Happy May Day!
Busy weeding my acre this time of year in-between 12 hour split shifts at work and the wonderful April weather.
As you can see, Rusty, who is on better pain meds, helps supervise.
I weeded half of this bed surrounding our patio. Then gave up moved onto another place that needed attention. I have to cut back the tulips and grab the artillery weeds. The blue on the left is lithospermum.
The house is on the left with the airplane hangar (doors closed) straight ahead.
I've lived on my acre for 26 years. Plants die. Plants get too big. Plants are amazing. We have fairly mild winters here in the Willamette Valley, but once every six years or so, we get hard freezes, ice, and significant snow. (No snow this winter except for one morning). Two years ago, the Lithospermum completely died back but I saw some green shoots near the base and babied it and here it is, lush as ever.
Stepping back a
few paces, this is the pergola with clematis (montana) climbing it. The
clematis shades us in the summers and you can sit outside and not get
too wet during summer showers.
These clematis rotted off at the
rootstock one winter - oh, 7 years ago, but they are now almost where
they were before - coverage-wise.
We use our patio most
of the year. There is a swing set that needs new cushions sewn. Has
anyone noticed that replacement cushions are thinner on the foam? The
ones that came with the swing were very comfy. We cook outside on the barbecue and watch the planes take off in the evenings.
Most readers know I live on an airpark. The runway adjoins our acre and runs mostly north-south. Bucolic. Anyone use that old-fashioned word lately?
You need patience to garden well. Plants are a tad unruly, not always listening to your mindset of how they should behave. That's okay.
I still need to pot up my hanging baskets. I'm slow this year. I am waiting on the high school plant sale for the little extras plants that go into the baskets (excuseexcuseexcuse).
Tomorrow is my day off and it's forecast to be 80', so this job jumped to priority one.
My upright green japanese maple on the other side of the house sends forth babies that I pot up for the patio. These babies don't seem to grow as tall. I have done some bonsai with them, twisted the 'stems' into circles, played with them a bit. These are getting quite root-bound so I will either give these away at the end of this growing year or compost them and start fresh with some new babies.
Looking left from the patio is my side yard. This is the yard I look at from my kitchen window.
The curve of the beds is lovely. The beds on the left used to be shaded by 40 year old fir trees but we had a little leaning problem and rather then buy a new house for the neighbors, we elected to cut them down.
So this bed went from shady perennials to a very sunny, needs to be edited still bed. I have replanted some taller trees for the bird habitat but also as a living fence between us and the neighbors. It is very difficult to edit my plants. I've known them for years and someday's I can't be ruthless enough. I tend to let the columbines live.
I tried a panoramic shot looking at the house.
All it did was give the house and hangar a decidedly weird curve.
That's the grass runway to the far right.
My kitchen window on the right. Just in front is my bird feeder and hummingbird feeder (empty again?). That's hubby there doing something.
Looking southeast towards the taxi-way, aka our street.
Another view of looking out my kitchen window.
My living fence is filling out nicely this April.
My goal is to not see that house there.
Those are my hostas there in front which amazingly took to the sun from being in the shade prior.
And from the
street end, looking towards the grass runway -- past the fir trees we
left growing taller.
Serous hummingbird habitat up there in the firs along with owls
and other birds. (not to mention the bats). We had an eagle thinking
about setting up housekeeping two autumns ago.
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| Another panoramic - the entire side length of the yard - about 300 yards? |
Strawberries blooming for June.
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***This is just my side yard. If you got this far - serious congratulations. This was a good place to put these photos for my reference.
