A Monty Rebuttal

Several garden bloggers I follow periodically show off the whole of their gardens, the big picture (Garden on Sherlock Street's monthly tours being the most regular).  I always enjoy these posts, but don't seem to do it myself. Most of my photos are close-ups, partly because there are specific plants I want to show off, but mostly because the wide-angle may not be pretty.  It is much easier to pull a few weeds from around a subject plant or plant-group than to clean out an entire garden bed. 

Today, Tammy at Casa Mariposa posted her annual "Full Monty", showing off her whole yard.  Tammy's gardens are lovely and even her Full-Monty posts are picture-perfect, making me think she must be still hiding something.  This year she flaunted in video form: proof that we really are seeing the whole thing.

Part of this post is responding to an implied (but probably unintended) challenge ("I'll show you mine if you show me yours"); part is a "rebuttal" of the perfect gardens.  Here's the down and dirty most gardeners don't want you to ever see.

My space is a two-tenths-of-an-acre corner lot in a semi-suburban neighborhood within the city limits.  Much of the area is taken up by building footprints:  my 1950s ranch-style house with a 1980s rear addition and a detached garage.  The remainder is mostly front lawn.  The actual gardening takes place mostly in the side yards and the little bit of terraced rear yard remaining, but that's plenty.

(please pardon me as I cope with an awkward late-afternoon sun-angle in many of the photos that follow)

Let's start in the front.  Here's the view from the corner:

I'm not big on lawn care, preferring to spend my limited yard time on the more vertical plantings.  Hence you see a spotty front lawn with bare patches, clover, and other assorted weeds.  At least the spring dandelion bloom has passed.  You can see some of the terracing that turns what would be a sloping yard into a series of relatively flat spaces.

My most recent garden addition is the parking strip, which is filling in nicely with moss phlox and creeping thyme.  A redbud anchors the far end.

But if I'm showing everything, I have to also show off the parking strip around the corner:

I haven't tackled this one yet, so it is clover and assorted other weeds covering a bricked over strip.

Back to the front, here's the yard as seen from the other end:

That's a big maple on the left that loses giant limbs in every storm.  The unidentified rose bush is in full flower, and I've no comments about the rest of the foundation bed on this side.

Behind the maple is the side garden, which nearly always has something to look at.

Plans grow and reseed so well that the path tends to disappear, as you can see here.  Not the worst problem to have, I will admit.  This end is a butterfly bush and daylilies on the left, rose campion (obstructing the path), blueberries, and iris on the right.

Here's the same garden viewed from the other side:

In the middle, rosemary and lambs ear encroach the walkway.  Last year's flower stalks are still on the tall sedum on the left.  More iris, lamb's ear, and geranium are also on the left.  The right is where many of the daffodils make their spring show.  Also Echinacea (a big reseeder!), lilies, more sedums, some small shrubs, and three honeylocust trees.  Lots of other things in there, too.

The above photo was taken from the driveway.  Let me back up to show that driveway (which opens up to an alley):

I like to show off the driveway bed on the far right in this photo, filled with blackberries.  What I don't normally show off is a cracked driveway full of weeds, some leaf mulch that hasn't been put in the gardens yet, a big brush pile on the right (I could use my garden-time bundling up branches for haul-away, or I could do some much more urgent task ...), a new brush pile on the left (today's pile, all the limbs cut to the required four-foot size, because today's the day I'm actually going to clean up the mess I make.  Yeah, right.)  Oh, and behind that new pile (in front of the grill) is a dead rhododendron, still in its nursery pot.

To my right when I took the photo above is the garage, and this:

One of two piles of bricks that I pulled up when I make the parking strip bed (the other is on the other side of the garage).  I've been meaning to freecycle these for two year now ..... (anyone in NoVa need bricks?)

On the other side of the garage entry door are the deck and the garage garden:

Perennial herbs (thyme, oregano, sage, tarragon) in the near end, near the door to the house, perennials in the rest of it.  It is nice and full, probably too full.

On the other end of the garage is the patio:

Not just any patio, but a home for the rain barrel, compost bins, lots of weeds and volunteer plants.  The terrace wall in the foreground is collapsing.  About half the penstemon blooming in the background and the butterfly weed in flower are actually growing up through the patio stones.  And if I'm really going to show off everything, behind the glider are:

... more bricks!  These are ones I've collected from throughout the yard, and use here and there for various purposes.  Yes, that's a volunteer tomato plant growing in the patio in front of the compost bin.  It's doing better than any tomato I've started from seed this year, so for now it stays there.  I've cleaned out one bin segment and started on the second:  eventually I'll move the bin to another location and reclaim some of the patio.

One of the gardens at Casa Mariposa has been dubbed "the yuck side", but I think it is as beautiful as anywhere else in the yard.  For a true Yuck Side, take a peek behind my garage:

Two and a half feet wide, full of old fencing, weeds, pieces that have fallen from my neighbor's porch roof (you can see the roof gutters above the fence), and whatever else blows in here.  Yuck.

Past the patio is the terrace garden:

Four bed surrounding a central square.  The center is the plum tree underplanted with daylilies.  The near bed is the edibles garden.  Strawberries on the right (with some of the random bricks used to hold down the squirrel netting), lowbush blueberries, peas, a metal arch for climbing food (beans and cucumbers), onions, peppers, tomatoes, etc.  Potatoes are just out of view to the left.

The left garden is perennials, mostly natives.  From here you can see butterfly weed just about to bloom.

Here's the terrace garden as seen from the side yard:

Front left is the little pond.  Then steps that are covered with clover.  Front right is the Neglected Bed, also with a crumbling terrace wall.  To the right are the ugly compost piles, held up with chicken wire fencing.  Eventually my good bins will go here. 

