual, and we put up a long burlap fence that surrounds the garden beds on either side. Overkill even in a very cold winter.

When we uncovered everything in the spring the strawberry plants were already green, the rose branches were tall, green and only a few had slight damage. The rest of the plants were doing well too. It was amazing!

Well I must go and see if I can muster up some energy to get into the garden and do some work or else keep working on finding a nice theme for this site.

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