What was I thinking?

Before

My front yard looks so DUMB right now.

After

I'm trying to slowly smother the lawn under my dogwood, in increasing small sections, hoping not to stress out a very old tree. I'd probably be better off using a deep layer of wood chips but I thought that would look weird. So instead I used two smallish cardboard boxes and some yard debris bags to go underneath a layer of compost in this strange pattern. Doesn't that look so much better than a layer of wood chips?

I don't know what I was thinking. I wish I could use a sod cutter but the dogwood roots are just too shallow for it.

That strange half-circle of compost is where a previous owner had put down a circle of bricks to better show off the sewer cleanout that sits in the middle of our lawn. It was planted with daffodils. We removed the bricks and I kept rolling my ankle so I filled it with compost.

In this newly smothered area (from here on out know as "the meadow") I'd like to plant a huge swath of Bouteloua gracilis 'Blonde Ambition', a grass that I saw at Wind Dancer and I'm still kicking myself for not purchasing.

Image source: High Country Gardens

The good news is that High Country Gardens was purchased by American Meadows so their wonderful stock is still available to us in the event that I can't find this grass locally.

Also in this area (somewhere  . . . ) I'm going to put this baby.

This is a Cistus 'Elma', one of the plants Maurice talked about at the Yard Garden and Patio show. It's evergreen with beautiful red stems and sticky leaves that emit a wonderful fragrance when the sun warms them. So even when it's not covered in beautiful white flowers it still smells good.

Image source: Joy Creek Nursery

It's also drought tolerant and incredibly hardy. And it was $8.50. I'm so excited about this guy.

The bigger picture for this area includes continuing this pathway that goes behind the agave berm . . .

. . . through the meadow, where it will spread out to accommodate a bench or a large boulder or some sort of sitting device under the tree. And the path will continue to the backyard, so you can theoretically do one large loop through both the front and back yards.

The meadow will be expanded with more grasses and drought-tolerant perennials. I want to build up a small hedgerow to the right of the dogwood tree to create a little privacy for the seating area. By the house smaller shrubs and perennials will go in. Behold, my MS Paint skills!

So I have a plan but my neighbors probably can't tell. My hope is that everyone is so distracted by my neighbor's strange burial mounds that they don't even notice my crappy smothering attempts.

I don't know why.

Agave update

Loree recently asked how my agaves were handling their first winter in the ground. They were planted back in May in the berm. I amended the soil with chicken grit and mulched them with gravel.

I'm happy to say that so far they are doing great. No black spots or rot as of yet.

Of course, we have many wet months still to come. My fingers are crossed!

Did I make a terrible mistake?

We've had a tiny dusting of snow and many nights of frost and the castor bean leaves had all shriveled.

People kept telling me it would turn to mush as soon as the temperatures fell but it was still solid as a rock. I pruned off what I could without a hacksaw and left this poor trunk.

Now of course I'm second-guessing this decision. What if it would have survived the freezing cold to rebloom next spring? That's impossible in 8b, right?

I need to get more of these

I planted Festuca glauca 'Golden Toupee' last spring and it didn't do much. It didn't grow at all and it faded to an unremarkable white/blue.

At planting

In August

But now?

In a sea of dead things this little guy is a cheery blast of chartreuse.

I think I'd like to buy 40 more of these. And I'd like to make it grow. Does anyone have this grass? Is it ever going to stretch its legs?

The saddest new planting bed ever

I whined and complained that I wanted rain so the ground would soften. After about five days of heavy rain we got a sun break and I headed out to plant the future meadowscape:

Despite the rain, the ground was still hard as a rock in places. Despite my sincerest desire to not hurt the dogwood, I ran into a lot of roots and might have just said, "Eff it, let's hope it lives." I really hope it lives.

Keeping with the tradition of doing everything wrong, I also planted everything too closely together. I followed Carolyn Kolb's recommendations for planting grasses . . . sort of. She recommends cutting off the bottom 1/2" from nursery starts (my bread knife worked perfectly), roughing up the roots a bit, then giving the grasses a smidge of granular fertilizer and some compost to get them going.

Despite the fact that I've been sitting on these grasses for over a month, I had neither compost nor fertilizer on hand. Fish emulsion a few weeks after planting will have to do.

Everything looks so lame right now but I'm hopeful it will look great come spring. And next fall should be spectacular. I have a mix of switch grass (Panicum virgatum 'Shenandoah'), Pennisetum 'White Lancer' (Pennisetum macrourum), and little bluestem grasses (Schizachyrium scoparium 'Blue Heaven'), plus a fountain grass for good measure (Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Redhead'). This is part of the master plan that Scott drew up. Hopefully I won't screw it up too much. I need to smother more lawn so I can fit in the rest of the grasses and plants I have planned.

The inspiration for this planting scheme was a photo by Pam Penick, located here. Large swaths of different colored grasses will be intermixed with some bright drought-tolerant perennials. My goal is to water this once a week or less, once established.

I'm trying to tell myself that this will grow and look okay but I always doubt my spacing. But hey, this looked lame once, too.

The saddest marigolds in all the land

Some of the plants are having a harder time with the rain than others.

No Day of the Dead garlands for me.

Garden bloggers' bloom day October 2012

The rains are finally here! Not everyone is happy about it but I'm selfish and sick of watering the garden. I'm also eager to finally get the ground softened so I can plant these guys:

I snapped most of these last week, right before the rain kicked in.

