Sunday, May 31, 2009

My Gardening Adventure~A Work in Progress…

Happy Sunday to you! I hope you are enjoying a fine weekend, whatever the weather. After all the rain last weekend, I took advantage of the sunshiny day to work outside again on Saturday. I don’t have any artwork to share, but took pictures of the work in progress that is my “garden.” I am so NOT a gardener. I just pick out flowers that appeal to me,  plop and pray usually. LOL

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Here’s the progress I’ve made on that corner I showed you before. Nope, I still haven’t finished weeding here yet, as you can see (and some of the “weeds” are actually marigolds that re-seed themselves every year. I just let ‘em grow willy nilly). I have finished planting all of the goodies I had picked up. I did add a few new purchases to the mix. Namely that wave petunia. I haven’t had a petunia for several years as I often find little caterpillars in mine, eating up the plant. Got tired of that, so I quit buying them. This one was so pretty though, I thought I’d try again.

Another new addition are those pave stones. Been wanting to do something like that for a long time and yesterday I picked them up. I still need to work ‘em into the rocks, but I like how it looks. Hopefully the morning glories will grow up that white arbor again.

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Sarah, this one’s for you. I need to get a trellis yet, but here’s the clematis I bought. I sure hope it grows! Oh and before I could plant it, I had to clean off the bird poop that was on that wall. Oh goodness, that bird either dive bombed the side of the garage or he had bird diarrhea because there were several areas to clean.  Ewwwwww….

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This is along the back fence and the area I can see out of my kitchen window. Steve had just mowed and edged this area. One of the plants (a Shasta Daisy-no blooms yet) was planted last year. The pathetic looking hyacinth may or may not come back. I waited too long to plant it. We’ll see what happens.

And now, for your viewing pleasure…I give you my sad, sad looking honeysuckle. Well, one of them, I have two. Yeah, I “attempted” to clean it up last year and it just looks horrible, doesn’t it? Oh and there’s a huge weed in there, too. Sigh. Why am I showing you this? Well, so I can show you where the bulk of my efforts went yesterday.

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This is the other honeysuckle and if you can believe it, it looked WORSE that the one above before I started working on it. I didn’t take a “before” shot. I told Steve that this year I was gonna get all the dead stuff off of them in the hopes that they will come back even better. See all that green in the space in the fence? Joy of joys, those are ALL weeds, about 2 1/2-3 feet tall. Those dogs I’ve complained about with their barking? That’s where they live. I guess I’d complain too if my “home” was as yucky as this yard is.  My garden will forever be plagued by those weeds…sigh.

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Anyway, all the dead stuff is off and I’ve tied up the “runners” that were at the bottom and hopefully it will fill back in nicely. And the one to the right? That’s another runner that took root. Steve told me to try to get it to grow, so I used some yarn to try to train it up. We’ll see what happens, I guess. Today, I need to tackle the other one. Hopefully, it won’t take as long.

The area needs to be cleaned up a little better, but I thought I’d share what I came up with for my newly cleaned off front porch. We stacked firewood up on the porch and it’s scratched up the wall pretty good, I guess. Anyway I tried to create a little sitting area, using items that we already had-although the girls now want kid sized chairs, too. Then I went to Michaels and Hobby Lobby in search of some pretties to put on the table. I thought these watering cans were cute. The silver one is from Michaels and the rest of the stuff is from Hobby Lobby. All of their garden stuff is one clearance (already!) so they can make room for the Christmas stuff (ugh).

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Because it was hard to see in the above photo, I took a close up of the butterfly I found! Yeah, it’s missing a little jewel/gem, but who cares, I love it for its imperfection). I think it’s supposed to be a pot hugger, but I like it on the table.

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And, finally here’s the barrel I planted yesterday. This is what you can see next to our porch. I adore pansies and must have some every year! They are such happy flowers, I think. I added a few new plants (to me) in the funky colored leaves plants (didn’t note the name) and some bacopa-which I just discovered this season.

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Well, thanks so much for taking the tour of my work in progress gardening efforts. There’s still work to be done, like housework, I guess you are never “done,” but the bulk of it is behind me now, and after I hack up the other honeysuckle, weeding and watering should be all that is needed.

I gave Amy a tour yesterday, after she got home from her Brownie Day,  and she loved it.

But then she looked at our patio deck and asked when I was going to do something about cleaning IT up! Sigh…most of the junk is their stuff. Ah well…all in good time.

Have a happy Sunday!

Jeanne

10 comments:

Kathi Carlson said...

On, wow! Thanks for posting these pictures. It was almost like being there for a little tour! I love flower gardens but have no green thumb and can't tell the weeds from the good stuff, I'm no good with houseplants either. Love that Steve took Jessica out to lunch yesterday in Amy's absence - very sweet. As a kid,I never had much alone time with my dad but remember the few times I had as being special. You'll have to share more garden pictures mid-summer ...

Sarah said...

Aww Jeanne that was a cool tour!! Honeysuckle is pretty hardy..I bet it will pick up. Mine is out of control huge. I love your little Nelly Moser! Too funny my name is in your post in the same section as bird diarrhea...LOL...
Thanks for sharing this..I love the little butterfly.

Angela2932 said...

I'm impressed! That is one nice garden for a "non"-gardener! Very nicely arranged, and your borders and edging are very artistic. Looks to me like you're more of a gardener than you realize! And I agree. . . . the honeysuckle is probably going to fill in more yet. Give it time!

mE said...

HOly Moly Jeanne!!!! You did a fantastic job!!! That's a HUGE change from when I was there in your yard! Nice work! It's gorgeous! I can't wait to see more pics when it "fills out" mid summer! It's going to be phenomenal! :)

Hugs!

Alanna said...

I think you've done a great job with your flowers. I love the ones you planted in the barrel. I agree with Kathi. Post some more pictures later in the summer so we can see how pretty they all are after they've had a chance to grow some more.

Barb said...

LOVELY, Jeanne! I really enjoyed 'visiting' your garden. I was imagining the fragrances that must be there. Sounds like you had a very productive day.

I've left an award on my blog for you! :-)

Carolyn said...

Looks great! Can't wait to see it in full bloom.
We are starting to see little green stuff come up in the garden. :) How fun.

AaronB said...

Sarah is right about the honeysuckle, mine is also out of control. Warm weather is so nice. Thanks for the tour.

Anonymous said...

Pats on the back for you, Jeanne, for all your hard work and how lovely your graden looks. The battle with weeds is never-ending...they seem to grow better than the flowers (at least in my garden they do!) Thanks for the tour. Brenda

Jackie said...

oh that is so cool....not a gardener either...but like having flowers...actually bought a couple of squash to plant :)