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Dahlia thief?

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Can you believe this? You know my lovely planted front boulevard? Well the other day when I was outside with my Lab puppy I took a moment to survey the garden. Much to my astonishment I saw that one of my Dahlias was lying flat on the ground.

I took the puppy back inside and went out to take a further look. It looks like someone was either trying to snap off a flower and accidentally pulled the whole two foot tall plant from the ground, or more likely they were trying to steal the plant for some odd reason.

The dahlia had been in the ground since late April so it was well established and growing well. I basically had to replant it and stake it to stabilize it. if it survives I probably won’t see flowers from it for another month. Grrr

It ticks me off when people do stupid things to other peoples gardens or property. Did you happen to read my story about everyone in the neighborhood stealing peaches off my neighbors tree?

Have you had people steal or damage plants on your property?






My replacement roses are doing great this year

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Welcome to all the new Green Thumb Sunday members that I finally got around to adding yesterday! I hope you enjoy our little group.

Earlier this week I went out into the garden with my camera and I took a number of great photos of the plants that were blooming and new ones that were growing, but I’ve had such a busy week I didn’t get around to transferring them from my camera to my computer yet. That’s the trouble with photos, especially if you take a lot of them at once – it takes time to prepare them for posting.

Anyway … I do have some photos to share that I took two weeks ago. Just imagine the plants being bigger or having more leaves now. 😉

This is the Climbing Iceberg Rose that I bought last summer to replace Antique ’89. Antique ’89 must have had too much winter damage in 2007 and died in late spring. Well as you can see Climbing iceberg is doing great:

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This rose is over 4 feet high already and I’m sure it will only get bigger in the next month. I have a standard iceberg rose shrub at the front of the house and once it gets going it’s covered in blooms all season so I expect that the climbing version will do the same.

I had replaced a few roses last year and all of the replacements seem to be doing well. The majority of the established roses (2 to 5 years in the ground) all have long green stems and seem to be ahead of themselves in growth compared to other years.

The Astilbe is also growing well. I have several clumps of it in shady areas of my garden. I think I’m currently growing three different types.

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Basically everything in my garden seems to be doing well this year with the exception of one rose – Dr. J H Nicholas – it’s struggling. Hopefully it makes it, but if it doesn’t I guess I’ll just replace it with a hardier rose.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Tidying up the garden beds

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Last week I said that it was such a nice day that I thought I’d go out and start cleaning up the front garden beds. Well I did. As much as I could anyway, given that there was still some snow on the lawn and in some of the beds:

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Now do you believe me when I say we’ve got a small front lawn? Look at that, the grass area which is still covered in snow, is smaller than our compact car! It’s actually a good thing that the front boulevard was covered in very deep snow most of the winter because it was really a sight for sore eyes once the snow melted.

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In case you’re wondering the boulevard was still full of hard woody sunflower stalks and the stakes that held the tall flowers up last year.

A few hours in the increasingly cold afternoon and at least three yard waste bags later and the front boulevard looked like this:

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I didn’t take after photos of the front garden beds, but they and the back garden beds were a lot tidier too with most of the leaves that had blown on them removed and some of the old dead foliage cut down.

We even took about 45 minutes and ducked out to Home Depot where we bought the stone edging for the front boulevard. That will help keep grass from growing into the flower bed. I also purchased several new spring plants to fill up some empty shady areas in the garden which I hope to plant later today.

By Tuesday all of the snow was gone and any growth that we’d discovered in the front and back garden beds when we were cleaning on Sunday had pretty much doubled or tripled in size.

Most of our crocus’ are happily blooming away now too:

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Have you been busy cleaning up your garden and perhaps even planting new plants?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

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