Work...

Today we did some fancy work in the yard. I used the tiller we bought last year, and it worked much better. Camellias aren't looking so hot, but we got the dripline on them, hopefully we can cheer them up. Salvia is looking great - came back like a weed.

March is coming!

March is nearly here (again) and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Home depot says to trim back our rose bushes to outward facing blooms. What blooms? That reminds me, our roses haven't grown any larger in the 2 years we've had them, despite adding rose dust.

Atleast our Camelias finally made it through the year. Our big favorite is even bigger still, and the two new ones we added look healthy and ready to grow.

We lost 2 Azaleas due to heat, direct sun, and poor soil last summer. Going to have to replace them this year.

My big goals this year:
Turn the front yard into a big island
Find an excuse to plant a crape myrtle
Plant some of that ornamental grass I like - miscanthus something. Its all over the area.
Add a stepping stone walkway to the front door, and put in some creeping stuff in between.

Happy March!

Tiller and more

Jacqueline and I decided to buy this tiller. We were inspired by the 20 year old 4 stroke beast my mother in law owns. The lightweight model on amazon received great reviews, and we were on a budget, so we decided to give it a shot.

The assembly itself was a total pain in the rear. Apparently the plastic crossbar holding the handles together was labelled backwards (front is back, back is front). This ended up causing 2 reassemblies and a lot of head scratching. Finally, we decided to follow the stickers, which I think are now incorrect, and this causes the power cable to hang free instead of fitting in the clip. Screwing this crossbar into the handles is a pain too - it requires lining up a hole in the metal handle, INSIDE the crossbar, with the hole in the plastic. I don't think we ever got this aligned, or the holes aren't the right size to accommodate the screws. Our screws are hanging halfway out of the holes right now.

After we got it assembled, we took it for a spin. Its lightweight and electric, which is nice, but also caused problems. The cord is always in the way, which I expected, but it proved to be more annoying than I thought. While I was excited about the lightweight aspect, it proved to be too light - it skipped off the ground and tried to bolt away continuously, rather than digging in. I felt like I had to grip and torque with my hands and wrists with all my might - something in entirely different from the beast of a tiller we used, which you just fought to keep straight.

So we're trying to till out this hard, rocky patch for a vegetable garden. The tiller is bouncing off the ground and away from me, barely digging in. We decided, after all the initial assembly, we must have the handles backwards. So we swapped them around. Big mistake. My wife said "now you need to flip the base to the other direction, right?" Well I was confused about it all, so I listened. Big mistake. Again, the machine tried to run off across the surface, but we had it reversed, so it drove straight at my feet. Thank God for the dead man trigger - atleast that worked - no injuries.

We flipped it back around again, and gave it a go in some less rocky, moister soil. With some serious torque applied, I was able to get it to bite in. Once it started actually churning, it did really well. I was able to just hold it in place, and all its force was directed down, rather than away. We then took it to the backyard to build a new bed for some iris transplants - it worked well here. Of course I was used to it by then, and the ground was nice and soft.

So in short review, this thing needs to be heavier, or built so that I can better apply torque with my arms. At the price I guess its ok, maybe a 2 out of 5. I would not recommend anyone to buy it, unless their yard was already tilled :)

Happy Baptism Mattie!

Jacqueline and I spent a beautiful after with her brothers family, for our niece's baptism. Congrats to the Urda's, and thanks for the ham!

Afterwards we booked it over to Lowe's, who were having a 3 for $10 perennial party. We grabbed 3 of each of the following:
Dragon's Blood Sedum
Rosish One Dianthus
East Friesland Salvia
Plus something else that I already lost the tags for. Jacqueline, tags are your job!

We added on to the mulched areas we added yesterday. We're planning a little path up to the street from the front door, since that is how everyone walks in anyway. Eventually we'll put some flag stone in there, and plant all the way up.

We also swapped our dying hydrangeas with our dying azalea's from last year. I'm hoping its a too much sun / too little sun situation, and they both grow big and healthy. Odds are they'll be toast tomorrow.

The entrance way is really coming along. This time last year we were frantically planting all sorts of random stuff, mostly in the wrong places, without amending the soil, and no forethought to layout. This year we are still doing mostly the same, but acting like we know what we're doing. Atleast we're playing with cow poop and soil conditioner.

We took a few pictures, hope you like!

Long day of work

Yesterday we spent most of the day working in the yard. Jacqueline made two trips to haul back 30 bags of pink bark mulch, and we picked up a few new perennials as well.

Splendens Common Thrift, Grace Ward Lithodora, and Silvermound Artemisia went in by the mailbox. Another silvermound artemisia went in on the walkway by the front door. Then we mulched *everything*.

Stuff from last year is finally coming up - Jack in the pulpits, lots of hostas, a couple oddly planted day lilies. Oh ya, I tried splitting our favorite hosta, by the new part i split off looks droppy and sad. We watered it well, I wonder if its going to make it. I hope so.

Finally, we started a small patch outside the kitchen window for our blueberry bushes. The ground was orange and rock solid, so we dumped in quite a bit of cow manure and soil conditioner. Hopefully they take well.

Hurray for window boxes!

Today Jacqueline and I put in our first window box. Well, rail next to the stairs leading up to the front door box. We shopped at Pikes - I can't figure out why, they're so expensive - and picked out a nice wrought iron trough box. Hope I spelled all that right. So we bought some unnamed Caladium for the thriller, 8 little 'Prelude Rose' Begonias for the filler, and something I have been lusting after for a year, 'Tahoe' Iberis sempervirens for the spiller. We used potting mix (not soil) plus a few pellets of slow release fertilizer for the dirt. Water gently after. I think the caladium will probably bite the dust, its nearly full sun there right now. It will be less harsh in a week or two when the big trees get some leaves out. Same torture the hydrangeas are going through - which are almost dead by the way. So much for the tent.

Oh ya, and Jacqueline actually had *fun* today! She told me I can even post that.

So Happy Gardening!

Weekend Work!

Sorry for the terrible layout, not sure how to get the images in the right locs.

Today Jacqueline and I got quite a bit done. We put in our two new 5g camellias, to keep our other camellia company. Three different varieties, but all have white flowers. Lets hope we can keep them alive. We kept the rootball exactly even with the surface, and mixed in some soil condition and composted cow manure. After we watered them, we added some root stimulator. Good luck plants!

We also built a little tent for our poor hydrangeas. Immediately after planting them they started shriveling. Hopefully this will keep the afternoon sun off them, until the trees above start leafing out. We built it out of landscaping weed control fabric, a few of the stakes intended for the fabric, and a couple 1x2's cut like vampire stakes.

We fed all the azaleas, roses, and flowers we have scattered about, as it is the first of the month.

I took a few photos of the blight(s) on the camellia we have. let me know if you can identify this, and propose a solution. Thanks!