Gardening Do's and Don'ts

Having trouble counting those hours in the day ..... hmm let's see, was that 27? That should have provided me the extra time after work for digging the grass roots out of my new bed, but somehow it got dark a few hours early. Ooops, that's a new bed that will require tending, and while working on this one, I was gazing over at the next location I plan to plant in someday. Focus, focus. Do not start 7th new project when there are still 6 in various states of incompletion (is that a word?).

Tilly, I got a car last January to replace my old rust-bucket. I do not plan to ever again haul around open buckets with sea water sloshing around. Your suggestion of covered totes may do the trick when I get the urge to bring barnacles to school so we can view them open up and kick out their little feet to catch plankton.
I hope you are able to find a decent vehicle soon.

Another one: Don't ask other family members which irises they like from the iris co-op. You will end up spending lots more time going over the options and purchase twice as many. But it was fun to look at them together, so maybe it's not a 'don't' after all.

Welcome back Pix, So glad you enjoyed it sounds like a dream for me can just picture it.

Holly, don't forget to do that. I so miss my car, have not found one yet. am using one I do not like its to small LOL. But I did find a mechanic that might be able to fix a car that I just love has been setting for a year, and I want it fixed. I gave up my new deck to fix it.

Steve so you should not yell at your DW its her yard Too, you have to share, if that means she has her area you have yours. Thats how it works here he has his I have mine ( which is 90%) LOL

The Do's and Don't for couples is to share but divide. He do the work and you plant LOL

TILLS! You will never convince me that you have let DH have garden space - he just is allowed to THINK he has garden space!!

Pix, good holiday? I'm going to keep the idea about multiple beds in mind - I am definately struggling. I think I am suffering from Katie's lack of restraint. Hope the holiday was absolutely reviving.

Sofer, you poor man - GET SOME DECENT GLOVES! Callused hands are yucky to hold hands with - (although it might be nice to pick at the crusty bits). go sit in a hot spring and get them rubbed off with a good piece of pumice stone, and then remember to use hand cream. Be nice to your wife. This will not lessen your effectiveness in scaring off bears. But I have to say, the patio/pebble area looks gorgeous, and the self-seededs look wonderful. Well done.

Gosh it is hard to be the only MAN on a garden site. I have given my DW much of my created areas and she suffers generously with envy of my garden sites. So she cuts my delphiniums to the ground in June (as she says dead heading) and the next year when they fail to survive plants something else. My 3 garden areas are all sabotaged and seem to have become hers. It hard to let her have all of the garden. But I suspect all sympathy will be focused in her prefrence of plants.
My Garden last year. And hers this year to follow.

This is this year. Somewhat different. There I feel better complaining. I just have to get used to not having a garden area of my own. Booooo Hoooooo. LOL

Did the pond get removed? I don't see it.

No, sofer, I think you do deserve sympathy.

Sharing gardening when you are so dedicated to it is very difficult, and despite liking both pictures, I do really feel for it being handled differently to how you were imagining it. It is the problem with being so attuned to your space - you've ask another person to come into it, and it does mean accomodating her too. But, hey, I seem to remember the picture you posted last year of your DW's wonderful weeding bottom!! That has to make up for a few lost/changed plants!

The pond is there but not visible the plants placed are invasive and the plan on showing the delphiniums behind and annuals in the foreground are taken over by the invasives. The bulbs placed are not timed to produce a color and shift of seasonal change. My DW is my best friend but does not follow the laws of garden planning. I do love her and needed a place of venting my discouragment. Thank you. Enough said. Me.

I'm old enough to say what I want so---I think your idea for that spot was much better than your DW'.

I do, too. And the pup drinking is a nice touch. ☺

Laws of garden planning?? Have we not been down this road before??

I have limited sympathy for a man who spends so much time kayaking the wilds of alaska and then sends photos of whales to prove it, spending lovely amounts of time in nature's garden. ;)
Okay, I do have SOME sympathy for you having to share garden space with anyone at all, let alone a wife with a creative urge who may not necessarily have read the same rule book you read. Gosh, she probably messes up your stuff all the time! I'm just still stuck on the whole 'rules' idea. Laurie knows my strong feelings about this subject of rules. Just say the word 'rules' to me and I want to run amok, buy plants, put them in in appropriate places, and mix bad colors together.

And both gardens are lovely in their own ways. Maybe you just need to ask her if you cannot have a little piece of garden to call your own??

Oh yes, I forgot to add that I, too, remember the bottom-pinching photo (or whatever) and that lovely smile your wife has for you. How long you been holding this stuff in, Soferdig? Don't you know you must speak up? You're going to create a complex or something!

