The White House

The White House

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Flowers Part One

It’s been so rainy and when it isn’t raining I’m busy so I haven’t taken any photos of my flowers in a long time. Here’s the front yard (with awful shadowing from the house as it was later in the evening).
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The peas did great this year. The pea pickers did not. Emily and Olivia took their cousins Jadyn and Justise up to pick some peas. They just yanked on the pods which then ripped the vines off the string on the left side making it all fall. (They were up over the top string). Then the right side fell when it didn’t have anything to hang on to. And they threw half-eaten pods all over the sidewalk. I wasn’t super pleased and there will be a garden etiquette lesson before they are allowed to touch anything again. On the flip side, an entire Ziploc gallon was picked for my niece and when I priced those at the Farmer’s Market I couldn’t believe it. It  was $20 worth of peas!! Who can afford to buy that?
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Four years of green bean failure. Not even going to bother next year. I bought a bunch of 25 cent perennials to plant in this bed that are still in pots and I don’t even know if they are alive. If the rain truly stays gone this weekend I’ll plant what survived.
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Lots of geraniums plants. Hardly any flowers.
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Last year of the low-lying wave petunia. The beds are big and need height.
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Invaders!!  The Monkey Flower, Johnny Jump-Up and Alyssum are all things that were previously planted in this bed the last few years that have reseeded themselves.  I used to think it was a great surprise. Now I find it annoying. Putting down newspaper should take care of this problem next year.
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What a mess and it is so late in the year I’m not going to bother fixing it. On the left are hostas that come back each year being smothered by Monkey Flowers and Viola that reseeded. You can also see the kohlrabi that is being choked by flowers. Yuck!013
The whole bed looks terrible. The other end was supposed to be lettuce and spinach. The spinach bolted immediately and the ground hog ate all the lettuce.
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Another bed of kohlrabi being choked by weeds.
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The broccoli flowered while I was in Anchorage with Elijah. Oh well.
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Can you see the buds of the dahlia buried in weeds? I doubt they’ll have time to actually bloom.
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I separated the front yard into four posts so I could actually get them to load to blogger. I hope you leave me some comments…I love gardening suggestions that will lead to next year being even better.

2 comments:

Tink *~*~* said...

Chez Bro says that a weed is something that's growing where you didn't plant it. By his definition, all your "volunteers" must be pulled. Something that might help is to fertilize the beds. You water and then put down clear plastic, which creates a greenhouse effect. Seeds just hanging out then sprout. Keep the plastic on and it will become too hot for them to survive. They will die. Till them under and now your bed is fertilized. This might cause you to lose a season in that bed, but it's a pretty sure way to kill that vast quantity of volunteers you've got going there.

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Tink *~*~* said...

OK, I am thoroughly annoyed with spelling auto-correct - that should have read STERILIZE, not fertilize! Auto-correct may well ruin all of our lives...

LOL

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