color me embarrassed

sambycat ♦ May 29, 2011 ♦ 1 Comment

(pictures will follow)

THAT sounds intriguing, don’t it?!?

nothing near any kind of lascivious excitement, friends, just a garden update. and it turns out that the thinner leaved, bunchy things i was hacking away at earlier in the season are not all irises, but lots and lots of day lillies – that are now blooming! they still needed major thining so all is well, but when stalks began to shoot up last week…. well, i knew i’d misjudged.

so, we continue to work on the lawn (trace is a masterful water-er!). i’ve no idea how you set your mower to mow at 2-21/2″ as the anti-crabby grass people suggest. and none of our grass gets that high, just the weedy parts, so its kind of difficult to atempt to wait it out. but, its still filling in in the front and i planted a few new plants today – some creeping fig (WhateverTF that is) and some lillies and some ferns in the back. my hostas have some weird brown leaves. i’ve never had problems with hosts so i son’t know what that is. too much water? also, lots of foiliage dying down in front that is yellow form the late bulbs i planted me thinks, so i sut that back, dead headed a bit. sadly for my ACD needs, there really aren’t any yankable weeds on our property now. of course, the beds still have some questionable grass like new growth, but i’m still not 100% about wheter or not its seeds i threw down or not! as i pur out mostly dianthus and cosmos and some hollyhocks, i *think* what i think are weeds are, but not 100% sure…..

tomorrow we are going to check out a nursery with elephant statues. how exciting!

it’s got me crabby

sambycat ♦ May 18, 2011 ♦ Leave a comment

crab grass that is.

i’ve been googling grasses (sounds fun, no?), and me thinks about 75% of the grass in our combined lawnage area is crab grass. crabbygrassy. me no likey. especially because i am now obsessed with weeding the lawn (its akin to popping those packing bubbles) and i’ve effectively run out of satisfying large weeds to rip from the earth, root and all.

trying really hard not to meander “accidentally” onto the neighbors lawns and grab those monstrous dandelion plants…..

apparently though, this is not the time of year to deal with this problem. for a few brief moments in my research last night, i was thinking i might just go start yanking out all the crabgrass balls and fling them into the trash. however that would leave us with a further denuded lawn, more susceptible to weed invaders. it seems its a spring/fall attack thing, so we kinda missed the first prong. of course it did say that weeding them out was good, or at least preventing them from going to seed. also, keeping your lawn mowed to the higherside of things (so that the “good” grass will shade and choke out the crabbies). welllllll that seemed like helpful info until i went outside and saw that pretty mouch all of the lawn is below the suggested grass length for mowing AND all that freakin’ crabby grass has got seedy sprouty blades shooting all about. arg!

i did try and yank some up and snap off the obvious seed heads, but that was about it.

on a brighter note, my lantana is blooming, the mondo grass has little flowers, herb seeds continue to emerge and even the branch of our one rose bush i accidentally whacked off this weekend and attempted to plant is still green in the ground.

this weekend, we found 2 lawn ornament statues and a white rose bush to plant, as well as more hostas and fountain grass. did i mention i am working an alice in wonderland garden theme for our backyard?

this is alice reading a book on a golden afternoon

my white rabbit

projects!

sambycat ♦ May 12, 2011 ♦ Leave a comment

i’d kind of forgotten how much i enjoy gardening since i haven’t lived in my “own” home or had much more than a random pot or two to attempt gardening in over the last few years. lucky for me, i married a guy with real estate and less enthusiasm than  mine for gardening – meaning he will mow the lawn but beyond that doesn’t do too much nor care too much what i might do to it!

when i owned my first home in kentucky, i discovered the fun that was gardening. i bought a home that was built for me, if you can call the modest tract home with minimal decision making choices (NO CORIAN???? WTF?!?) “built” for me, but , nonetheless, it was my first home and a cool one. it was on nearly a quarter acre with a neat little forest-y area at the very back. i did the sod thing (included) but left the “landscaping package” (essentially two bradford pears and some boxwood) behind  and took the credit towards god knows what – probably trim moulding or something.

in any event, i discovered a fondness for gardening and a slightly verdant thumb.

fast forward to the wild wilderness i have begun to homestead with the hubby. our grass is a bit sad, he blames this on his being out with me the entirety of last june when it is like 1000 degrees every day in texas. i agree but also see evidence of old grass and poor drainage, just a generally ageing lawn that needs some TLC. and thats where i come in!

i’ve seeded and weeded and finally planted the bulbs i bought at walmart last fall that sat on our porch until april (yay me!). i’ve dug up 3 bed areas, created 2 raised beds, cut back trees, pulled and moved the copious and no longer flowering iris’ (but failed to think in advance about giving someone the corms i ended up removing – rats!), planted seeds and multiple plants front and back. we’ve a long way to go, but it’s looking pretty good! a before….. and more to follow…..

my old kentucky home - yes that was my stab at building my own rustic stone wall...

before