This message was edited Aug 28, 2008 6:49 PM

No just saying this to my peers here at DG make me love her all the more and I can submit to not having any place to call my own. She is my own and that is all I need. I needed to complain somewhere. If I do it to her she might aggressivly prune something important. LOL

NNOOOOO! Don't let that woman have the pruners!! Complain away!! We're there for you!

Ahhhh . . . Steve - don't you know that your fate is to prepare the bed, but not to plant? Hee hee.

She's a good woman to put up with you and your wandering - and sharing the bed isn't so much to ask (easy for me to say, right - I don't have to share anything, including the chores).

I'm thinking that you two could spend part of the winter doing your planning for the beds together. Each gets to choose a plant - each gets one or two plant vetos. It might be kinda cool!!

And we don't want you to get hurt. :-)

Ahh your wisdom is one of the many joys I have with Karen. I love to plan and share the plan in discussion. It is just that I am a planner and she is a shopper. Opposites attract and I am so blessed that my opposite is her. Thank you for the opportunity to garden and remain with friends who love even one who is a hunter-gatherer, thorn ravaged hands, and loaded with the hormone of intelligence, TESTOSTERONE. lol

Well, we hate to admit it, but we need you all with that crazy hormone to make sure to keep the other wild animals at bay.

I still think you could plan most of the bed and then allow her the "spontaneous" spots in the beds. It's a great challenge - good bones, interesting artistic impressions (that's you) and the SURPRISE!! Where did that come from? (that's her). That's how it works in real life, right?

Ya sure you betcha. I think that it is even better to let her do what she wants and for me to accept it. Beauty in the garden is natural and not designed. I shall remain unattached to the plant and develope the soil and hardscape. I think that she is truely talented and this is her best work. Rocks that we have collected and she has arranged

I do love that bed - I will eventually have one that size if I can keep the Himalayan Blackberries out of it . . .

This is very interesting, I for one am on Pixy side. 'Don't tell me I can't'
This maybe is why we have been together so long, because he knows I will do it anyway LOL so he agrees and finds something else to do and leaves. to the bank, to the store anywhere he can think of. because he can't see what I see. Then he comes back and says Wow. He is no gardener and when you explain, he still don't get until he sees it. Making things he does alright.

Yes Laurie, he has his 10%. Remember the snake "What is it" tread I did. that is his place and only his. I'll take a pic today, and you will see why thats all he gets.

My vac. starts today, last one for the year. Have 5 yards of soil coming and the new bed for the ( I forgot how many) Irises and 10 Dahilas is ready.

Oh yes, telling me I 'can't ' do something is really dangerous. Must have been my mother's fault. LOL!!

Oh yes, soferdig. Testosterone. Ain't it great???

Laurie, this is his space, no more, no less. see how well he takes care of it. But he has all the Honey dos too. LOL
You can see the snakes head, and that is all. only 10%

Butt next pic.

Now Its Is How hard he works for me. such a sweetie. I didn't have to do it.

DEAR DEAR partners - don't you just love them (most of the time).


We had a very exciting morning yesterday - speaking of garden intruders - just before going for my warm-up-the-bones shower I walked over to the windows to survey all that is mine, to watch the graceful, catwalk, movements of four fully grown, gorgeous black cows come striding calmly into the front gardens - you could just about hear them saying "this is lovely, why haven't we been here before, hmmmm, a few cornus alba elegantissma leaves, lovely!! we must get some of these the next time we are shopping" - expletives and commands issued forth from crazed woman gardener, and out we flew to attempt to contain damage, terrier hot on my heels (brave animal) oh, yes, and husband - neighbours called in - corraling with long sticks, many many heavy heavy hoof marks later - cows driven out into centre field. GATES slammed!!! Fence temporarily repaired and cows chased into lower field! And there they must remain until fence repaired properly!!! Thank goodness it happened on a day we were home!! Gorgeous cows, not sensitive to my gardening needs.

OH ROFLOL!!!!! SORRY Laurie, but that is just toooooo funny!!! Can I dare to hope that you were in bathrobe and slippers???

(P.S. - I do hope there was very little damage to the garden..... and the cows.)

No bathrobe, just jamies - crocs are my slippers, and I did take a moment to put the straps over my heels. the funniest thing was, as I was chasing the cows - they running blightly across my newly mulched beds - I RAN AROUND THEM!!! I couldn't believe it, cows walking on them and heres me avoiding walking on them!!

Damage could've been much much worse - some real craters in the beds from the weight, but surprisingly they seem to have missed almost all of the plants.

