I've had some surprises this summer -- good ones for the most part so far -- and today I'll show you the second of them. (Wait, what about the first? Well, I'm numbering them in the order I discovered them, not in the order in which I'm sharing.)
I've shown you the build of the rose support and the design process too, and I've had a chance to get the final bars on and the rose has been tied up...
I started building the rose support last week, and if you remember I did not have a final design in mind yet -- I only knew that I needed two sturdy posts. Well, I finished the design on Friday and started building.
I've been eager to jump into some of the projects in my garden that will require my woodworking abilities, and although I've dabbled a bit over the winter and planned, it's time to really get busy!
Today I have some questions. Some are rhetorical, some are meant to inform. Others, well, I truly am asking. We'll start here:
Last week/weekend I was in Portland Oregon for the Garden Bloggers Fling, a gathering of about 80 bloggers from around the country (and a few internationals). We toured several gardens and nurseries over three days, but my wife and I arrived a day and a half early so we could check out the city and hang out with an old friend that we haven't seen in at least 15 years.
Sometimes when I'm working in the garden I look up and think "wow, this really looks great!". At other times I look up and think "wow, I have a lot more work to do!". I suppose this difference in feeling toward what is the same garden can partially be explained by mood -- some days I'm just crabbier.
It's the time of year when the roses are exciting: foliage is fresh and colorful, blooms are starting to appear. It's also the time of year when a pest makes my normally carefree roses need some help.
I tackled a fairly big project last weekend, one that should pay off for me in future years. It may even pay off early this summer.
I think I've got a few rose-themed posts coming in the next month or so, with pruning that needs to be done, and a transplant/salvage project, but I'm starting things off today with something that required much less effort.
I know that I wasn't very diligent when it came to deadheading (removing spent flowers) from most of the perennials and shrubs in my garden this year. It was just too hot, I was too busy, [insert your favorite excuse here] -- whatever the reason I just didn't do it.
For the past several weeks I've been doing little jobs in the garden. Moving pots out of the garage, potting up new plants, weeding, dragging potted bamboos around, cutting down last year's dead growth, pruning -- you know, gardening.
It's the 15th, which means it's time for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day -- a meme I participate in a few times a year when I actually pay attention to the calendar and have some flower pix to post.
It's rare that I ask for gardening advice in a post. It's not that I don't need advice because I'm an expert in everything related to plants and gardening -- far from it! I'm not an expert, and often do need advice. It's just that I like figuring things out myself. I like trying something that seems to be logical to me, then seeing if it does what I expected. This approach usually works pretty well, as it's difficult to make terrible mistakes with most of the plants I grow. Despite my unintentional attempts to harm them, they overcome and keep on going.
The last two nights we've had some good, hard rains in St. Louis. By my measurements it's been about 2 1/2 inches total, which is a very nice soaking for two days. The nice thing about storms that pass through in the night is that the garden gets watered, but the day can still be nice and sunny and dry.
As I promised, to help balance out all of the "creepy" posts about insects and spiders I've been doing lately, here's a look at some of the late summer flowers that are in bloom in my garden. It's really important to make sure you have plants that make the end of summer and start of autumn interesting. Although it's great having flowers all over the place in May and June, it's also pretty easy as most plants seem to want to bloom then. It's a little trickier to ensure you're looking at blooms now (in early September), but it's really worth the effort.
It's time for another "catch up" post, where I combine all of the mini topics of the last week or so -- the things that don't deserve an entire post for themselves. I'll start with weather.
June is one of the best months for gardens in St. Louis. The weather isn't too hot yet (except for this year, which has been really too warm), there's plenty of rain, and everything is lush and green.
I've mentioned before that I'm not a big rose gardener, but I do have a few varieties of roses in my garden. They're doing pretty well overall -- the blooms are beautiful, and the plants look healthy:
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