Green Spring

Not doing much this week. Just pulling and digging up green onions/wild garlic in the yard.
The yard and house are MonsterMustDie's domain. My gardening will be entirely in pots that I can move to unseen places so that he can keep his vision of what the curb view should be.

Meanwhile, since things are piling up downstairs and he is not putting anything on sale online, I am trying very hard to persuade him to spend his off-time on the weekends working on the house and yard, rather than going picking/treasure-hunting all weekend and adding more to the horde of unusable things in the basement.

yard thoughts

Modern. Native. Edible. Functional. Social.


We live in an older, traditional neighborhood so I know the front yard needs to have to traditional green turf and neat landscape. We are trying to keep a clear view outside the windows with low-growing shrubs and plants like heather and dwarf conifers. We'd like to add a few more large rocks to those arrangements.

I cut out and pulled up a ton of English ivy off the trees, fence and house, where it once festooned every tall tree. We removed the tacky plastic non-functional shutters from all of the windows. A few of the windows need to be replaced due to cracked glass. We plan to build or install as large a shed as we can in back to become a mini-workshop and tool storage building. John wants to have a compact woodshop with a small outside deck that he can work at. We also need the space to store large things like ladders. We still desperately need house numbers either mounted on brick or posted in the front yard and on the mailbox.

We would like to use mostly native plants and edible landscaping for the back yard, which has a wood fence that we plan to replace. We also have a laid stone retaining wall on one side at the back of our lot that needs to be repaired, preferrably using all the original stones so that we don't have to purchase too many more. I think 2/3 of the wall could be original stone - maybe more. We had crepe myrtle trees that had been attacked by ambrosia beetles that have been cut down along the rock wall side of the house that now have stumps that need to finally be removed/ground down. My guess is that some sort of new plants and shrubs need to go along the rock wall to help with erosion control.

NO English Ivy! I am still removing it everywhere I can, mostly concentrating on taking it off the trees. My neighbor shares my hatred of overgrown English ivy. She's working at ridding her yard of it as well. I am also taking it upon myself to pull out poison ivy where I see it. Slowly, the old roots of the poison ivy are going away and I cut down any flowers/seeds from the poison ivy when I spot it trying to reproduce, whittling way at it as best I can. I am a one-woman ivy-killing warrior. I'm not agains all vines - just those troublesome invasive or poisonous plants. Grapes are cool. Muscadines are cool. Grapes would be great. I even turn an occasional blind eye to Virginia creeper if it's not in my way.

The inside of the back yard is mostly mud, mulch and shade. We have new plantings of edible and/or native plants like elderberry, chokeberry, blueberry, trillium, ferns, golden seal, jack-in-the-pulpit and I'd like to add more variety so that I could have year-round blooms for bees and birds (and humans). I have a dinky herb garden that I am still figuring out.  We are also planning to place a small fire pit/grill and seating area to the side of the future shed.

And the drive way needs to be repaved - preferably with some sort of simple roof added at the top for the cars. The car shelter is not a priority but it is something that would make life a lot nicer.

Termites + Garden.

John came home from work today and was inspecting and weeding his planter in the back yard while I watched through the kitchen window. He pulled something out of the box and started inspecting it carefully and knocking dirt off the bottom and looking more closely at it. I came outside to see what was going on. “What kind of bug is this?” he said, handing me the rootless stem “It looks like white ants.” I looked at the shape of the insect coming out of the hollow of the stem. “Termites” I said. There was no doubt in my mind from the unique shape of the creature. He doubted my prognosis, believing termites only eat dead wood. I pointed out that termites are colony insects and there will me many more where those came from if he looked. Then he dug into the soil and found plenty of termites underground.

I've never seen this before in a garden. Just weird if he did not place it over a tree trunk or roots from a fallen tree. Ants would be a lot easier to deal with because they usually leave plants alone, just going after the insects, like aphids, around them. You can usually work around ants. But termites? I think his garden is a goner this year.

I am wondering what, if anything, he can do to save the rest of his work in the planter? They do not seem to be in the wood of the frame as far as we can tell. Don't know where they came from unless they were somehow already the cabbage seedlings he bought.

last of this holiday

Spent most of today traveling to Pell City, AL to visit MonsterMustDie's mother and cousin, stopping at several antique malls on the way there. Nearly every place we stopped had a BBQ grill smoking outside, putting Mr. Monster in the mood for pork. So we took his mom to WallMart and then out to lunch at Golden Rule where I had the chicken lunch special (very dry, unfortunately), he had the pulled pork special, and his mom had a hamburger. Came back to her house and visited for a while before finally heading back to Atlanta.
Stopped on the way at the Grassy Knoll and visited for a while with Mrs. Lounge. Got to pat the furry beasties and chatted about books, food, family and animals.
Finally got home, unpacked the car, covered the herb planter to try to protect the plants from tonight's freezing low temperatures and picked the last few green tomatoes of the season and peppers off the plants. I'll fry what I have tomorrow night, along with other things, for dinner.

taste of spring

The forecast today promises sun and slightly warmer weather. For me, that makes it a good afternoon to work on removing more of the rampant English ivy from trees around the house. Still to early to do much serious gardening but we're close... very close.

I think I need to plant more cosmos this year. Cosmos are good flowers for cutting because they have long stems and rabbits like to eat them before anything else. We enjoy seeing bunnies in the yard enough that it's worth allowing them a few things out of the garden. There are too many cats in the neighborhood for foraging rabbits to be a big problem.

Other flowers that have done well without being eaten by rabbits are blackeyed susans, zinias, and marigolds. The tea roses are always around, as are tiny fragrant gardenias. I need to find out what the long stemmed yellow flowers are that look like dandelion blooms but are not dandelions. They are very long stemmed and hardy and I picture keeping cobalt blue bottles holding a few around on the dining table or in the window(s).

Slowly, I am learning by experience what I can actually grow around here. I know I can keep some beans and flowers in the front yard and keep herbs happier in the shadier back yard. Dill died last year in front but thrived in back. Tomatoes, I still have a lot to learn about and I might not have enough sun here to grow them even in pots. Squash and pumpkins are easy to grow here but I will only be able to take advantage of the blossoms because borers get to the fruit long before it's ripe and I don't want to use insecticide dust on anything.

For me, the best part of the garden is having fresh herbs immediately outside - thyme, basil, peppers, dill, parsley, oregano, sage, and mint. I love cilantro too but that's another challenge for me. Also thinking about trying chives this year as well.