After spending several pages on my dad’s garden, wondered what the rest of you were growing this year.
I was out adding compost to a long garden bed yesterday evening. The soil was not too wet, not too dry- crumbly and easy to work. The air was cool and breezy. Not a mosquito. The wood thrushes were singing. And I had Lakme’s Flower Duet going through my head. …Life is good…
Lots of pictures of my gardens (and other stuff) here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markrough/
It’s changed a lot in the last couple of weeks though. The rain and the heat we’ve been getting have really made things take off.
Mark
I’m in a rental house right now, so mostly I’m growing regular garden grass. I do have some lillies that I started from some cuttings and some oak saplings courtesy of the combined efforts of squirrels and the two massive oaks in my front garden.
I’m also growing an annoying amount of nettle.
And moles. Bothersome, mound-making, moles.
I’ve also got a couple of (I think) apple saplings in the front garden.
The side garden is entirely gone wild, thick forest-type setting with the floor and many of the trunks blanketed entirely in ivy. If I owned the place I would leave it as is, except I would make a footpath in it and probably place a couple of benches and a fountain in there.
The back garden is domitated by some narrow-leafed trees that I cannot identify. I’ve posted a pic of them in the past and I’ll see if I can dig that up again just in case someone can identify them for me. They’re non-deciduous (don’t lose their leaves in fall) The leaves are of similar shape to laurel (bay) but without a noticable scent and approx 5cm wide by 11cm long. They’re currently all abloom with 15-16cm long clusters of sweet-smelling white blossoms averaging about 1cm accross per blossom. Come July or August those will be dark-red/black berries. I’d really like to know what they are.
I’ve been pruning shrubs. We have a very long Spirea hedge that divides us from our neighbors. It hasn’t been tended to for many years and the dead wood is keeping the new growth from coming up. In this case the wood has actually formed a long low tunnel. I get on my Scoot 'n Do, grab my bucket of tools and scoot down the tunnel almost as though I were going down in a mine----the tunnel of dead wood is so thick you can’t get inside it anywhere except from the end. I have to scoot backwards to get out. It is fun in the tunnel. Sometimes my cats come to see me. No one can tell I’m in there except by the sounds of my pruning and the occasional yelp when I get poked by a broken cane or something. The canes are just a mess, they are essentially woven like a basket----I will only be able to fix things to a certain extent. I like cutting out dead wood because you can’t make a mistake. You know a dead cane has to come out. Pruning live canes is nervewracking because you can end up with an ugly shrub. Spirea fill in your mistakes pretty well, but not all shrubs do.
We’ve lived in a totally wooded yard for six years. The woman who’d lived in our house previously had been ill, so absolutely nothing had been done for several years before we took it over. The leaves hadn’t even been raked. We’re trying to grow moss over much of where there had been grass (maybe 10% of the half-acre). The rest was a mixture of azaleas, hostas, rhododendrons, some bulb/tuber plants (lilies, daffodils, etc.), a few camellias, and loads of ground cover – some sort of minty thing, myrtle, and LOTS of pachysandra.
For a couple of years we’ve been pulling up ground cover and invasives and replacing them with native plants. We actually had two jacks-in-the-pulpit bloom this year. There’s also wintergreen, some sort of mini lily thing, wild pachysandra, wild bleeding hearts, and a couple of blueberry bushes.
Then there are the carnivorous plants. Because the one patch of sunlight moves across our front yard, my wife has been moving them three times a day. Lemme tellya, there’s no shortage of insects for those guys to eat, and the mosquitos really haven’t hit yet.
Our wisteria tunnel is not nearly as impressive as Cynth’s Mysterious Tunnel of Spirea…but the birds love to nest in there!
Near our jungle of wisteria planted way too close to the house, we also have a jungle of trumpet vine planted way too close to the house 
This is the view out Kevin’s window-- it’s like looking into a terrarium. Birds come way close and we can watch them.
I like to grow birdhouse gourds. They were great this particular year. In the 2 yrs since that picture was taken, Kevin has grown about 10" but last year’s gourd crop shrivelled and died.
Mark, what do you do about squash bugs???
Last year’s Educational garden-- each quadrant has representatives of one plant family. Ex. grass family, rose family, daisy family and bean family. There’s purple basil planted around it.
It’s aligned like a compass-- this way points north.
One Eyed Walt, guardian of our compost heap. We try to bring him a gift every day. “Look, Walt! Banana peels!” 
How big are the trees?
Are the leaves opposite or alternate?
Are they shiny / waxy, or furry, or wrinkly?
How many petals do the flowers have? Are they “petally”, or fused into a tube?
Oh! duh! I forgot to ask. Where are you located (in what geographic region is your mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam?) The horticulture class I took covered Landscape Plants of Eastern North America. Anything beyond that is Terra Incognito for me 
Okay, the mystery trees I was hoping to identify: I don’t have any batteries in my camera right now but here’s a few pics I took last August.
I edited my post above to correct my less than photographic memory; the berries are, as you can see, not bright red, but either very dark red or black.
I’m in southeastern England right now for what that’s worth.
We have garden areas around our house in the middle of the city. I took a couple of quick photos this afternoon. The wind was blowing like crazy.
My tomato plants have blooms and small tomatoes already.
My wife, Rita, does sculpture in stone. We have her pieces throughout
our garden areas. This particular sculpture was done by her teacher.
We are going to Paris next week to visit sculpture gardens.
I just put in this arbor a month ago. The climbing rose has bloomed
already, but next year it should be spectacular.
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Here’s something we have that’s native in eastern US that looks similar–Black cherry (Prunus serotina). Ours is deciduous.
Maybe your mystery plant is in the same genus. I did a search on Prunus and evergreen but couldn’t find anything I could make sense out of.
http://www.duke.edu/~cwcook/trees/prse.html
This was fun! I miss my hort classes.
