I'm One Hellava Gardener

 Well, maybe I'm not.

I don't think I did much gardening last summer and I don't know why. Covid? I don't think Covid was loitering around in my garden, so it couldn't have been that.

Anyway, this year I decided that my so-called perennial garden should actually look like one and I've been wandering around in it, trying to identify what I've planted in the past. I have lots of mystery plants.

Anyone know what this is? Anyone? I sure don't. I found lots of loose labels scattered around, but I couldn't match them to any plants, so I still have lots of puzzles to either solve or ignore.

This label (upside down, sorry, Blogger is misbehaving today) is for a rose.  Queen Elizabeth. I don't know how it got on this plant but this is definitely NOT a rose.

It's clearly a blueberry plant, although I didn't realize it until I saw these little beginnings of blueberries.  I knew that I had planted one in the past, and here it is! Surprise-I thought the deer had eaten it.

Here is an existing rose plant.  I told you I was a good gardener.

I had lots of peony plants that did nothing this year and I think it's from lack of sun so we will move them.  These poor, bedraggled peonies. (Sideways because ...Blogger, and it will only allow me to have text in the center now.)

And, bonus!  If you've ever wondered why a Tulip Poplar tree is called that, here is one of the flowers that fall in the spring.  Very much like a tulip.  

 

We went to a garden show two weekends ago for inspiration and we did see some pretty gardens, but this was my favorite find. There was no For Sale sign on it, so it can't be mine, but I love it. Beautifully restored, better restored than my garden is so far.

A Rosebush by Any Other Name

might be a blueberry bush? 

Yup.

Remember last year? When deer ate my roses and my blueberry bush? No? Well, they did. 

However, a couple of weeks ago I found a bush growing that looked for all the world like a blueberry bush---but it had this tag on it:

Queen Elizabeth?  A rose?


I kept watching and watching and last week, I found these:

Self-proclaimed gardening genius that I am, I identified these as blueberries, NOT roses!

I don't know why the rose tag is on my blueberry bush. 


And I don't know why I HGTV hasn't contacted me about developing my own gardening show...  

Hope Springs Eternal

at least among gardeners in the spring (hahaha). THIS will be the year I have the flowers/vegetables/fruits I dream of, say all of us.

And so I must be an optimist. After years of drought, a broken ankle (no gardening), a broken wrist (no gardening), last year I tried again. No drought, no broken bones, but, OMG---deer!!! They ate everything, even rose bushes and they have thorns on them. Ouch! Wouldn't you think?

But this year I'm off again, to the nursery. I bought flowering perennials and I just put them in the ground. Our last freeze date is April 15th, so I'm early, but I figure that perennials are tough. Persist, perennials!!! (please don't die)

I had everything I needed, including my gawjus garden boots. It's beautiful out and it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so perfect timing.

I even planted purple coneflowers!

And that is proof of my optimism; a gardening friend, who is a way better gardener than I am, and who worked at a really good nursery, told me that, "If you can't grow coneflowers, we take away your trowel." Well, I have had coneflower plant after coneflower plant die on me, year after year. I can't find my trowel from last year, so maybe someone DID take it away. Hah! I bought another even BETTER one and I love it.

Best trowel ever!  Soil Scoop by Garden Works, Bellevue, WA

It is really curved well, has notches on the sides that make digging really easy, and I can scarify the root systems well with it. (Scarify is a word my daughter taught me, meaning that you sort of pull the roots apart so they don't continue to grow in the shape of the original container. I think she was watching a lot of Martha Stewart at the time she learned this.) Maybe you already knew the word. I did not.

So now I wait and watch. Last year I briefly tried netting until I was warned that the netting could trap birds in it. It also allowed vining weeds to twine up and through the netting and into the rose plants. I tried helium balloons. I tried cotton wadding that was soaked with smelly stuff and then attached with bread ties to the plants. 

And the deer ate my whole garden.

But THIS year? THIS year? As doG is my witness, if those deer show up, I'll, I'll, I'll, well...I don't know what I'll do.  

Cry? 

RIP

Markers from roses long gone

I have always thought that I was a fairly good gardener:  flowers and shrubs my specialty.  But I was just outside pruning overgrown plants and found way too many corpses of plants past.  

