Planting, Ranting

So, I've done a bunch of work in my garden that I can't wait to tell you about, even though the photos won't really do it justice until tomorrow. I was feeling headachey this afternoon and didn't feel like sleeping yet, so I went to the garden to work instead. I spent hours out there!

This first one, though blurry, gives the nicest sense of the color of the new plants, lovely bright native plants I found by the roadside and transplanted to this spot across the way, which up until yesterday was a mess of buckthorn plantain (Plantago lanceolata), crabgrass and other weeds.

Now, though, it's got butterfly weed, wild phlox (I think that's what that pink one is), black-eyed susan, echinacea (in the back toward the top, not blooming yet), lilies (some orange variety), and a variety of succulents I haven't identified. I also planted seeds for lupines and from some kind of deep bluish/purplish flowering plant Umlud and I came upon on a walk in one of the Ann Arbor parks, in the area between the echinacea and the other plants. We'll see what the mystery plant is eventually if the seeds take. Perhaps Caryopteris? I do love a good mystery.

I've been painstakingly transplanting the lilies from farther back on the garden plot, beneath a lilac tree, in an area so overrun with mosquitoes, it's impossible to be back there to enjoy them. They're not happy with the transition at this point, but I think I'll have beautiful blooms next year, once they've had a chance to settle into their new locale.

The succulents have been growing down my neighbor's rock garden on the other side, and creeping into the bed beneath, so I'm transplanting them from there and from where it's taking over chunks of the lawn. There are three different kinds, apart from the purslane (more on that below!)

I also planted morning glory along the chain-link fence a few days ago, along with sweet-pea. If I have my way, the whole place will be exploding with blooms pretty soon, and the exposed metal fence will be a distant memory. I already see the morning glory rising out of the earth and spreading its leaves like little green angel wings. Tomorrow I'll get some more shots of them, and the amazingly quickly growing zucchini plants, and the sweet-peas that are starting to pop up on the other side of the garden.

Below, with the terrible lighting of my camera flash, you can see the pattern of the rock garden with succulents that I've started, dangerously into the territory of the 40-foot area zoned for our subdivision's road, but probably safe unless two cars meet on our gravel road and are in too much of a hurry to take care. There's a margin of at least a couple feet between where the actually used road ends and the little rocks & plants start. But, folks around here in the country have a tendency to drive onto the edge of the lawn without a great deal of concern, when there's not room for the two SUVs on the small gravel roads. One of the oddities of this part of the country. Anyhoo, below, that's what I've got on the side.

And below, this is what I've done in the upper area, leading toward the chain-link fence.

Unfortunately that little wooden retaining wall is coming apart; I'll have to mention that to my landlords and see if they want to do anything about it. It's not holding back a lot of soil, so they may not be too concerned.

And, I've been doing a lot of thinking about weeds and weeding. So I wrote a dogmatic little piece tonight.

Week 2: A long day's work in the garden.

I'm being rewarded with my first big bloom on a plant I bought with no sign of flowering: a deep orange-colored flower on the Maltese Cross I planted (above).

The other plants in that bed are doing fine, growing slowly but surely.

At the end there (above), you can see the cilantro and parsley are holding their own. I think they're not liking the hot days we've had intermittently, but I spread the bed with a bit of compost and manure and cocoa bean mulch after taking these photos, so I hope that will help all the plants along.

In the front of that bed, the phlox and zinnia seeds I planted seem to slowly be peeking out:

Also pretty happy is the hydrangea plant, and beside it, the butterfly bush, below:

The purslane bed on the right is doing splendidly:

The one on the left (below) is still growing up from tiny little plants.

In that same bed, the mint is much happier:

Behind them, the eggplants are growing slowly. I saw a little purple bloom on one of them, but sadly I knocked it off after I took the photo while I was watering.

The tomatoes seem to be growing slowly. I hope the compost/manure mix and mulch will help them a lot too.

The herbs generally seem pretty happy.

The only one that really doesn't look too happy is the lemon verbena, there between the basil plants and the variegated sage above. I'm not sure what is going wrong there.

The pineapple sage and horehound above seem to be growing steadily, and the chocolate mint is thriving.

