Summer Garden Update

Hello again, dear friends!! Summer started with a bang around here… Memorial Day weekend was the first weekend I was out of school, so I went straight away out to the garden to work on planting…

Garden projects galore

Now mind you, I did take some naps along the way to recover from a long, stressful school year, but after three weeks of extra rest and getting outside, going for long walks and catching up on housework (my least favorite thing, but necessary!), I feel pretty recovered.

One of the first things I did was work on making the little plant stoop on the left side of the shed a bit bigger over by the Big Garden Shed (photograph above). Over these past three years here in our Texas Home, I’ve been moving these square bricks around as needed as plant supports. Now a bunch of them are here under the left shed window. 🙂

I had to pick up a few more bricks from Lowe’s and the new ones are thicker than the previous ones, but they all play nicely with each other!

I “walked” the little Angel over from its previous spot underneath the oak tree to its new spot here with the hydrangeas, lavender and pelargonium. I am really liking this new look, how about you?

Next, we just finished building the new Small Shed, of which I posted about on Father’s Day, just a couple of days ago. You can find that post here. While all of these updates have been going on, I’ve been rototilling, clearing grass and weeds, digging plant holes and removing roots, amending soil with lots of good homemade compost and grit to break up the heaviness off the clay soil, and planting plants along the southern fence.

I will share a video post soon with the finished bones of the side yard in place so you can see everything at once. It actually looks pretty sparse because the main plants are so young, there aren’t any annuals to help fill the spaces, but in a few years time, these new plants will fill in and take up a lot more space. 🙂

I think the garden is coming along nicely! I wish the panicle hydrangeas hadn’t lost their blooms this year in the little Artic freeze… They are nice and green for you, though! You can just see it behind the iron fence.

Let’s check out the roses, which are having a banner year…

Roses, roses, roses

All of the roses survived the winter like champs! I really covered and wrapped the four new roses with all of the extra freezes we had from late February until sometime in April. I had planted them into two pots and into two spots on the south side of the house; that post can be found here.

A type of peony (?) came up behind the rose so I’ll have to move that peony for next year (or the rose over some!).

Our neighbors said there used to be a gentleman who lived here who loved to garden several homeowners ago… He must have planted the peach tree which grew on this southern side of the house.

I wonder if all these dormant peonies (?) and liriope, which are springing up all over now that the area is getting a lot of water, are some of his? Amazing that they just lay dormant all of this time!

… A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

spoken by Juliet, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

found on: No Sweat Shakespeare

I am looking at ordering more roses to plant again late next winter and looking at some climbers for the fences. The little Miss Kim lilac I had died last summer/fall. I think ants got its roots, or I didn’t give it enough water?? Anyway, it made it for a couple of years… It was always a bit iffy with Zone 8 and I think it was a Zone 7-max plant picked up in South Dakota. Bummed because I love lilacs and thought it could make it… My MIL didn’t dig any up from her garden, which is a real shame as hers would have done very well here!

Oh, well! Sorry for complaining…

It was to go along this back fence and would have been a nice central feature. 💜

A new garden bed

The next project I am working on is getting all of the plants I collected last fall and winter into the ground. I got the boxwood planted last fall, I think, and it is doing very well in its spot (above right, near the bag of purple Hapi-Grow mulch).

A small juniper is bursting out of its small pot and will be going in along the western fence somewhere, along one or two golden arborvitae (the Southern Living brown pots to the upper left). I thought they were only supposed to get about 6′ tall, but I reread the tag this weekend and they can get much larger! About 10-12′ in height).

I wanted to build an arborvitae hedge wall along the western back alleyway fence but I’m not sure what else to plant there which can take a lot of heat and sun. Any suggestions?

A dwarf juniper is planted over in the far left corner with a Jane magnolia to its left, and a climbing rose to the left of Jane. Might have to move the Jane. It’s leaves are scorching a bit.

What’s next?

• A chair painting project (already underway!)
• getting new water lines run for the garden to have drip irrigation
• finishing painting inside the Big Garden Shed
• finishing building the two rafters inside the shed (Mr. Ethereal’s project)
• finding and installing a second French iron fence piece for the right side of the garden (to match the left side) ~ maybe a French find in France?! XD!!

Well that’s it for now, folks! I’ll be sharing from inside soon as I deep clean and create summer vignettes. With the heat, I do tend to be indoors more in the afternoons. 😉 But first, a few trips to the doctor’s office and a Texas Dept. of Transportation run with my MIL to get her new Texas driver’s license today. 🙂

Happy beginning of summer,

Barb 🙂