Saturday, May 15, 2010

Bloom Day, May 2010

Hooray it's Bloom Day! Been a long time since my last Bloom Day post... ....but I'm back baby! :) May is a particularly great bloom month here at Millertime....
....as well as a good month for mysteries. Like this one. I've seen plenty of bulbs pierce leaves, but this daylily did it to itself!


Mrs. Robin is using this platform properly, after an Eastern Phoebe nested on the roof last year.
Yellow violet blooming nicely, despite several recent nighttime freezes...


....epimedium unaffected too...
...and white bleeding heart blooming great in only its' second year in the ground!
Lungwort looks nice too, my mom calls this one "Boys and Girls" in reference to the dual bloom colors....


...white epimedium look very spider-like....

...'Rubrum', not so much.

Hooray for Bloom Day! For more Bloom Day action, check out our founder Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Friday, May 07, 2010

Spring Is The Word

That word doesn't guarantee warm weather, however. We are due for snow in the next 24 hours, so I thought I'd gather some flowers for an indoor show... ...there are so many blooming...


....quite vigorously!


Who put the bees out? Me, I sure did... :) My mason bees are ready to start filling their nest tubes and pollinating my cherry blossoms, and I really appreciate it!

Nice big spider hanging out in my "junky" spot next to the garage. I sure like all my bugs!
Indoors the seedlings are quickly getting crowded...

...reminding me of the awesome 4-tier, 4 light shelf system I was drooling over in a catalog awhile back. Ah well, someday.

Meanwhile there are pretty bulb blooms to enjoy....
...and some early blooming perennials to appreciate. After all....

....gotta get in my flower happiness while I can before the snow flies!

Is it June yet?

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Garden Makeover By Fire

Have you ever had a garden that had become a hot mess, and you wanted to just torch the thing and start over? I think I just did...
...well, most of it anyway. Every spring I do "prescribed burns" in my yard in lieu of mowing. Wildflowers are not only unaffected, but often assisted by this process. I've never burned a garden area before though, so I got nervous and prevented the fire from spreading to certain areas containing hardscape bushes. (I always pre-water perimeters before I get going, so I watered down the spots I wanted spared ahead of the fire in progress.)
This is last summer, it's a weedy but certainly lush area...

....and you can pick out most of the perennials in the crowd, like the yellow leaves of 'Sweet Kate' widows tears.

Now all I see are the charred remains of plants that were coming up already, much to my dismay.... ...scorched right down to the dirt!

At first everything looked dead, both the burned and spared alike...

....many dug-out spots where animals were taking advantage of the summer cover...
...so I make "amends"! Well-composted manure is spread to fill in (not that "well-composted" is a requirement or something, but it helps and this had a lot of cow poo in it which is "hotter" and has more nitrogen due to the way cows digest as opposed to horses...but I digress.)
As I fill in, I discover that the grass is recovering nicely of course! Hrumpf!

This is just a couple weeks after the burning and daylilies appear un-phased...

....some mulch will surely help too. I ran out before covering the un-burned spots, but I was just attending to the most needy areas (or "putting out fires", as it were :)
Despite rain being forecast frequently, this has been a super dry spring so I water the garden well...
....and hope for the best! Now I get to find out which of my plants are "fire-proof".

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Seed GROW Project Update

The good news is: my wintersown nasturtium has re-sprouted...
....the bad news is: none of the others have. Not these recently "direct-sown" seeds, nor the indoor-under-lights-seeds.


Ah well, take the good with the bad, I say :)





"I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project, thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds."