Catch-up Time

This picture was taken near June 1st, just after I mowed the lawn. My stone wall garden that was the inspiration for my "Bench Garden" quilt. The Iris I planted are in the bed at the top of the wall. Some of the plants have filled out more, and some are struggling. I have not mowed the grass again, because the only green is the taller stuff- No rain in weeks. A little "crunchy" underfoot. We have been watching storms going all around us, and even got the van washed in a dounpour in Sayre, PA, but ran out of rain as we drove home.

I took this picture from the inside of our small greenhouse. It has plastic for the wall in winter, I took it off for summer- it gets too hot out there in summer.

You can see the Iris looking a bit sad, along with some daylilies and Hosta at this end of the stone wall. The area under the walnut trees is a great place to spend a lazy summer day. Someday I may try it. The light pink impatiens to the left have been munched on by some rabbits, I better get out the repellant spray. I have a few petunia blooms, now.

I have divided many of my Hostas to fill in space in these gardens.

These are some pots of divided perennials. With no greenhouse business, and not much income, I have to make do with what I have, and add only a little annual color with a few things I purchased. I have 5 kinds of Hosta, Siberian Iris, hardy Geraniums, and Tall Phlox.

We always steamed the potting soil at the greenhouse, to kill weed seeds, this soil wasn't steamed, so I had a bit of work last week weeding these guys.

These are the front gardens.They look a bit better now, the tall grass is growing, and a couple clumps of lilies are blomming- It's been so windy, any pictures I took of flowers were blurry. The hose in the lower part of the pic has been used way too much. We still have water in the spring that we use for garden watering. When that goes dry- end of watering. This picture was taken at the end of May, along with the following ones.

Here are some of the Memorial planters I  potted up for customers. We did that as a service at the greenhouse, and will continue to do them. We plant, deliver to cemeteries by Memorial Day, and pick the pots back up in fall.  I get to use some of my favorite colors in some planters, but most people prefer the traditional red geranium. You can see that we were getting more rain, then. The grass grew really fast then.

I ended up using my paint table as a potting table. It needed new vinyl this year. For any who may recognize it, yes, that is an old manure spreader full of soil. It is what we used for steaming our soil at the greenhouse. We kept the oldest one, it needs plastic lining to hold anything now.

I remembered to take my camera to the cemeteries when we delivered the planters. This one has some fantastic trees. This is a picture of a huge fern leaf beech tree, we figured it was over 100 yrs old, by the markers under it. There also is an old purple beech there, also. I thought it was kind of a neat view from under the canopy of this one.

Some new color in the gardens. Last week, I took this picture of Tradescantia "JC Wecquelin", My favorite Spiderwort variety, actually the only one I have let stay in my gardens- personally, I think others are too weedy for my taste. It has larger flowers than most, and is a great plant in crummy soil. This one is in my rock garden, which is on a pile of ground rock left after the well was drilled, the original owners just left it there. Not very great for a lot of plants.

This little guy and a couple others were quite the surprise. My Siberian Irises have been seeding themselves all over the place, even in the lawn. I can't believe I got blooms between mowings. I did wait 2 wks between mowings. The plants are now a bit shorter along with the lawn.

This is a flower from a lilac named "Miss Canada". It is a late blooming variety. It is still in a pot, and will someday end up in the backyard, not far from the wall garden.  This is another picture taken with the sky as a background. No, we don't always have blue skies here, I just like to take pics on those days. This may end up in my "Blue Quilt" that is in the idea stage. I can't wait to try printing this on silk.

I need to get some more pictures of flowers, I am trying to document their blooms as the come out. I also need to have  a way to remember which clump of what is what color.

I will try to post again tomorrow, and show my latest quilting, painting, and printing projects.