"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article , "madgardener"
wrote: substantial pathetic stuff snipped
away
with apologies for the blue mood to everyone.............
I'm lucky to live in a place where it's really possible to garden almost
year-round outdoors, even though not many people bother to do so. Within
the next week or so I will be stripping up a weed-smothering cloth I put
down eight or nine months ago, then will churn & enrich that newly
weedless ground, then put together a low-maintance garden for which I have
a bunch of pots as yet unplanted: blue rose of sharon, hybrid scotchbroom
cultivars, & a couple of largish rugosa roses, plus will transplant from
other gardens to the new one the succulent ice plant & the lambsears that
were spreading too much & threatening nearby things in another sun-garden,
& move a yellow poker plant to the new area as it got so big it blocks
an important path. There's already another (red) poker plant & a couple of
rockroses in the area I'm about to plant in earnest, & three young trees
-- so this will be a very decent start on a newly substantial garden, even
if it starts out looking dead until spring buddings. This is a fairly
major project for this time of year & there's no hurry, & as I was sick
for a couple weeks (flu) I have to catch up my book-business shipments & a
few other things, but soon as I'm caught up, it's back to gardening even
if it's semi-nasty weather.
wow, that's quite a bit of doings. I'm just looking forward to the
emergence of the Hellebore buds. Since I don't have a front yard where the
southern exposure is, I have planted my yellow ice plant in a rather nice
clay pot. It's sulking in the freezing temperatures and yesterday with the
temps getting up to the 50's the snow finally melted. I see way more clean
up than I thought possible. The one thing I am going to tackle regardless
of anything else is the blackberry canes and small saplings that are spring
up in the mucky boggy mess that the gray water produces that the Bengal
Tiger canna's adore. With this thaw and a good pair of gloves I figure that
will be a good start. g
If I can move my arms after that, I also want to go ahead and prune the
butterfly bushes back to stubbies, but I'm in no hurry to do that. The mess
around the canna's is enough to kill me. I have fairly good soil around
that mess and the honeysuckle is also determined to strangle everything it
comes to, and I see the green of it approaching my beloved Mock Orange that
Mary Emma gave me a baby shoot of that has grown to impressive proportions
in front of the Tulip Poplar tree.
I couldn't begin to tell you at this moment everything that needs my
attentions, but next day off, instead of talking about it, I'm just jumping
out there and doing some much needed things.
I appreciate you keeping me up to date. I know your gardens are beautiful.
Mine are a sad example of disorganization and allowance of fairy meddlings.
Other than plantings and keeping weeds out, you'd never know there was any
order to my raised boxes and beds plopped around the area's capable of
holding them.
During the coldest days of December until the recent snowstorm (we had the
ground completely covered for four days), I couldn't really do any
gardening to speak of, so ended up cleaning out all our vivariums, then
putting up some new plant-pages at paghat.com about terrarium & aquarium
plants, & updated some window-succulent pages. But I really don't do much
gardening indoors so it's a poor substitute, & I dunno what I'd do if
winter gardening were REALLY impossible, as could happen if we ever do
move to Idaho where the ground seriously freezes &/or remains under snow
so that all gardening stops. Suppose I'll have to have a greenhouse if we
ever do locate nearer my sweety's family, as is occasionally threatened.
You'd find a way Paggers. I'm still determined to get that clivia of mine
to bloom for me and am about to sequester it into a cooler room for six
weeks..........And I see with the obscenely dry enviroment of this heated
house, my cacti and succulents are screeching at me to please water them
every other day...........two casualties already........ keep in touch, I
am amazed that I'm able to use my own computer today....
madgardener off to work after I put Sugar in the crate----up on the ridge,
back in Fairy Holler, overlooking English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee,
zone 7, Sunset zone 36
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/