In my defense, I broke my ankle early last fall and then broke my wrist early this spring. No gardening for me. In the previous years, I really did try to keep things going, but we had multiple years of drought and then last summer, I swear that ALL it did was rain.  

Also, we drastically changed the conditions in the backyard when we had six 30-40-foot Leyland Cypress removed a few years ago. We had NO sun in the backyard before we took them down and they were dying from the bottom up so they were no loss in any way.

Man climbs tree.  Man cuts tree.

This morning while I was pruning the lilac bush, which, unlike nearly everything else, has done really well here, I found TWO rose bushes tucked under it.  I won’t move them until the fall, but for now, I spread some fertilizer and systemic insecticide on them, watered them in, and I’ll keep track of them. Getting some sun should help too, now that the lilac is not blocking their sun.

It's Alive!!!  Really, it is.

It's dead.  Really, really dead.

AND, here are the other failures:

• Japanese Iris:  a few spindly leaves, no flowers
• Gardenia:  one and one-half flowers
• Purple Coneflowers:  nothing, not even leaves.  I was once told by a gardening expert (Hi Sue!) that anyone who can’t grow coneflowers will have her trowel confiscated.  I’m waiting for the authorities to show up.
• Hydrangeas:  no flowers
• Daylilies:  a few have returned, but most are missing.  

RIP indeed.

I did think we had one success in the yard, this pretty box turtle in our pond.

He had been in the pond for a couple of weeks and we thought that he liked---no, LOVED---being there. But Alas and Alack!!! We contacted a friend who is a retired UGA professor and nature expert, and also called an animal rehab staff member at the Chattahoochee Nature Center and both said that box turtles live on land, not in water. So either someone put him in there, thinking that’s where he should be, or he got in and couldn’t get out. The rehab worker at the Nature Center said to take him out and put him in some nearby shrubs for cover.  Ideally, he should go to within one-half mile of where he hatched, but since we have no idea where that might be, just out of the pond will have to do.

Bon Voyage, Turtle!  We scarcely knew yeeee. 

The rest of you plants, shape up or else.

Or else what???  

Lawn??? I hope not.  I'm not good at lawn either.

Peonies!!!

There is no better day in the garden for this amateur gardener than the one when I can go outside and cut peonies from my very own yard. And this is the first time in three years I've had any; they just didn't do much during the three-year drought.

Peonies and a rose? Perfect!!!

Gardens in a Time of Drought

(with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez )

I live in a suburb outside of Atlanta, Georgia. We have been in a drought for several years, but last year and this have been the worst of it so far. Last summer we weren't allowed to water outside at ALL, except with water saved from the showers indoors---water that runs while we wait for hot water. There was even controversy over that because some people thought that using that water in the yard kept it from going back into the water supply via the sewer system. But that's all the water we had for outside use.

This summer, even though the drought has not eased, we are allowed to water three times a week, for twenty-five minutes each time, using a hand-held, automatic shut-off nozzle attached to a hose. Woo hoo! We can do this until ten in the morning.

If we want to install a pool, we may fill the pool. If we have a pool, we may top it off throughout the summer. If we have landscaping professionally installed, we may water it for a month. This allows pool and landscaping businesses to survive. But if we have---and I do---nearly 20 year-old landscaping---tough. I understand this, I really do. I've been to Lake Lanier and seen how terribly low it is. It is just so frustrating to watch plants wither and die. Last year nothing died, but this year things are on their way out. My azaleas didn't bloom this year and are now wilted. Daylilies, which are tough plants and survive neglected along roadsides, did not bloom. My roses are just hanging in, but not flowering. Very large leyland cypresses that give us complete privacy in the back yard are now diseased and will probably fall over in the next ice storm. I think the drought has stressed them beyond the point where they could have remained healthy longer. Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, there are floods! We watch the news and cringe to see floods ruining homes and destroying crops.

Last summer we learned that Atlanta is the only major city in the country to have only one source of water: Lake Lanier. Other cities have multiple sources and thus, have resources to allow them to deal with droughts. Not here. And our always-unhelpful governor, Sonny Perdue, can only think to hold prayer sessions on the steps of the capitol.

Gotta love the "Bible Belt"!