Because I plan to go to bed tonight thinking about homegrown tomatoes and the year’s first daylily… and imagining that is a juggler in the fourth photo below!
More bounty from faithful garden commentor Opie Jeanne:
Volunteer chives, foxgloves, and baby lupine in the gravel
Beans just starting, volunteer lupines
New rose garden. 3 years ago this had a dying pine tree and some English ivy (invasive species here) and a row of elderly lavender, also dying. The rocks were there and we salvaged a few of the old lavender and added a lot of young plants. Had to fix the drainage in this part of the yard before we did anything.
[Ed: That can’t be a juggler leading the parade, can it?]
Corn bed, alpine strawberries
Last of the Lilacs, just a week ago
Dreaming of bunnies
***********
Here north of Boston, I’ve got almost all the mail-order tomatoes transplanted, but now all the rootpouches need to be slide-puzzled into place before they’re tall enough to require laddering. And I can’t finish moving them until the Spousal Unit finishes pruning as much of the godsdamned overhanging nuisance oak as he can reach from a ladder, which it’s my job to hold… if I’m not back on the blog this evening, assume the worst.
Speaking of future posts — there’s a bunch of pet pics waiting to cheer up our mornings, but as best I can tell from my disorganized email, the only gardening post now in the queue is a blog-link from Peter Cook. So, if you’ve got garden photos, this would be the time to send jpgs to annelaurie at verizon dot net.
What’s going on in your gardens this week?
Elie
Didn’t know you were in the NW… what a wonderful garden year…. Weeds are also plentiful and today spent half the day pulling out more morning glories…..Roses are just massive and weighed down with blooms this year…
Renie
Just beautiful pictures of the garden. I can’t even pick a favorite. Love the layout of each garden area and am jealous of the expansive property to grow plants in. Here in my garden on LI, NY, a lot of the summer perennials are just about to start opening up. Two years ago my new neighbors took down 2 trees on their front lawn and I can see the difference in my daylilies along their border. Many more and they look stronger. I planted some purple ones in the fall and hope they arrive. However, I have an overzealous husband who I believe rips out some of the perennials in the Spring cuz he thinks they are weeds. Created a little fairy garden in my backyard. Really cute but it can quickly become an expensive project so I’m taking it slow. Have to be real careful what plants I use so and make sure they are dwarf ones and stay small.
TaMara (HFG)
That for sure is a juggler, Anne Laurie. I’m hoping to soon be able to post photos of my own garden. I’m still holding my breath, though everyone from real estate agent to mortgage broker says it’s all going fine. It’s been such a long slog, I won’t be restful until I hold the keys.
Adam L Silverman
Are you sure that’s not a guy being bombarded with projectiles?
M. Bouffant
If no one’s answered the jugglers question, it may be the Bothell Jugglers:
PatrickG
@TaMara (HFG):
Good luck with that TaMara! My partner and I got our keys two months ago. The memory of frustration and repeated disappointment remains strong… blergh.
Along with our keys, we acquired a lovely urban garden which might provide some photos of how quickly a lovely garden can be reduced to tear-stained ash. It’s scary moving from responsibility for two planter boxes in an apartment window-sill to a mature garden. I mean, this garden has these tall things with bark on them. I’ve never been responsible for bark-things.
opiejeanne
@M. Bouffant: I didn’t know about the Bothell jugglers, but that makes sense. This was less than a block away from the park.
Thanks for reposting this. Anne Laurie. I missed it first thing this morning amid all of the tragedies and outrage of the day.
This garden is in its sixth spring. We bought the place 51/2 years ago in September of 2010. Where there are now garden beds there were chest-high weeds. The place had a lawn and the previous owner planted the lilacs, and some hedges, but there were no fruit trees, no raised beds, not even a single rhododendron which I think is a violation of a state law for Western Washington. 3 years ago we paid a landscaper to remove the grass around the raised vegetable beds and put in the gravel. Mr opiejeanne objected at first, until I showed him a picture of the walks in the gardens at Versailles. There are reclaimed raised beds along the dilapidated fence that are bordered with broken concert chunks. The fence used to bisect the yard, separating the front lawn from the garden. We removed two sections of the fence for the arbor and left the rest of the fence because we thought it looked charming. Yeah, we’re nuts.
A year ago I looked at the garden and realized it was finally a garden.
