I may not have fully appreciated our garden while I was pulling weeds, cutting grass, pruning and tidying, but, looking at this years photos, I can see it did us proud.
The year started with a lot of dead wood – literally. We lost our choke cherry tree and a number of large branches on the honey locust over winter. Adam came to help do some lumberjacking and he and his chainsaw pretty much single handedly reduced the cherry to firewood, and he helped me cut off branches on the honey locust. As usual, the hard part was organizing the debris for removal. Our neighbour lost their large tree in the front as well over winter, so it wasn’t all my fault!
I moved two more roses – another that was getting shaded by a spruce, and one that was too close to a sprinkler head. So far the transplants are doing well, and the Peace rose out front is getting compliments from random passers-by. The carpet roses are an unsung hero of the garden, blooming year after year and just getting an occasional trim and maybe a splash of liquid fertilizer left over from doing the annuals. To make it up to them, I used a photo of one as the feature image on this post!
Again the seeds I took the best care of did the worst, and the back-up spare did best. The clematis that was doing so well was another winter casualty and the only sign of life was a couple of shoots; I couldn’t tell if they were shoots or seeds sprouting at the base. However, the morning glory seed I planted nearby outgrew the clematis and spread through the lilac bushes, pretty spectacularly. Two clematis that emigrated to the border of the Town path outside our property have grown well but failed to bloom so far – and it’s been years now!
The cherry tomato plant produced a steady stream of salad add-ons – the last ripened indoors and were eaten in November!
The coneflowers that I had practically written off flowered quite nicely; the water hyacinths produced a huge volume of leaves and a total of maybe five flowers, which at least beat last year’s total of zero. Pretty much all the annuals that got planted with any expectation of decent sunlight did well, but it’s getting harder to find sunny spots as all the trees (ours and our neighbours’) continue to grow.
I haven’t tried to name any of the plants in the photographs, mostly because I’d have to look up all the names. In case you have difficulty with identifying them all, here’s a hint: there are some extreme close-ups of smaller flowers, like alyssum, pear tree blossom and annuals in the hanging baskets.
December update: one last note on the garden – winter caught me unprepared. I was saving the lawn mower winterizing for a last run around to get the last leaves, and that fine December day never came. C’est la vie!
