Stuff for Saturday.....

Up at the old place the hosta is showing beautiful leaves. The shade and moisture is perfect for this kind of plant. I mowed the orchard yesterday pushing the mower over many wild violets. I need to return and trim out all of the volunteer trees. Maples and mulberry trees seem to come up everywhere.

This is the first Asiatic lily that is in bloom at the old place. A lot of the flowers have diminished because the gardener isn’t living there any more doing maintenance on them. The peonies that had a dumpster sitting on them last year all did bloom this year.  Places where I dug and moved out a fern leaf peony did have a stray root left behind as it did put out new branches and bloomed.

I was reading about this plant in a garden book last weekend.  It almost made me think I wanted to move it because of its rarity.  They said one could go to old farmsteads and find it growing there to get starts.  I did post this a few years ago and a blogger friend immediately told me to burn it and get rid of it.  The plant is beautiful but it is called “creeping bluebell” for a reason. In the front yard where I planted it  I have to keep mowing it back. It still is spreading towards other parts of the area. In the back yard I had dug it all out 40 years ago and planted spreading jupiter shrubs.  Years later when I removed the shrubs because they had become too large, the creeping plant came back in full force.  I keep thinking that I could plant it in a container with high sides so it wouldn’t spread. Maybe that would be a bad idea.

A new temporary flower garden that I added yesterday is shown here.  It was for necessity that I did this because the dog wet the area all winter causing dead grass this spring.  I had tried to put sod in the spots from other parts of my yard and I couldn’t get it to grow.  As I planted these I discovered another problem.  The people who built the house and put in the sidewalk have layers of clay right here. Also parts of it is filled with river rocks that they were too lazy to remove after they put in the concrete. I could dig down three or four inches and get a bucket full of small rock. Clay does not absorb water as when it rains I can see the water standing on the flower gardens surface. As I nit pic away I want to buy a couple of more geraniums now that I see it does look good.

My thoughts are to  stop the old dog from just wetting there. I also though that grass loves to grow into mulch so that I could get a yard back in there in another year. I did put about a bag of purchased topsoil around the growing area hoping the hardy geraniums will grow.

The petunias are liking our weather conditions and the rains have made them really grow.  The colors seem to all work together for this area. We are headed downtown this morning to see the Arts Festival display.  It is an outdoor show with tents spread all around a four block area. The drive is less than 8 miles now but the parking is such a difficult situation.  We go early and find a ramp to park in that isn’t too far away.  Tradition requires us to go to Spaghetti Works after seeing the show.  Downtown driving won’t be great as the downtown Farmers Market goes on until noon down there.  It will be a crowded place.

I will take photos for sure as their flowers will all be in bloom and the skyscrapers and office buildings are great to see.  Thank your for checking out my blogspot today.