Catching Up in the Gardens

A lot has happened in the gardens in the past month since my last post. I have slowly gotten most of them mulched with hay to keep the weeding chore as minimal as possible, the Iris and Peony flowers have long faded, and new flowers have taken their places as bright spots of color.

While I would love to have the garden in the photo above in my yard, this one is along RT 222 between Reading and Kutztown PA…. The greenhouse is set back from the road, but the flowers literally pulled me in. The end of June, I was in the Reading area to present a lecture and trunk show to the Quiltessence Quilters quilt guild, and on the way home I did some “greenhouse hopping”.  In the past while we owned the greenhouse, I did have gobs of these Tidal Wave Petunias in my own gardens…. Without the greenhouse and with a very limited garden budget, I have none of these this year, and the Petunias I have were purchased the last week of June and are no where near full bloom yet.

This little deer and other critters have been making things quite challenging to keep my plants growing and blooming. The deer and woodchucks seem to love the tender buds of various Lilies, Petunias, Phlox, and more. I even found that two of my large Hydrangea bushes have been trimmed by the unwelcome guests. The deer in the photo had been playing with one of our cats in the front yard, then wandered to the back and posed while I stood on the deck. A week after the deer’s visit, and additional sightings of this same critter, we gained a couple more fur-kids…. one who is helping with the unwanted critter populations.

The photo above shows our two new charges…. Nick and Megan’s dogs. They brought them up from GA on their way to Germany where Nick will be stationed for the next 4 years. They took their 2 cats with them, but wanted to be sure they would be able to find a home they could have the dogs at before having them sent over. Well…. It looks like we will have Roxie and Vladdi here until they get back to the states…. They found that renting a home for 2 dogs and 2 cats was not a possibility…. most homes only will allow one pet.   Vladdi is the big black Lab, and Roxie is the brindle who lived with us for 6 months, a couple years ago.  Roxie is pretty low key… the total opposite of Vladdi, who within 5 minutes of being let out of the car when they arrived here, had killed and rolled around over a skunk AND killed an Opossum that came wandering down the yard. He began his stay as a “skunk dog” who has now had three de-skunking baths and still has a lingering odor especially when wet.  He is helping out my gardens a  bit…. I let him out of the dog yard we now have off the greenhouse when a young woodchuck was teasing him from the garden…. the woodchuck didn’t last very long….

What was the wood box in the greenhouse is now a comfy dog bed. With just Roxie, we could let her stay in the house and outside when we were with her. Vladdi tends to be a runner, and to be sure we don’t lose a dog, the fenced in yard was made so they can come in and out of the greenhouse. The cats are a bit put out, though…. they “owned” the greenhouse…. Now they “own” the deck for the summer. We will have to figure out how to get everyone to get along in the greenhouse come winter.

This photo shows the Back Yard Mound Garden after I got most of the weeding and mulching done… This garden has taken a real beating this year with all the heavy downpour rains that have washed gravel from our driveway all the way through the garden and into the woods shade garden. It is hard to see, but the Dark Purple Japanese Iris were in bloom when this photo was taken. I also had some white Impatiens planted between the ditch and lawn along with some lilac Petunias on the upper side of the ditch.

Here is a photo of a pale Iris flower I found… The flowers are usually a very deep, dark purple.

This photo shows Vladdi with his favorite toy and a few others nearby. He loves to chase and catch the frisbee and chew on various pieces of lumber or dead branches from the old Lilac bush. If  you look closely, you can see Cuddles the cat “picking on” the dog…. He is in the gravel at the top of the Mound Garden. That end of the garden was not completely weeded yet the end of June.

This photo was taken the same day as the earlier two…. A few showers started, and something bigger was looming on the horizon. You can see some water already running down the driveway….

Here is the Mound Garden during the storm…. The water turned the garden into a raging river…. So much for the new hay mulch…. Most of it did stay, but a lot got covered with more gravel. The water ran right through the  middle of the dog yard.

Even though the Japanese Iris do like water, they are not usually at the edge of a stream. Here you can see how much water was flowing through the Hostas and across the lawn…. This storm was the biggest one yet this year. Thankfully, the Impatiens and Petunias I planted were out of the major water flow.

The storm shown in the previous photos was on June 28, This is what the area that was covered with water looked like after I filled in the ditch, mowed the lawn, and another storm came through on July 2nd. I started with larger stones in the ditch and filled over them with gravel dug out of the garden…. July 3rd, the gravel was gone, but the larger stones stayed… not all was lost!

With all the rains causing trouble in the gardens, I was glad I had my deck planters. I have been blessed with an abundance of flowers that seeded themselves from last year. I did plant the Impatiens, Lobelia and Alyssum in this pot, but the Violet, Nicotiana, Pansies, Violas and even some Petunias came up on their own. The seedlings were so thick I removed many and put them into pots to use in the gardens and other planters.

July 5th I finished planting most of the Mound Garden. It doesn’t look like much yet, because by the time I could purchase annuals, they were a bit scraggly but half price so I gave them a trim and with a bit of patience, will have color again in the gardens.  Things were pretty much mainly green after the Peonies and Iris finished blooming. In the photo, you can see the buds on the Daylilies on the left nearly ready to pop.

These Pink Asiatic Lilies are pretty rare sights in the gardens this year. I used to have many, many varieties of these and Orientals, too. The mice or other critters must have eaten many of the bulbs as there is no trace of many of them this year. Of the few that did escape the critters, many of those became deer snacks…. the deer seem to think that the Lily buds are like candy. The biggest problem…. Once the buds are eaten, I have to wait until next year for flowers again…  The deer also like to munch on the Phlox buds too, but at least those will re-grow new shoots that will bloom a bit later than usual.

This will be the last photo for this post. This was taken on July 5th. The Achillea, or Yarrow, likes hot, dry weather. It has grown a bit taller than usual and has flopped due to the many rain showers we have has this year. This is growing in the Lilac Garden which has not been very colorful since the Lilacs finished their bloom months ago. In the week since this photo was taken, I finally finished planting all of the annual and vegetable plants I purchased late June. All but a few areas have been mulched with hay, and the Daylilies have been blooming. The Phlox are beginning to bloom a bit, too. To keep posts from being too big, I am dividing things up a bit. I have taken many many more photos throughout the gardens in the past week or so.