To do list in the garden

• Clean up The Backyard
• Tidy up the Kitty Graves
• Look to see if I need to buy any seeds
• Accept the fact that the garden will never be perfect or finished

Plans for spring 2010

Most of these are from 2008, not good... there will be more added to the list soon I'm sure.

• Fix the raspberries
• Build bathouses
• Build birdhouses, an owl one too
• Build a compost
• Build a birdbath
• Cut the boxwood
• Cut the buddleia
• Clean up the backyard

I take a picture of these crocuses every spring and the first time it was like one flower and now…

Ooops again…

I can’t find my little note with where I storage what so I don’t know if I dug all of them up or if someone is still down there in the backyard and it’s an awful awful mess there right now so it’s impossible to know. I look around a bit more and hopefully I will find the note, I don't want to leave anyone behind.

Project

The Backyard is a horrible mess due to no planning what so ever and the horrible evil Snowberry bush (sound so cute but it’s really not). I found this adorable green tunnel, it’s in The Poison Garden at Alnwick Gardens (so want to go there) but I don’t have space or use for a tunnel but then it hit me. Why not make a little house/hut of it? A round little secret place just for me covered with ivy? I was thinking of having it in the Backyard and I hope that I’ll get some help in the spring to get rid of the Snowberry, build a compost box (well, actually three, or at least two), replant the raspberries and the gooseberries, make some space for my rhubarb and basically tidy the place up.

If this hut/house thing happens, it will be called, Kojan.

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

I thought that the poppies would be gone by now

But no, they keep blooming and there are plenty of buds. Pretty sure that they are regular corn poppies and they bloom from July – august but not in my garden apparently, which I’m fine with. I’m my garden things usually bloom late.

( I love that you can see the little red hairs on this one)

My garden rooms

At first you just plant some bulbs and some perennials you don’t know the name of, then, slowly almost sneaking up on you, you start to name certain areas in the garden.

In my garden I have The Front Yard, dull badly planned flower bed with two bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) taking up most space and they bloom pretty quickly and become very boring. This spring was great with lots of tulips (that the deer didn’t eat for some strange reason, was it because I planted garlic there?) sticking up from a sea of forget me not but then there wasn’t much going on. Must come up with something, perhaps move the bleeding hearts and plant roses instead.

(It was hard to find a picture of the front yard, that how bad it is. I had to reuse a picture, in the spring it’s pretty okay. Spring 2008)

By the two wooden pillars to the balcony there’s honeysuckle and the other pillar there’s a clematis. They are pretty mistreated and have nothing to climb on.

Then in the front yard there’s this The Slope where nothing but weeds wrong, horrible. I want to build a stone wall and then have a low fence on it and then a nice hedge.

(This is what the slope looks like when you’re standing on the road, so beautiful! Summer 2007)

Then there’s The Tea Corner, two climbing roses, ‘Flammentanz’ and a pretty boring flowerbed where I planted a nice lavender edge this year, let’s hope it will be nice next season (garden people say season and not year). Other than that there’s just a peony which I thought I had killed but apparently not, a ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ and some Miscanthus giganteum which is probably the most exciting thing in the Tea Corner.

(Most parts of the garden are pretty in the springtime. 2008)

The Backyard is where the greenhouse is and where the berries grow, raspberries (yellow and red), redcurrant, gooseberries (which no one eats) and a vine with horrible white grapes. It’s a complete mess back there and this nasty weed that I believe is sent from Satan, Snowberry Symphoricarpos albus. Not sure if I’ll ever get rid of all of it. Then there’s this big oak throwing acorns everywhere and you have to pick all of them up by hand because they will grow and then it’s not as easy to get rid of them.

(A funny looking opium poppy the white cross makes me think of the Danish flag. 2008)

Then there’s The Terrace which is made of wood so most pots there, a small patch of grass but it’s just roots and a thin layer of dusty soil, a large oak with a swing-ish rope that my grandpa made back in the day. This fall we planted a rose by the oak so let’s see how that goes. Got lots of lavender babies, they are easy to sow so I’ll plant some by the rose and see if they want to grow.

(A red Pelargonium against the blue house. 2007)

That's my garden rooms, The Front Yard, The Slope, The Tea Corner, The Backyard and The Terrace.

Today

I started cleaning up, making the garden ready for winter. Got all the dahlias I grew some seed this spring and cutting all the leaves off and putting them in labeled paper bags, hopefully some of them will live through the winter. Some are really big and it’s not THAT cold during the nights yet so they can stay in their pots or flowerbed but the babies got bagged. My favorite is an Oxford baby with really dark foliage; I hope the flowers are just as nice. And I hope I'll have some seeds of my own to sew next spring. (If I get any seeds I'm willing to share)

The raspberries are absolutely everywhere, must find something to prevent them from spreading but so far no luck. A plastic rain barrel is the best thing so far but it was way too expensive, especially since I plan to cut it. Anyway, trimmed them and some of the lavender, planted cuttings in individual pots and dug them down under the rhododendron (which I hope to edge with boxwood, love edging).

And took a picture of the last poppies for the season, I think...

Some kind of Papaver rhoeas but which I don’t know, I do have to get all the seeds since I want only blue and pink in The Backyard. Red is best up close so The Front Yard and/or The Slope