Not as productive a day as I had hoped, but productive nonetheless!
- Realized I had accidentally dumped some seeding dandelions in the compost, and I need to start using two bins for plant mass clearing so that doesn’t happen again.
- Discovered that the purple flowers by the front stairs were not in fact wild flowers, but the ghost of seeds that did not germinate last year–Lunaria/Honesty/Money Plant Lunaria annua. That packet of seeds was an impulse buy last year out of nostalgia. Turned out to not be native. Why are so many of my childhood’s fond garden memories not natives?
- Also found not just the patch of smartweed I didn’t manage to fully eradicate before frosts last fall, but the small bed we cleared last year a few feet away for the lupine and I can’t recall what else we planted there, but it did not grow (so we might have another ghost of seeds past soon–I think it was maybe a big bushy marigold type?) I am going to wait and see with the lupine. I’m trying to find someone on the west coast to send the seeds to that I saved last year just in case I am right in that it is indeed not the native.
- I did clear some room for the three herbs that desperately needed to get into the ground. Since we didn’t get hardly any rain Friday into Saturday, they were all droopy and unhappy when I went out to plant them. The parsley looks the worst, but maybe that’s just the nature of their finer appearance, rather than the broad leaves of the basil or the woody stalks of the rosemary.
- Something fuzzy that is already near a foot tall is growing like crazy around the patch where we had the lavender/rosemary/broccoli last year. I want to say I know what it is, but I can’t recall. It’s definitely not golden rod–it’s much fuzzier and the stem is thicker. I need to flip through some images from last year to see if it’s something that self sowed rather well, or what.
- Some of the boysenberries are co-operating with the scrap fence trellis I hung. I need to encourage more to start climbing up that rather than try to work their way behind the siding of the cellar stairs . I can’t figure out for the life of me why it loves hiding from the sun.
- Realized we have not one but two oak tree varieties in the mass of seedlings. Two very different leaf sizes. One is likely white oak, as there is one on the border with the neighbors to the west. I’ll be looking at oak leaf pictures in the near future. We’re definitely keeping one of the bunch, just want to know which one is best to keep.
- Found yet another Japanese barberry baby–this time out front near the westernmost holly. I had shorn the main plant on the rockwall quite a bit the other day, and now I am thinking come late summer I will “shape” it back much further and better. I know pruning it now isn’t the greatest idea, but it’s just exploded like so many other things after this relatively mild winter, and that’s right where the dry creek bed will be starting. I didn’t want to be digging and getting thorned. *chuckle*
- I was amazed to see so much milkweed popping up where we had pulled out so many plants last year due to what was likely milkweed yellows phytoplasma, a bacterial disease that can spread through the soil to other nearby plants. I’m going to keep an eye on them, and if any start to exhibit the yellow leaves, out they go. I don’t know if I’ll transplant the questionables to the new spot we’re going to start this year behind the garage, so I might move the questionables out front instead.
- Speaking of that spot…there used to be a small bed that ran up against the concrete splash guard slabs on that side of the house. I need to dig out all the perennials to move them elsewhere as I’m going to go with my partner’s desire to put the pumpkins over there this year. We’ll see how it goes this week with the clearing.
- The easternmost holly is looking absolutely awful. With him ending up having to work tomorrow that just killed any hope I had of transplanting them soon.
There is so much that feels like it needs doing right now…but I just have to remind myself that we’re in for an interesting year. Time will tell.
