nuranar | Entries tagged with garden

This is a thing that's going to be happening regularly every weekend into April, actually. When you're planting seeds, you have to go by the number of weeks each packet says it must be planted before/after the last average frost of the winter. Which can be ANYONE'S GUESS because "spring" is the craziest season. Today hit 80 (again) but there was frost on Thursday morning. Pfui.

I stopped at Home Depot and made the mistake of looking at the herbs. I'm feeling daring because the parsley I planted last fall is still going strong, having survived even the two separate occasions of temps in the teens. (Which the Goodwin Creek lavender did not. Hardy to 20 degrees, and they meant it. But I may try again, since it survived 100+ plus August days with watering only twice a week. That's a lot more certain than such hard freezes.) The parsley died back a bit, but not totally, and it's already coming back strong. To my surprise the thyme I planted then is also trucking along. Not thriving particularly, but still honestly impressive since I doubt it gets a whole lot of sunlight.

I'd been thinking I also wanted to some mint for recipes, but I know that mint in a flower bed is a baaad idea. And not sure the thyme will live long enough (or get big enough) to be a reliable source for cooking. So I came home with a mint, a German thyme, and an unspecified lavender (I keep trying!). I was proud of myself for putting the mint in a medium-sized pot. I plan to just set it in the front flower bed so it will be acclimatized and look pretty (nice cobalt pot) but unable to take over the world. The German thyme may do the same; not sure. I put it in a small rose-pink pot for now.

The lavender I did have to stick in the ground, though. I really took a risk with planting it so early in the year. (It was SO HARD to not go through Callaway's when I stopped at Trader Joe's next door! But I knew I would want to buy plants, although a warm February has very little guarantee that it will stay warm.) I'm going to have to keep an eye on the weather and cover the lavender if/when it gets cold again. I hope it grows well - I do love lavender.

I put in another flower bed this afternoon. It's a sheltered corner on the southeast side of the house; it needs a retaining wall someday, so I've been hesitant to put significant plants in. But it's really a good corner, and quite visible from the family room. I planted some snapdragon seeds five years ago, and a few of the plants are still alive. (Plus some of their descendants.) They're not really supposed to be perennial, so that amuses me. They even survived multiple ice and snow storms, including the Epic Cobblestone Ice Event. So by elimination, it's not the harshest environment in which I can attempt to grow things...

Another boat load of rocks came out of the ground (though no monsters this time; nothing bigger than a softball), and I replaced that volume and built it up slightly with 160 pounds of humus.

And all that because I was going to plant the first round of seeds (4 to 6 weeks before the average last freeze, which is really anyone's guess). Poppies! I hope they come up and thrive.

I also seem to have ordered more seeds. I decided I must plant English wallflowers, tall Sweet William mix, and blue cornflowers. They're all supposed to be drought tolerant, which is never, ever a bad idea here. (When a plant is glowingly recommended for the Pacific Northwest, it is immediately eliminated from my consideration. It wouldn't be fair for either of us.)

I got a bur oak. It's a nice big white oak, with enormous acorns (up to 2" long) with big fuzzy caps that make them even bigger.

My tree is fairly young (about 12' tall) and in a 15 gallon container. My soil is of such, um, uncertain quality that the nursery recommended a young tree that can establish itself quickly and learn to deal with the rocks and clay.

It's going in the back yard where I can get some shade from the south. And I think I'm going to name it Marya, after the Russian woman from Hogan's Heroes (played by Nita Talbot). Because she wears furry hats like the acorn caps.

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