Garden Projects #12

Good work, Marilyn! I'm sure it will start to look good before long. I raked and pruned today, and I could say the same, about our endless yard cleanup.

My friend will be cooking for Thanksgiving this year, so that was a load off. More time for yard work. My beds just eat up mulch like they are quicksand.

About 2/3 of the way through cutting back the siberian iris foliage. The leaves from the trees are making leaves of iris difficult to grab.

Celeste, your river of blue is going to look very nice, even if it isn't on a large scale. That big open yard shows a lot of potential. Just think of all the gardens you can put in there.

Jumper, I had a while lilac bush blow down during Sandy. Good thing there Are lots more.

Just did some mowing at my place this weekend. Helped out a friend and her daughter plant 35 daylilies yesterday, and did some weeding for her. Her health is not good these days.

Karen

There is no way I could get that much beauty in the blue scilla carpet/river. There must be a trick to keeping them so thick.

I think its a great idea even if there is some photo enhancement with Photoshop.
I know sillia multiply and even grape hyacinth but there must have been some bare spots.

Pixie, how did I not know you had a new house? Great looking spot with ever so much virgin land. The house looks so inviting and tranquil. Remember that great River of Muscari up in NE Harbor that contained 15,000 planted at one time. It must be an ocean by now. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/730772/?hl=watersedge

sorry to hear that, Karen. I just need to prune some of this one.

hi patti - glad to see you back, had been wondering how you where with the last two storms.

rescued 4 more frogs yesterday afternoon and finished the raking - on the downside i might have burned out my small spare lawnmower with a bag that i used to chop up leaves to spread in the veggie garden - still starts, the self-propelled drive is not working and it smokes a bit - will have to inspect it closer next weekend.

Thanks everyone, I hope it comes out half way decent since I did it with plans brother Brian and I had drawn up in July. :( I planted it in his honor although I only used 500 muscari bulbs and made a small stream instead of a river! LOL
It is flanked by 211 tulips, 65 mixed daffodills and 50 dutch iris's.

Thank you Patti, I do remember Watersedge from Northeast Harbor. I didn't do an 1/8 of what he planted but I hope to do something like that on a large scale someday. As far as the virgin land, I may have to have wha=Bill come help me. ^_^

that may cost = LOBSTAH :)

i think it will look great celeste!

I cant wait to see it.

Lobster it is, and i'll even throw in rocks!

someone light will also need to walk on my back at the end of the day to get it straight again

Wha, Thanks , the storms were minor though some damage from Sandy to some docks and a couple of beach front houses and some shore erosion. We had more sustained wind in the Nor'easter, but no damage to us. We just lots of small stuff strewn about and lots of leaves. The wind dumped some boats on shore, so DH is out today with another salvage boat surveying the situation before trying to pull them off. I hope they can get them off before they get more damaged and that they have good insurance who are willing to pay the piper. I missed the yard clean up as I went to Boston on Thurs as soon as we had the ferry running again after a couple of days of no off island planes or boats. I didn't come back until last night to find DH had done all the clean up. Nice. I was like a blister, I showed up when the work was all done. I wish we had a small mower just for shredding leaves as you do. Hope you can fix it. Smoke sounds like a bad sign. You have way more leaves than us. I was thinking of getting a leaf shredder, but then you just have to store it for most of the year. We have an attachment on the blower, but it is rather limited in what it can do.

I hope Cindy doesn't see any of those frogs as I know she hates them. I adore them. DH has trapped and moved to some very nice conservation land very far away 3 squirrels so far this fall. We don't need them eating my bulbs nor teasing the dogs which they seem to do with great glee. I think they also eat out of dog food bowls when it is out on the porch as do the birds. Our dogs only nibble a bit of their kibble a little bit at a time during the day and never wolf it down when we feed them which is kind of weird for dogs. So there is usually some food in their bowls during the day for the birds who seem to love it and who I am happy to feed, but not the squirrels.

Out to finish up the fall clean up and then it is going to be bulb planting time this week. Patti

good to hear the update patti - i also use the mower for the back of the yard that is a combo of crab grass and other assorted weeds so they are not spread into the lawn from debree on the under carriage of the mower - hoping it is only the drive stuck and some new oil will solve the problem - if not I will get it repaired or pick up a cheap one next year.

only moving the frogs because i can't see them living through the winter with no mud to dig into.

glad that you are safe Patti.

I wish I had been abole to finish cutting siberian foliage yesterday. the rest will have to be done when it is cold as it is raining off & on. DH says that it isn't too bad, but i don;t see him raking leaves today.

Glad that you had only minor damage, Patti. Happy you are moving frogs, Bill, but it sounds very funny! Pixie, even a small stream of the bulbs will look nice, & will remind you of Brian...a nice memorial.

Can't wait to see it Celeste

So glad to here you came thru the storm ok, Patti

I have some bruises from hauling all the branches to the curb

flowAjen, I think you got it way worse then us. Hope you didn't loose anything special. Breaks my heart to see the shore looking like New Orleans which still has whole areas looking the way it did right after Katrina except for the tall weeds. Hope that doesn't happen up north.

