Weekend garden rearranging

On Friday afternoon, I took a lunch break and ran to the garden center that's just down the street from my office. I had no specific plans, but ended up buying something that created a major weekend garden project. The culprit was this:

A little Canadian Red rhubarb plant that was half off. I've been wanting some kind of fruit but haven't quite figured out where I could put raspberry bushes. A rhubarb plant seemed like no problem. Then I realized I had no idea where to put it. It would eventually take up too much space in the kitchen garden. If I put it anywhere in the backyard it would have to be in a bed, with fence or block edging of some sort, or the dogs would run it over. I was envisioning a trip to the garden center for blocks and fence and compost, when it finally dawned on me. It could go here:

This is the neglected flower bed on the side of my house. It's home to lilies, hostas, irises and weeds. There's only about 10 feet between my house and my neighbor's, so it's pretty shady, but that very front corner faces south and gets a fair amount of sunshine. That very front corner, however, is full of irises. All of those irises, and a bunch on the other side of the bed, started with three rhizomes I pilfered out of a neighbor's yard about 10 years ago. They've done very well, but it was time for them to give up their prime real estate.

I started by trimming the irises and pulling all the weeds in the bed. I had a whole wheelbarrow load for the compost pile.

Then I dug out all of the irises in the front of the bed. Nothing like a little quality time with a spade and a pitch fork.

I had a huge pile of irises on the sidewalk. This is just a fraction of them:

I was able to replant most of them throughout the rest of the flower bed. With any luck, they'll grow well enough to fill out the whole bed and choke out the weeds.

With all of that done, I was able to put the rhubarb in its new home.

Now the bed looks like this:

A little less messy and with the promise of rhubarb pudding. :)

Squirrels are a$$holes

I'm sorry if my title offends anyone, but I'm very annoyed with those red furry bastards right now. I've tolerated them eating my bird food for awhile, but they've crossed a line recently.

Last Sunday evening, I noticed this:

That's an empty hook where a suet feeder used to hang. This summer I've been making homemade seed cakes for the downy woodpeckers and putting them in the suet feeders. When I mentioned the missing feeder to D, he said he'd seen a squirrel hanging on the feeder, pulling the food out. I assumed the feeder was laying on the ground, but when I finally went outside to find it, it was nowhere to be found. One week later and I still haven't found it. One of my neighbors is going to find that thing in their yard and wonder where the heck it came from.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the nasty squirrels are destroying my sunflowers. The volunteer that grew underneath the bird feeder looks like this:

Then there's my beautiful eight foot tall sunflower, growing in the cinder block garden.

It was lovely, until someone did this:

I know the picture is out of focus. My poor camera had nothing to focus on because a nasty squirrel chewed the flower off the top of the stalk! When I first noticed this, I saw the flower laying on the ground. The next day, all that was left was this:

Squirrels are dirty rats, and I'm thinking about getting a slingshot.

Potatoes!

Curiosity got the best of me the other day, and I decided to dig up some potatoes. The plants have not completely died, but I couldn't wait any longer. After the rabbit nest incident, I was pretty nervous about what I would find.

I dug out one plant, and I found this:

One pound, six ounces of potatoes. As you can see, their sizes vary widely, and they seem more like new potatoes than ones that have been underground all summer. What's important, however, is that I got over a pound of potatoes and I have five more plants to dig up!

It didn't take long for me to turn them into this:



Potato salad, in case you couldn't tell

I'm contemplating trying a different tactic for potatoes next year. I did find and evict the first nest of bunnies, but they weren't the last ones to show up in the garden. This little guy hung out for several days after Scout found and squeezed his sibling.

I had just gotten around to naming him (Adam, of course) when he disappeared. I didn't see any obvious nests in the garden, so I'm afraid he may have come out from under the potatoes. We'll see when I dig up the rest of them. My point is, I'm thinking about trying containers or a separate, more secure, garden for the potatoes.  Or I might just decide to hill them with dirt instead of straw. The spiders seem to like the straw as much as the rabbits.

Not exactly the garden

I didn't plant them, and they're not even in the garden, but I have to share pictures of these guys. They are baby mourning doves that were hatched in our gutter, the third clutch that this mama has had there this year. I found them on my patio umbrella Friday evening.

As you can see, a parent wasn't too far away.

At first, I only saw one.

But then the other one popped up.

I was out of town over the weekend, so I didn't get to see them fly away. I'm sure they'll come back and visit.

A gardening first

For the first time ever, I have a fall garden. Okay, it only consists of beets and peas, but it's a start.

 It's exciting to be watching for sprouts again, and I hope that whatever chewed up the peas this spring doesn't come back.

The rest of the garden is doing well. I'm still waiting for peppers to ripen.

These two plants are covered with peppers, so it shouldn't be too long before I have enough to make some salsa. You can't tell from the picture, but I'll be buried in tomatoes pretty soon.

The garden August 7th

Today's birds: blue jay, mourning dove, sparrow, cardinal, white breasted nuthatch, chickadee.

Yesterday's harvest

The first peppers: two anchos, one Hot Daddy and one Good as Gold (these are Burpee hybrids). Now I have to figure out what to do with them. I've got a salsa recipe for canning, but I need a few more peppers and tomatoes for that.

Danish gardens

My vacation this year was a trip to Denmark with my mother. We went last year for the first time and liked it so much we went back this year. Denmark is a special place for me because all of my ancestors who weren't born in the US immigrated here from Denmark. My mother's father was an immigrant.

Denmark is a beautiful country. One of the things I love about it is that gardens are everywhere. I thought I'd share some pictures of Danish gardens. It was an unusually dry July for Denmark, but there was still a lot growing.

Hollyhocks are popular, especially, it seems, in the old parts of town. These were in the historic town of  Ærøskøbing.

Also in Ærøskøbing, I saw this, which I really want:

A bean plant with orange flowers! They were so pretty.

Roses are also very popular. We saw so many yards full of rose bushes, and they were almost all covered with roses. Roses aren't my favorite, but they were pretty. These were in the town of Løgstør.

All over the countryside, you see farm stands with fresh produce for sale. While we were there, it was mostly new potatoes, peas and strawberries. This stand was in an old neighborhood close to the canals in Løgstør.

As sad as it is, we never did stop for any fresh produce. Right across the street from this stand, we saw this garden.

We have a friend who lives in Aalborg, so we spent a few days there. One afternoon we walked around downtown. These gorgeous planters were all around the old town square area.

  One evening, we had dinner at our friend's parents' house. They are gardeners. I love their house and yard. This is their sunroom, complete with Poul Henningsen PH5 lamp (a very popular and ridiculously cool Danish modern lamp).

Denmark's climate is not conducive to a lot of the vegetables that we grow, so Danes grow them in greenhouses. Their sunroom had tomatoes:

and cucumbers:

Outside they have beds with strawberries (right) and herbs (left).

To the right of the strawberries, they had two kinds of currants and two kinds of gooseberries. We ate berries straight off the bushes. Their lovely patio:

Another very popular plant is hydrangea. We saw them both in pots and in gardens. Our friend's deck is very typical of what we saw. Lots of people keep potted flowers, especially hydrangeas, on their decks.

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this tour of what's growing in Danish gardens.