And for anyone admiring my garden and thinking it’s so well-behaved, I know enough not to show you my weeds. There are fewer this year than last, fewer than the year before. Slowly we are reclaiming garden space from the buttercup and bindweed and the weird ferny plant that has little pink flowers on it.
opiejeanne
@TaMara (HFG): Good luck! Fingers crossed for you, and all of that. May you never encounter sellers like the last two raving lunatics, or buyers who are truly insane.
(I could tell stories, but then you wouldn’t get any sleep tonight)
CarolDuhart2
Beautiful purple flowers. 90 degrees in June? And some people say there’s no such thing as global warming….
trollhattan
Picked the first tomato tonight, a big one. Yup, hot spring this year.
opiejeanne
@CarolDuhart2: very hot week before last, but the past 5 days have been cooler with a little rain. The Pacific Northwest can be hot in the summer but this was so early that a lot of the garden was shocked.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: our tomatoes started setting fruit in early May. Very unusual.
The corn is a lot taller now than when the photoessays were taken and there are two more rows, and the beans are climbing the birch teepees.
cckids
Beautiful gardens! Don’t worry about the weeds, we all have them. The spouse & I are hoping to head to the Pacific NW permanently later this year. The heat & continual f*cking SUN here in Vegas have done me in. We shall see.
max
What’s going on in your gardens this week?
It rained for a month and a half. And then it stopped. Really really stopped raining. So now I am hauling water. No, can’t have some rain and some sun, it’s just going to dump it all and then completely stop for a month. Bah.
max
[‘But the roses are blooming.’]
TheMightyTrowel
Went out today to dump some manure on next summer’s veg patch. I really love winter gardening – there’s something really peaceful about preparing and planning and trimming and making ready.
Also fewer creepy crawlies…
O. Felix Culpa
Putting up a higher fence to keep the bunnies out. Came home from church this afternoon to find a cottontail munching on my newly flowering penstamen. Grrrr. Turning me into a right Mr. McGregor, that rabbit is.
Petorado
Summer finally hit as the Hall’s honeysuckle have bloomed and are perfuming the night air. The potted star jasmine should be right behind as the next fragrant blooms. Bud break in the vineyard as the tempranillo vine has finally become serious about setting fruit. These are the salad days as most of the green leafies planted in April are getting that slight extension in height before the heat will make them want to bolt. It’s glorious watching fuzzy peaches turn from quarter size to silver dollar size. Frosts have had their way with the blooms for years and I finally tented the tender peach blossoms when spring sent yo-yos of heat and freezing spikes for weeks. Such is life as a grower on the Front Range.
dollared
That Woodinville sign is missing the symbol for “drunks walking from winery to winery on the shoulder.”
joel hanes
The CA drought continues.
In Santa Clara, I’m letting the lawn all-but-die, and the raised beds will not be planted again this year.
What water I’m allowed to use will go toward keeping the trees and perennial ornamentals alive, if not happy.
opiejeanne
@O. Felix Culpa: We have three or four rabbits of various ages on the property, or visiting from the neighbors’ yards. We put up fences around that corn bed and this evening the oldest (biggest) rabbit was sitting inside the fence, about to chow down on the young corn. She had cut a hole just the right size in the green plastic fence material.
My husband is now referring to that rabbit as “that little bastard”. We caught the same one eating the rose bushes about a month ago, just stripping everything edible from them as high as he/she could reach.
opiejeanne
@dollared: LOL! You know all about Woodinville. You know the Hollywood Schoolhouse at the roundabout? If you go up the hill instead of into town you will eventually come to our house, at the big bend in the road.
The drunks wander around that roundabout in droves sometimes; several wineries right there next to the Mexican restaurant and across 140th behind the old Hollywood schoolhouse. .
opiejeanne
@joel hanes: that’s a good decision, if a little sad. When we were looking for this house we saw several places where beautiful old hedges and lines of trees had been allowed to die, over on Bainbridge Island. That was 6 years ago; things had died because of a drought a couple of years earlier and water on the islands around Seattle was really restricted.
O. Felix Culpa
@opiejeanne: Dead thread response (a night’s sleep intervened), but I’m with your husband: Bunnies are cute, as long as the little bastards stay out of my garden! This experience totally changes my outlook on Peter Rabbit, pace Beatrice Potter.
Your garden looks beautiful, also too. Thanks for sharing your pix.