In this side yard, out of view to the right, are two birch trees with lovely exfoliating bark.  I haven't figured out how to plant anything under them due to their shallow roots and water-sucking nature.  Out of view to the left is a kousa dogwood, currently in full flower.  I couldn't put it in the photo because that's right where the sun was.

I'll end with a view of the side foundation bed:

The tree is actually two growing together:  black cherry and crepe myrtle.  Somehow they cohabitate nicely. This area is home to hellebores, hosta, a big aucuba shrub (behind the tree), and whatever else I plop here.

And that's the tour, the "real" full monty. 

The Perils of Spring Travel

So many tasks/activities compete for a gardener's time in the spring.  In addition to yard, garden, and athletic pursuits, spring is also Travel Season at my job.  This year most of my travel was compressed into two weeks. 

The first trip (first week of April) lasted five days.  I returned to find spring finally starting to spring in my yard (hooray!).  Inside, a sad story awaited me.  My 'not late' pepper and tomato seedlings, sown in tiny cells, must have used up all their available water by day two.  I found the cells completely dry, and some withered up seedlings laying on top.  I tried to revive them.  Some came back (turns out the flat was not completely level, so one corner go more water than the rest), but many did not.  No photos:  I couldn't bear it.

I didn't have replacement seeds for many of the varieties I'd planted. I re-sowed what I had, plus some more mater seeds that had (finally) arrived in the mail while I was gone.  Two days later, I left on another five-day trip.  Fortunately, this time I had houseguests staying in my basement, who agreed to tip over a watering can every day or so during my absence. 

When I returned on Friday afternoon, I was shocked by the explosion of spring outside.  The daffodils had withered in the three days of 90+ weather, but moss phlox and the redbud made up for that big time.

the parking strip that welcomed my return

Indoors, everything that was alive when I left was still alive when I returned, thanks to my helpful houseguests. Hooray!



don't worry, the seedlings aren't actually yellow - that's just my poor photography

Note the big empty space where pepper seedlings used to be.  I have two or more of each variety remaining, so I should be ok.  My friends and neighbors just won't be obliged to take excesses off my hands this year.

Next spring, I'm going to insist on shorter work trips. 

Signs of Meteorological Spring

Happy (Meteorological) Spring!

I've been mostly ignoring the yard and all things gardening-related all winter, so not it is time to come out of hibernation. Like these spring bulbs:

Purple/white crocus in the front parking strip

One of the few times in the year when my "neglected bed" is showy

Not just yet, daffs, but soon!

Tulips aren't reliably perennial here. But if these purple triumph-types bloom again, it will be year #4.

Tulip sprouts

I left some lettuce unprotected in the garden over the winter.  Looks a bit frosty, but growing!

'Tennis ball' lettuce

The tall sedum knows it is March.

This volunteer euphorbia is mostly a goner after the winter, but it made some vibrant red stems!

The butterfly bush is leafing out already.  Time to dig out those loppers!

If it starts out 8ft tall, how high will it get?

Inside, I celebrated the first day of March in my usual way, by sprouting peas.  I don't have any new seeds this year, so I'm testing out packets from 2007, 2008, 2011, and 2012.

The "Boulevard"

What is it called?  That space between the sidewalk and the street, sometimes filled with manicured lawn, more often filled with weeds (like mine), and sometimes a beautiful garden? Some call it a parking strip, some who try unsuccessfully to beautify it call it a "hell-strip".  I've seen a few garden blogs refer to it as a "boulevard".  That's a new term to me, but the nicest term I've seen; so let's go with it.  Welcome to my boulevard!

A previous owner must have had a never-ending supply of brick.  Brick retaining walls, brick patio, brick garden edging, and a bricked-in boulevard:

If only it actually looked like that.  Usually, it looks like this:

About once a year I go pull out all the weeds, fill in the gaps with sand, and end up with the first picture.  That lasts about two weeks.  I'd been wanting to pull out the bricks and plant something, and last fall I finally removed the bricks.

My trusty cart holds a lot of bricks, but it is hard to push when full.  I found the 28 bricks (four courses of brick) was the most efficient number to move at once.  It took me 15 loads, over several days, to remove all the brick.  For every two loads of brick removed, I brought back a load of leaf mulch.

No more bricks!

I've admired photos of other boulevards that have been planted like a garden.  My space isn't very wide (only 2.5 feet), so my options are more limited.  There aren't usually cars parked in front of my house, except when I have visitors, but I do have to leave the space car-door friendly.  (I think the city requires that.)  Some people solve this by using gravel or a walkable ground cover for the first foot or so, and then plant taller things next to the sidewalk.  But since I have such a narrow space to work with, I think the whole thing needs to be low.

Another necessity of this space is that whatever is planted needs to get by without attention or intervention from me.  My hose doesn't reach that far, and I'm not going to hand-water.  I think a lot of trial-and-error will be involved to find plantings that work.

So far I've put in some bulbs:  crocus, snowdrops, scilla, and anemone.  All low-growers.  They were a nice, colorful addition this spring.

 I also divided up some moss phlox that was growing in the back along the patio terrace, and plopped it in the boulevard.  By winter, the phlox looked to be a goner, mostly dried out and brown.  But it surprised me this month, when at least some part of each patch showed green leaves and flower buds.  This might just work.

Of course I have a lot more of the boulevard to plant.  I might try liriope:  I have quite a bit that can be divided.

And then there's the "other" boulevard.  The one around the corner that I never see, because it is hidden from my view by my ivy-covered fence.  People do park along that one every day.  And it gets a lot of shade (from my ivy).  Something to mull over while I admire my new view in the front.