Salvia 'Black and Blue'

Mexican milkweed Asclepias curassavica

Greg's father gave us what he dubbed "screaming orange" crocosmia in July. They got in the ground late so they bloomed late . . . I wish I could do that every year. They are so hard to photograph but they are the most fantastic yellow-orange-red combo.

NOID Crocosmia

The yellow Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' and orange Zauschneria californica 'Wayne's Select' are still blooming like crazy.

Okay, this isn't a bloom so much as a fruit, but my creeping snowberry (Symphoricarpos mollis) is gorgeous right now.

Symphoricarpos mollis

Agastache 'Ava'

NOID canna

Happy bloom day, y'all! Head over to Carol's to see the rest of the show.

It's still growing.

Last week was windy. All that wind really fluffed up my castor bean plant, causing it to lose some height but gain some width. 

No joke, it's as wide as my Honda is long.

But I'm more excited because my Mahonia media 'Arthur Menzies' put on about 8 inches of growth overnight.

Grow, baby, grow! That castor bean is going to die soon and I'll have a big gaping hole that you need to fill.

Officially ready for rain, damn it.

Guys, I'm so sick of watering the garden. I'm sick of sunshine and warm weather and the hard rocky soil that prevents me from putting my new grasses in the ground.

OH I KNOW. I know. I should shut up.

I just want three days of light but steady rain, enough to recharge the ground a bit. I'd also like to test out our new gutter situation. Since I built the rain garden in front the size of an Olympic swimming pool, I've determined that it can handle all the gutter outflow from the front of the house. The only problem is that the gutters on the left side of the front of the house all tip toward a downspout here:

I need the gutters to tip toward the right side of the house, to the downspout that leads to the buried PVC pipe that carries the water to the rain garden. 

So these guys came out, removed the gutters, cut them down, then repositioned them so they tip to the right.

They also removed the downspout there, so we need to do some touch-up painting.

They left the gutters a grimy mess but otherwise everything looks fine. Now I just need some rain to make sure they work properly. I spent the weekend ignoring the sunshine and making a freezer full of empanadas and contemplating sewing projects.

I am ready for cool weather. I'm ready for long sleeves and homemade pasta and movies and pining for spring. Let's do this.

And then we built a giant litter box

I've been plotting what to do with the left side of the front yard, under the dogwood tree.

And by "I've been plotting" I mean that I emailed Scott and asked him if he'd design a grass/meadowscape for me. And because he is awesome, he agreed. He drew up an incredible plan that incorporated drought tolerant grasses and wildflowers, all in the color scheme I wanted. And then he gave me a bunch of seedlings. And now Greg is concerned because I natter on about Scott all the time. And Scott will probably stop answering my emails after reading this, because I'm bordering on swimfanning here.

Thank goodness I never got an itch to plant this side of the yard before because I was reading a recent issue of Fine Gardening and they mentioned that dogwoods have shallow root systems that resent being disturbed. I won't be able to use a sod cutter, sadly. I'll have to move more slowly than I'd like, slowly smothering the lawn and using very small plants so I don't cause any damage to my 75 year old tree.

I started with the area outside the drip line, where we'd had our giant dirt pile all spring:

It was weedy but still mostly clear of sod. I worked with my half moon edger (that Greg sharpened with his Dremel tool) for an hour or so and made slow progress.

Then Greg came out with the pickax and cleared the whole area in about 15 minutes while I fretted, "Watch for roots!"

We ran into one tiny root so I didn't worry too much about piling the mulch on comically high.

Next Scott and I are going to make a trip to Wind Dancer and do some shopping, then I'll have to carefully start to smother another section of the lawn. I was going to use a method described here where you use 8" of wood chips to smother the sod. It's supposed to be more effective than smothering with cardboard and it supposedly maintains better soil health, BUT. What do I do with all those wood chips afterward? I don't want wood chips in my landscape. I supppose I could keep moving them around as I smother new parts of the lawn but that seems like a pain in the ass.

Any input from anybody who has removed sod under a fussy tree would be welcome.

In the meantime we're enjoying our giant cat toilet.

Summer in the garden

Most of the late summer action is going on in the front yard. Things are finally filling in. The castor bean is almost as tall as me (5'6"). I've given it ample water and fish emulsion, and of course the weather cooperated. I didn't think I believed in annuals but I have been converted. Totally worth the money.

Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' and Zauschneria californica 'Wayne's Select'

Sedum 'Matrona'

Happy agaves

This blue alkanet (Anchusa azurea 'Alkanet') may have been planted too late in the season to get blooming out of it this year (come on, Indian summer!) but I really like the form of the foliage. It's so cheerful.

Agastache 'Ava' has not disappointed. The form is incredible and I never have to water it. My only wish is that the color was hotter.

In the backyard it looks like we *might* get mature figs this year. Everybody cross all your fingers!

I tucked some agave pups into the wheelbarrow planter. So far, so good.

This sedum combo was sort of an accident and I'm digging it.

Left to right: Sedum 'Bertram Anderson, Sedum oreganum, NOID sedum

In bummer news, the stalks of Sedum 'Frosty Morn' that I Chelsea chopped didn't bloom. The long floppy stems are blooming but they look really leggy. I might chop all of them next year, since I prefer their foliage. Has this happened to anyone else? All of the other sedums that I pinched back bloomed normally.

Sometimes, when your boyfriend is very mischievous, he'll leave these creepy bamboo roots that look like creatures from a Guillermo del Toro movie lying around and scare the shit out of you. Punk.