No curb here so we will burn all the storm damage stuff along with everything we have cut down since last March early in the new year when burning is allowed again. It is a rather sizable pile already, at least one full day of burning so far. I have my eyes on lots more clearing around the property to be done this winter, so I think we we have at least 3 days of winter bonfires which I do love.

Lobster for rock throwing and massage sounds like a great swap. Patti

Celeste = light.. perfect back walker!!!

Wha, Nice shot taken in Maine, it deserved the nod . They ended the contest early so I didn't get to vote as I had planned on today. Patti

I only voted birds & moon & sun pictures. Planned to go back today.

thx patti - i was going to vote today too.

Whew got all my bulbs planted, a few plants that were still in pots I got in the ground
Mulched up some leaves and spread on the gardens, removed the arborvitae and dragged it to the curb

Good work, Jen....

Jen, you are ahead of me. I was bad and just placed the 40% off Van Engelen bulb order, so they will all be there next week. I hope I have time to plant them as I am currently in Boston at the pottery studio getting ready for the holiday show and sale and I then I go to Vt for tomorrow for T-day before going back to Island on the 26th after a pit stop back in Boston to load another kiln. Hope we have a sunny few days and I have some energy left. Running on fumes. Patti

Yes, you are busy, busy, but there's a lot of satisfaction when it's done....good luck with the pottery show....

You guys have all been busy, and I've gotten relatively few things done. Tomorrow, while waiting for the turkey to cook, I will be planting the last of my daylilies that need planting. It should be a nice day.

Karen

i took down a couple oaks from the property that abuts us - both were very tall trees maybe 60' and had been bent from the storm last Oct. - one was hanging into the yard at least 40' and it was over a satomi dogwood, forest pansy redbud, an expensive sensu jm, a Frazier fir and assorted bushes.

I had been staring at this for a year trying to figure out how to get it down without damaging anything. After tying it off i thought i had figured it out - not so - i could only get a rope up 25' or so and thought i could just keep pulling the rope to pull the tree from the yard. Well after beginning to cut i realized this tree as just to heavy to pull back at me. Both were the type that shoot up to reach the light and were not to wide.

Too far to turn back and a good hour of tying to figure out what to do - i got the ladder out and from another tree got a second rope around it so that i could pull it from the side and away from my property. With rope strung around a couple trees for added support and tied off I finally was able to bring it safely down on the other side of the wall. I was really suprised I was able bring it down off the property. Not before some very anxious moments, serious consideration to dig up and move the endangered trees, and a bunch of 4-letter word internal insults to myself.

Now they are both firewood for next year.

Wow....scary good, Bill! I keep looking at my maple, & my roof, & shake my head.....

Did you do that by yourself???

yep jen - wife would not have been happy - i made sure there were escape routes and went at it slow when it was close to tipping

a couple weeks back i took a couple really big ones down at our friends where I get my rock now. was a bit nervous about one of them as it was leaning slightly towards her house -tie that one off in the opposite direction and it went down no problem although i did have to finally pull it towards me to get it to drop - plenty of time to get out of the way and i do not think it was tall enough to get to the tree i had it tied off to anyway - still ran out of arms way - wife watching me and her friend watching the tree drop and thinking it was cool.

Wha, congrats, but perhaps, You are a Fool! Sounds very dangerous especially by yourself. Escape route is essential, but having help would have been better. But clever of you to getter done! Beautiful day up here in Vt. Made a big pot of Portuguese kale soup for tonight DH has been out with the dogs climbing around the back hill, but I have been enjoying working on my garden journals. Our dogs found a turkey wing on their walk, but it turns out it was one being raised by our our neighbors that got snatched up by a couple of standard poodles a few days ago that had escaped from their owner and had an early feast. Gobble Gobble. Neighbor not happy. Patti

Uh, oh....I wouldn't have been happy either.......sounds like something my airedales Skip & Jazz would have done....Jazz was always looking up into the trees for turkeys......and one day they drove a deer right at my DH who was walking them in a wooded preserve.....they didn't get it, Thank God!

Geez Bill!

Wow, Bill! Sounds like the kind of thing my brother would do. I'm glad you weren't hurt, and you were able to get the tree to fall where you wanted it.

Karen

Way to go, Bill! Sounds like you thought everything through about the trees. I am wishing we had energy to pull more of the damaged trees down at our neighbors' as you have. We've been lucky that fallen branches haven't broken many of my plantings and that our fence is still intact.

thx rosemary - although "thought" it through was not what happened. as they say "necessity is the mother of invention" and with the possibility of this tree landing on all those plantings it was definitely a necessity :)

Sometimes you have to think about your plants!

Glad it worked out ok Bill.
A nurse I work with, her husband in construction fell off a roof Wed morning, broke his left hip, elbow and wrist, his right pelvis, and his back from coccyx to lumbar region. He was having surgery Wed afternoon, I'm hoping he recovers ok.