Oh Laurie, I can just see this, running waving stick, doggie barking, people yelling. Cows mad cause they didn't get to taste the good stuff.
I hope they didn't cause to much damage.
I have had the neighbors Bull and his two girlfriends over once, years ago.
Chased them out with a broom, but the Bull was not going to leave that easy. was worried that he might chase me until one of my dogs step in and the Bull thought he better leave and join the girls on there side of the fence.

Oh Tils, had there been a bull, I don't know I would have had the nerve to herd. cows I'm pretty good with, bulls are another story all together. Brave woman, armed with broom and dog. Excellent.

I have to say I had to grab terrier by the tail at one point and chuck him behind me when one of the cows dropped her head - I think the dog would have been fine, but I wasn't too sure I was going to be fast enough to get out of the way.

Well, it may not be kayaking with whales but it is about as exciting as it gets around here.

I went to an open day this afternoon at a garden a couple of villages over from ours. Sounded good on paper, collection of salvias, two and a half acres, mature shrubbery. Thought I'd go get some ideas - it was all I could do to stay for a polite amount of time - this was my idea of nightmare gardening - golf course meets 1950's municiple gardening - what a bore!! There was not a leaf out of place, or a line that wasn't true, devoid of humour - plants tied back to be the right fit, and over blown blossoms with loads of 'variety' (read that as too much, too many, too thorough) - there was no where in the entire garden that felt restful or alive. Just done to death - all those growing plants and just flat flat flat. Then on top of it I hadn't realized that it STARTED at 2 - that means we were to be there for two so the owner could show everybody every plant, blade, water feature etc. - we had been invited to see another place up the road (now that was fab) so we arrived about 3ish - got the politest ticking off ever. I don't think I have been referred to as Dr. quite so agressively before. Oh, well, I take my laissez faire attitude to their timing as a comment on their gardening! Ick.

I want more photos of WW and Pix and Tils and Cocoa and Rach and Dragonfly and Sofer to put me back into the wonderful world of organized passion breaking loose! Go Go gardeners.

Well I feel for the dissapointment of staging the garden when you were looking for creativity. My garden is simple and never looked at by anyone wanting to be uplifted excepted me and my DW. This is for your Laurie for the want to see an unaltered plan of color.

We have a series of television advertisements here, Laurie, with cows talking (the theme of the series of ads being that cows in California are happier and hence produce better product than cows in the midwest, where it gets cold in the winter). They are pretty funny. So I have read-made characters in my head that I can picture commenting on the uniqueness of their new discovery and the freshness of the various cultivars they encounter. It's all very Disneyesque for me.

I can just hear little Terrier (you BETTER run, 'cuz my momma's gonna kick your a__). Nick used to get between my legs at the dog park and say that to the other dogs that were trying to intimidate him. I would reply to Nick that, "Momma's not going to kick the Doberman's a__, dear. At least not today . . ."

Steve - I don't think I've ever seen a stand of delphinium quite that dramatic. That is amazing.

Thank you but these Aconium have great size the farther north you go. I saw one up on Kodiak island that was even bigger. This one is only 3 years old. They enlarge each year. It helps to have compost going into the soil at least every other year in all of my garden beds.
Laurie this is a unique creative bed. I have taught my plants to grow at an angle to make people walking in my garden to lean. LOL

Working on it Laurie, Have 4 yards of soil to move, just me and the barro, DH is cleaning Mom's gutters. He did the tilling now I get to fill it.
30' long 2' wide and 15" high I think. Camera is outside, not done taking pics, will down load and start a new tread tonight.
" Kelvin Floodlight " One from Cocoa
Tils

Looks more like someone couldn't hold the camera right. Ha Ha

Laurie, When looking up that pic. I forgot to tell you that the Hellb. has another bloom. And this is Aug.
Tills

Sofer, Wow, great colors.

Garden Do's: Photograph at sunset and live a richer memory

Garden Dont's: Plant anything after July 1st.

I know when I'm not wanted
Happy Gardening All

Tills, how is it that you are getting another hellebore bloom at this time of year?? Clearly you know something I do not know.

Check this out. I was weeding a much-neglected front bed today - look at the babies!!! Bonanza!! and There are a couple more groups of baby hellebores just like these.

Kathy, did you know it takes 240 days (I my have the days wrong) to germ a Hell. What you have is a bonus package from the mother. ConGrats. I have my GH full of seeds from a friend.

Pix's will all got the same plants from Heidi, this one has a mind of its own, there are 3 other Hells next to it, not getting anymore than the others, Don't get it.