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.