When you get a chance, I hope you’ll post some photos!
Does she ever do sculptures with hypertufa (a cement and peat moss mix-- it’s much softer than stone)?
The blossoms are nearly identical actually. Maybe they are deciduous and it just didn’t get cold enough here for them to shed? It’s colder winters in Maryland than here I think. Last winter it didn’t get much below freezing and didn’t linger around there too long either.
Another possibility is Bird Cherry, which is more native to this area.
Nope, not bird cherry. That also is deciduous and the leaves aren’t nearly as shiny as the ones in my back garden.
We use to really garden. One year we put out so much we ended up sending stuff to the local farmers market. But, for the last few years we’ve grown nothing. After selling the majority of the farm it was nice to NOT raise anything.
This spring I decided I had to have some tomatoes and green beans. So I built some raised beds in the end of our former dog exercise yard. It had not been used in about five years so the ground was nice and loose. I robbed some old poplar boards off the old chicken house(it hasn’t been used in at least 20 years) and got some good compost to mix with the clay. Here’s the result so far with NO rainfall , in fact we’ve had the driest spring since they started keeping records in the thirties.
as usual click thumbnails for a better look-
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I have worked on my flowers, trying to give them a drink every few days and they are struggling, poor little things-
Here’s the stuff to the left of the front walk
The large bushes (one’s spirea I don’t know about the other) are original to the house so they’ve seen many generations of our family come and go) I planted a bleeding heart that’s coming back after the dog’s decided to " waller" it out last fall, some hosta and a potato vine and petunia. There’s some wild strawberries under the bush too. I laid the brick walks last spring but as you can see I have yet to finish them. Oh and a wonderful Skye graces the steps.
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Here’s the right side of the front porch plus 17yr old blue heeler and former cow dog extrordinare. More hosta, spirea, dark potato vine, petunia and stuff in the smaller planter. I just put down compost for the second time this spring on all of this.
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My two hollyhocks- they just flowered yesterday. I transplanted them about 10 days ago. They are my old-fashioned flowers and match my house. 
You know how I am about my house…
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The EVIDENCE of our mysterious critter that has destroyed so many of my plants. Yes, it’s still around. These holes were dug last night.
GRRRR I tell you I need some younger outside dogs!
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Caroluna, I envy you your beautiful wisteria. Mine was loaded with little blossom “pods” when we got our last late deep freeze and snow. Mine has just now started putting out greenery to replace everything that was killed by the cold. I wasn’t sure if it was even going to survive. All the blossoms on the friut trees and everything else was frozen too. (you can just make out our nearest neighbors in the background. I love that they are so far away.
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growing the world’s largest pumpkin and watermelon breen, purple carrots, heirloom brandywine tomatoes, and the hottest hobenero peppers.
Because of school I had to scale back the veggie garden this year. Mostly I transplanted perennials out of a small bed overgrown with spearmint to the veggie area, along with starting a few cuttings.
Around 25 Tomatoes: Mortgage Lifter, Cherokee Purple, Arkansas Traveler, Green Zebra, Riesentraube and Large Red Cherry.
Swan Gourds.
70+ strawberries.
A Golden Tiara Hosta and or 7 offsets.
A few Butter-and-Eggs (wild snapdragons).
10 cuttings of curly willow.
A tricolor sage and a bronze fennel that I picked up on sale, some lemon balm that volunteered from plants I grew a couple years ago, plus a sorrel plant that I divided into 4 new plants. I’ve also seeded some purple basil, summer savory, rosemary, oregano, thyme, chives and garlic chives and bunching onions.
I also have a little grove of trees out front, most notably is a massive 90’ triple-trunk cottonwood. To maintain the area (we don’t want to hit some of the exposed roots and damage the tree) I’ve been underplanting mostly with native shade-plants. Native dogwood, wood fern, pennyroyal, and trilliums, a few bleeding heart and columbine. I also have a few oriental lillies and daylillies and iris in there too, plus blackberry lillies and sweet peas and pinks and am hoping the vinca minor will make a nice groundcover.
It’s wonderful to hear these descriptions. I’m getting all inspired!
Cowtime-- I didn’t realize how bad of a drought it was out your way. I just took a look here…
http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
We’re in MD and we’re getting good rain this year. I just sort of assumed it was that way for everybody :slaps hand on forehead :
Now please, all you gardeners who have experience with things in the squash family.
How do you deal with squash bugs? I’m desperate!
Do you mean squash borers?
Having not had trouble with squash borers (knock on wood) I can’t vouch for this from personal experience, but I did hear of it from an organic gardener/author with lots of good advice and many years experience with squash.
His advice was to allow the squash vines to make contact with the ground in multiple places rather than mulching underneath or trellising. The vines will grow roots at many places along their length (I know that part for a fact) and thus borer damage to any one section of the vine isn’t likely to do major damage.
Of course, if the borers bring in a disease from someone else’s garden that’s another story…
I just Googled 'em and this is the first entry that came up
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2141.html
The squash bug is one of the most common and troublesome pests attacking squash and pumpkin plants. Both nymphs and adults suck
I agree 
Here’s the rest of the quote
sap from the leaves and stems, apparently at the same time injecting a toxic substance into the plant causing a wilting known as Anasa wilt of cucurbits. This closely resembles bacterial wilt, a true disease. After wilting, vines and leaves turn black and crisp, and become brittle. Small plants are killed entirely, while larger plants have several runners affected. Squash bugs are often found in large populations, congregated in dense clusters on vines and unripe fruits. Sometimes no fruits are formed.
Here’s a great picture.
Izzy, if you’re reading, hide your eyes!!
note, really they’re about as long as your fingernail.
http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/IMG/cucurbits/SqBadbig.jpg
