Monthly Archives: May 2011

May 31 2011

The Lawnmower Man

I’m not sure if I’ve blogged about it before, but we’ve hired and fired about six or seven different lawn mowers over the past four years ever since we’ve lived here.  They mowed down flowers.  They cut ruts in the yard.  Various reasons. The latest one, and only one we’ve had this year, cut down flowers and didn’t do a good job at weedeating the way we wanted him to.

So, yesterday, J decides he wants to buy a mower and weed eater.  Home Depot was having a sale.

So, he mowed and weed eated yesterday and the yard has never looked better.

At $200 for both, they will be paid for in 8 mowings.  (We typically paid $25 a pop for a mowing!)  At the rate our yard grows, that will be in less than two months.

We also finished up a lot of other landscaping projects this weekend…hanging baskets, more annuals for the empty flower pots, rose bushes and trellises.  You know there will be pics to follow.  For now, here’s a pic of J hard at work with his new mower and a nice wide shot of the backyard.

May 30 2011

The Urban Gardener: Backtracking

I couldn’t resist just one more post about the allium bulbs.  My purple starburst alliums were in full bloom last week.  They are a nice pop of color amongst the hosta.  The traditional alliums which I had posted about earlier came and went very quickly, but their long faded stalks are still in the garden and at least provide some depth and something interesting to look at amongst all the green.

Purple Balls Amongst the Green

There is a yellow sunny twinkle variety which has yet to bloom complete.  I see plants coming up out there which I think may be this allium, but there is only a hint of a bloom on a few stalks but they really haven’t reached their full potential.  They are a small dainty flower and should have probably been planted in a bunch closer together.

The starbursts are in the front and back beds.  The ones in the front are a bit lost amongst the tall foliage of the tiger lilies which have come up like gangbusters this year.

Like I said before, the allium stalks are very fragile and we have lost many to the dogs trampling them this year.  I’ve moved several out of the high traffic areas and plan to move more later this year when the blooms are gone.

This is about our third year enjoying the alliums, and they are still one of my favorites.  I’ve already preordered a new one to be planted this fall which is a white allium ball with hints of purple in it.  It’s called Graceful. Let me know what you think.

Allium Graceful

May 29 2011

The Urban Gardener: Tango Ladylike and Orange Sensation

There are 3 or 4 established lilies in this whiskey keg planter.

With strange names like that, you know I have to be talking about lilies.  Asiatic lilies!

Lilies love the sun and moist soil. They bloom in the spring, if you have a warm spring.  Here in Missouri it looks like the lilies are holding out for June instead.  That’s fine with me because all through the month of May you know we were enjoying the irises.

Lilies can grow 12 to 14 inches tall and their tropical flowers at the top of each stalk can be quite stunning.  You see these at Lowe’s or Home Depot right around Easter and Mother’s Day.  Last year, I took advantage of a sale after the lilies had bloomed.  They were marked down and I bought a dozen of them.  I even bought more when I went home to Tennessee and gave them to my mother.

Look close at the tiny buds on top.

Mine are nice and green right now and its been nice anticipating where they are and waiting for them to bloom. I knew they were going to take longer and we’d at least have some color in the garden after the irises were gone.  We also have family visiting in two weeks so I hope the lilies are in bloom then for everyone to see and enjoy. We will have mostly yellow, orange and red varieties – including a taller yellow variety that I bought from an online vendor.

More pics of the blooms to follow.  Since I don’t know all their names, don’t expect much from me in the identification department.  I only kept a few of their cards last year for the ones I bought on clearance.  We do have these in all of the beds though and a bunch of them in a whiskey keg planter which I have pictured.

May 28 2011

The Urban Gardener: Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

I love to photograph my blooms after a rainfall.  And it seems we’ve had tons of that every weekend for the past few weeks.  It’s nice and sunny through the week, then gloomy and rainy on the weekend.  Weeds and weather just aren’t on my side this Spring. Oh well, at least the flowers are keeping me happy.

May 27 2011

The Urban Gardener: One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Front Yard Lion King Irises

Its funny how this time last week I was jumping to conclusions about that Lion King Iris that I had bought online last Fall.  I finally identified it, but discovered the ones I planted in the front yard are a completely different color than the ones that bloomed in the back.  Maybe this has something to do with the type of soil and mulch?  Anyone else ever had this happen?

These bulbs came from the same batch.  The blooms in the front yard are bluish purple and yellow, while the ones in the back are a deeper purple and yellow.  But both share the signature stripes in the petals and have the same leaves and stems which is how I knew they had to be the same kind. We use red mulch in the front, while the ones in the back were planted in the newer kidney shaped bed in soil we brought in just for the bed so it probably has more nutrients in it.

Backyard Bloom - Check out those stripes!

Could that cause a distinction in the color of the flowers?  Perhaps. I still emailed the company I bought them from mainly just to inquire if anyone else had reported this type of situation.

Either way, both colors are pretty and petite, averaging only about a foot tall.  And as you can see in the photos, their stems are thin like a wild onion making them appear extremely wild and fragile.

As of last Friday, there were three blooms in the front and two in the back.  There should be at least 5 more if all bulbs come up.