My fight with the "lawn demons" continues, though. Since they weedwhacked the best bed of mint I had, below, I surrounded that one too with a ring of rocks (below). I would have done before, but they got to me before I had a chance to, while I was in Ann Arbor at the end of the long power outage. I'm mad, but I know that the mint will come back, probably even hardier than before.


I'm taking similar precautions along the border, where I've also planted mint. Now I'm experimenting with other kinds of materials, including tree branches and broken pottery, since I'm not sure I have quite enough stones to cover every boundary clearly.

Despite their best efforts, the mint still is growing nicely there, and I don't think it will be long before I really do have a nice (edible) border covering that ugly PVC.

That other variety of mint is also thriving in the little bed at the front of the walkway:


The walkway is also improving in appearance as the purslane and that other succulent fill in a bit. Some are still pretty small, but I expect that they'll grow in time. Their older siblings are already looking nice and bushy.


And despite my having thinned it considerably, the purslane is still growing in in patches of grass where the sod is thin.

In the garden plot, I know I have some more work I ought to be doing. Things are dry, and I know they want more organic material to thrive. It's hard, though, because the mosquitoes have been so thick over there, and every time I start working the soil, they're on top of me and I have a couple dozen new bites almost immediately. The peas, especially, have been suffering.


Still, there's been some growth. The okra plants below are shooting up.

And the vines of the squash and melon plants are moving along.

The melon plants have begun to flower.

The beans are growing (below), though I think a rabbit or other critter may have gotten to one of them.

After taking the photos, I did a ton more work, adding compost/manure almost everywhere, working it into the soil where I could, and adding topsoil in some places too, and cocoa bean mulch in some. I also did a BUNCH more planting, including Oriental poppy, larkspur, sunflower, more zinnia, marigold, black-eyed Susan, purple cornflower, snapdragon, lettuce, spinach, carrot, radish, zucchini, redbud, strawberry, sweetpeas, and mixed wildflowers.

I'll update ASAP to show how things are getting along.

Living "sturdily and Spartan-like"

Well, I spent nearly the entire day in the garden, which was exhilarating, and also a bit exhausting. I'm having a blast with it, remembering the joy of working the soil, interacting with plants, and getting a bit of exercise, sun, and fresh air.

It's also both rewarding and humbling, seeing the landscape transform with your labor, and also seeing how much depends on time, weather, and so many other factors you have no control over. And, realizing how, even if you push yourself, there's only so much you can do in a day. It cultivates a sense of acceptance of both my strengths and my limitations that feels very healthy, very connected to what I feel is fundamental to being human.

I am sitting here after my long day's work and a simple supper of fresh salad, homemade rye bread, olives, and salty Bulgarian feta cheese, and I just poured myself a cup of Moroccan-style tea made with green tea my brother carried home from Taiwan and fresh mint I clipped just moments ago in the garden. It smells positively glorious.

As far as the garden work goes, the biggest part of the labor was the process of ripping up grass and weeds out of the area of the pathway (this is what it looked like before). I was inspired to try to expand the purslane planting into this area, to see if it would cooperate as a groundcover. Given that the soil is very shallow and comprises more compost than real soil, it's not a fabulous place for planting. But since the purslane had already started cropping up there a little bit, and since the plant only develops a fairly shallow root system, I thought it might be worth a try to get more to grow between the paving stones.

I almost finished; I just have a few more weeds to pull, and I obviously need to clean off the paving stones and compost the remaining grass pullings.

Above: Here's one spot of the newly replanted purslane, which I was hunting all over the garden amidst the sad, anemic, dry grass today.

While I was at it, I also transplanted some succulents from a patch at the far end of the lawn into the entrance to the path (above), and into the bed beside it, with the Moroccan mint plant (below). I also marked this little bed (below) with stones, once again against the lawn demons.


And, also, between the bricks outlining the herb garden (above and below). I thought if they got covered a bit by succulents, perhaps it would look a bit prettier. I don't love the delineation of the space with the bricks, but it prevents misunderstandings with the lawn maintenance guys who have a tendency of getting on the riding mower and destroying everything in its path.
Finally, I also did some weeding in the purslane bed next to the steps. I think I'll harvest a portion of the largest plants already in the next week to encourage root development on the plants. And to try my new crop! Hooray . . .