Tuesday, April 24, 2012

'Slovak Prince'


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'Slovak Prince' is one of the last additions to my collection of irises, I haven’t purchased any new ones in almost three years. I’m going to be on the lookout for some beauties though. I think it’s just gorgeous. I can’t believe this particular bloom has last for so many days…

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This iris was introduced in 2002. It ranges in height from 24 to 36 inches. It has beautiful purple falls, with a gold beard and rim. All the information I’ve read on it says it blooms mid season, but it always blooms early for me.

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Hope everyone has a great week. :0)

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

In The Garden 041712


I hope everyone has had a good week so far. I walked around and snapped a couple of photos of a few things in the garden. The first is a photo of my Grandmother’s rose. She told me once it had been passed down for several generations. I have no idea what the name of it is. When I dug it up from her yard after she passed it actually had a root on it almost the size of a Nerf football. It was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.

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This next plant is ‘Anthony Waterer’ spirea. I think it has a beautiful bloom. Such a pretty color, don’t you think?

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Every now and then it puts out a variegated shoot and I’ve often wondered if I rooted it, would it make a completely variegated shrub. An entirely ivory colored shrub would be incredible. I know it would need protecting from the sun. I might just give it a try and see what happens.

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‘Beverly Sills’ is putting on a good show. It’s always the fourth bearded iris to bloom in my garden. I lost a huge stand of them to iris borers last year. As a matter of fact I lost a lot of gorgeous irises to those nasty rascals.

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Enjoy the upcoming weekend. I’m having a special guest from out of town and something tells me I will be buying plants. So maybe I’ll have something new to put in the garden and share with you guys. The photo below is ‘Stella De Oro’. See you soon!

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Saturday, April 14, 2012

A Job Well Done!


Hi there everyone, welcome to the new blog! I’m so happy you decided to follow me and continue reading my posts. It was just time for a move to a new location. Change is good and I’m embracing it these days.

I’ve been busy as a little bee in the garden trying to catch things up from the neglect it’s received the past two years. It has actually been 4 years since some the beds had mulch put in them so I thought that would be as good a place as any to start. Really what I wanted to do was to start buying plants to fill the holes where the heat killed so many things the past two seasons. The logical part of me says you need to put down new mulch to help conserve water, protect the plant roots and make the beds look better. So the mulch won out. I’ve just got to remember I can’t do it all at once and I have limited financial resources so I just have to do a little at the time. Before, all my extra funds were put into the garden, now a BIG chunk of them is sitting in the driveway with black racing stripes and another portion is used being a social butterfly. :0)

I like to use the mini pine nuggets that are put out by a company named Evergreen. You can find them at Lowes. It’s inexpensive and it good mulch. When they delivered it to the house it was stacked so high on the pallet I had to get a ladder from the guy next door just to get the top bags off. I was so excited to get started. This is something that has needed to be done for a long time now. As soon as the mulch was delivered I was ready to get going.

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I had to take the wheel barrow to put some air in the tire. It’s been sitting for a couple of years so it was just as flat as it could be. I learned a long time ago the value of one of these things in the garden.

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I managed to get about half the garden done the first day and let me tell you, I was whooped! Even using a wheel barrow it was hard work. I put out about 1500 pounds and I said okay it’s time to stop. I was stumbling all over myself and starting to trip! I poured out a half a bag in the center bed and that was all she wrote. But you know what? That’s really a great feeling, to be totally exhausted from hard work and know you’ve done a good job.

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Look how much better the lines of the paths pop with new mulch in the beds. Before I put in the new mulch I also retrenched about 95 percent of the borders. That really helped the appearance too. Seeing how good everything looked the next morning I was ready to get started again.

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I made a pretty good dent in this pallet for the first day. Don’t you think? The good thing about it being so high was I didn’t have to lift those heavy wet bags, I just had to drag them off the stack. That saved my back a lot of work.

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By the second day I had a system figured out and things started moving much faster. I figured out it was much easier to start on the outside of the beds and work inward verses from the center out. Too bad I couldn’t figure that out a little earlier in the day the previous morning.

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Yaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!! An empty pallet! I never would have dreamed that my back would have held up for me to move literally thousands of pounds of mulch in two days by myself. That back surgeon did a really good job on me. Don’t worry though, I don’t act carelessly, I’m very cautious with my back.

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Things look a hundred times better in the garden now, just from new mulch. I have several bare spots in the paths that need to grow back in from an over growth of weeds the past two years. But I’ve been spraying and I’m going to fertilize and I think I have the weeds on their way out. I’ll have beautiful grass again in no time.

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