May 26 2011

The Urban Gardener: Planting Ostriches

By Ostriches, I mean Ostrich Fern of course.

I have a back corner in my flower bed that’s hidden by the massive hosta growing in the front.  We haven’t tended to this corner much and it doesn’t get much sun either.  When this bed was first created about three years ago, I planted two large Boston Fern in this corner.  Of course, they are not perennials in Missouri so they did not come back fully.  One sprig did actually sprout back the following year and I dug it up and potted it.  I still have that fern to this day which I’ll show you in another post about the potted plants.

Back to the shady corner though, last year I bought two Ostrich fern and planted them in this corner just to see how they would do.  The nursery where I got them said they would come back more so in this area than other ferns.  And they did!  They aren’t very big, but they did come back this year.  Anxious to fill this corner with fern, I ordered 4 more roots online a few weeks ago and they arrived just last week.  So, last Wednesday after work, I was in the corner pulling weeds and digging holes for the new fern.

There’s a house around the corner with a small nook between it and the neighboring house.  In this nook, lots of beautiful fern grow along the border of each house.  Its thick and full and looks just great from the road. I first saw this fern 4 years ago when we actually looked at the house with our Realtor when it was on the market.  I have secretly thought of sneaking over in the night and digging up a chunk of that fern ever since, even more a few weeks ago when the house was vacant.  But I didn’t!

Let’s hope the fern I bought grows in just as nice!  If you look in the photo though, you’ll actually see two types of fern.  The one in the front is my Ostrich fern that I bought.  The one in the back is a sprig of some other type of fern which a neighbor gave to me last year.  There are two of each now growing, so plus the 4 I just planted should hopefully fill the corner in nicely.

May 25 2011

The Urban Gardener: Looking Ahead…

I’m in love with the Batik Irises from Brecks.com.  What a great price too!  You get one of each of these pictured for just $19.99 – 5 total! Too bad you can’t pick and choose.  If you could, I’d probably skip the purple one at the top right since we all know I already have too much purple.

I may just have to buy a set though just for the heck of it!

And the pink one at the top right is called Baboon Bottom!  How funny!

May 24 2011

The Urban Gardener: Sunny Twinkles

The sunny twinkle alliums are finally coming into fuller bloom.  Here are pics of two of them from this morning.  I think they still have some more blooming to go as I remember the picture in the catalog showing them as being a bit rounder and fuller.  But, we know the catalog has been wrong before.

I also expected them to be bigger and I wish they were taller.  I guess that’s not the case.  If they don’t get any bigger, I may have to consider moving them to a new spot and to the front of a bed so they aren’t lost.  The one to the right is coming up between two towering bunches of irises.  They are still a pretty little flower, but need to be planted closer together for impact.  Hopefully there will be better blooming (and better pics) to follow.

May 23 2011

The Trampling Shall Cease!

Remember me talking about how the dogs always charge the fence because of the rabbits on the other side?  And they end up trampling our flowers?  Well, the trampling shall finally cease.

We have a concrete patio in the back left corner of our yard with the flower bed running along the back of the yard behind it.  The concrete used to be the foundation of an open garage long before we moved in.  It was a basketball court when we bought the house. We’ve turned it into a patio and sitting place with the long flowerbed running behind it. Maybe one day it will house a hot tub.

But, we’ve thought of some kind of open fencing or guard along the edge of it between the concrete and the flower bed in order to slow the dogs down.  I wanted something iron and antique looking – think old fence around a cemetery.  But we never could find anything in good shape and at a good price.

We finally found something last Saturday at an old antique shop on Cherokee Street.  While the owner of it was an ass and it was a huge pain getting the fence home, it looks perfect and is exactly what we wanted. Let me know what you think.

May 23 2011

The Urban Gardener: The Last Bearded Iris

Picasso Moon

With Fall Fiesta blooming on Saturday, I knew there were only two more types of irises planted that we had not yet seen a bloom from. We got to see both of those this weekend, which pretty much marks the end of our Spring Iris season.  Lots of the Japanese Iris and Roanoke’s Choice are still blooming, but everything else has come and gone for the most part.  We might see one more bloom or two from some of the bearded irises, but I’m just happy that everything bloomed this year.  Both Fall Fiesta blooms have already started to turn, and one new one bloomed last night in the back yard.

As for the two last blooms, the first is called Picasso Moon.  It looks much like the Champagne Waltz variety except it has a lot less white on its bearded petals and is a softer yellow all around.  In fact, it grew so close to the CW plant in the back yard that I thought it was the same.  J was weeding that bed on Sunday and accidentally knocked the one flower off the stalk.  He saved it though and I at least got a pic of it in a nice vase.

Harvest of Memories

The other one bloomed this morning in the front bed.  It is called Harvest of Memories and is a deep deep buttery yellow.  It is one of the three I bought last Fall when I first started this project of trying to bring more orange and yellow to the garden.

Its so nice to see all these plants establishing themselves, which hopefully means next year they will be even bigger and have more blooms for us to enjoy. I’ve already purchased several more varieties – lots of red this time – from an online vendor to be delivered this fall.  More about those later…