A Milestone

Yesterday I went out in the cool of a lovely June morning and did an hour and half of real gardening. 

I toted pots, unpotted them, dug holes, scrabbled around in the dirt, made a mess, trimmed the rootballs and planted, then moved them over a couple inches. . .  because. 

Schlepped the hose, watered. 

Cleaned up, dumped the debris, spread what little bit of mulch around that I could steal from other plants.

Just like my old style gardening in years past, except in a CAM boot and using a kneeler. 

It was a milestone in my long recovery. My foot was fine, no issues.

What did I plant? Since last winter when I created the new bed along the fence, tying the birdbath and the potting bench curve together (after I took out the juniper), I have been planning what to put in there.

I had big pots of Black Adder agastache and Windwalker Red salvia that had served to fill in my prairie pot garden by the deck last summer. I loved the look, a little wild and weedy, but still.

I decided to unpot both and put them against the fence in the new space. (I'll have to come up with something else for the corner by the deck next year.)

There will be more plants to extend the bed to the right -- a Rocky Mountain penstemon, a dwarf goldenrod, some other things. I want to make sure I fill this area and that the plants actually touch.

Like this:

So I planted them too close and hope the purple and red will mingle like they did in the pots placed close together by the deck. 

The agastache should spread out about 2 feet -- that's not much and mine won't get that big. The Windwalker Red salvia will get bigger, almost 4 feet across and just as tall, a very big plant.

But it probably won't, the vine's roots and my general experience tells me it will be constrained.

But I do want them tight together, mingling their flower spikes. I'm so tired of planting things for eventual size and watching them shrink and remain isolated blobs. 

These two plants and the birdhouse above are what I see straight out the slider as I enter my bedroom. I want a show.

There they are just out of the pots and transplanted side by side. They don't look too bad despite an afternoon that turned hot and windy.

And I don't look too bad for my first major foray out into the garden doing real work after months of recovery.

I did it.  I now have so much more I want to do, but . . . caution and prudence and just a few simple tasks at a time are called for. I'm still not 100% on my foot and won't be til mid summer or later. But boy, do I have plans now.

Circles

I am going around in circles with the circle garden. It's so challenging. 

I've been at it for years now, adjusting, redesigning, adding plants, moving border rocks. It disappoints.

Everything is skimpy and tiny, and while some things look nice (the Blonde Ambition grass, the Sweet Summer Love vine, the pineleaf penstemons) other things have failed and simply do not grow.

So there's little to see other than mulch and new things which are tiny, I keep trying to see if I can get anything to thrive. Every summer the garden appears undeveloped.

The thyme bed under the white bowl has stubbornly refused to fill in the gaps after a couple years now.

There's nothing to see. Just mulch. In June already.

In my mind I have visions like this -- it's A.I. and things are out of kilter, like the crabapple, which is too far from the rock border, but.

In this artificially matured garden picture I like the idea of getting rid of the circle -- I'd eliminate the bowl and apron of thyme under it. Eliminate the full mulch path all the way around, and just have an opening in the rocks leading down a short mulched path to the bench. 

That's it. The rest is dense planting. The bench is the focal point and mini destination and a place to sit and observe all the plants in front of it.

Could I get Engelmann's daisy to look like this?

But that's a whole redesign and I can't get what I have to grow as it is. Here's what, at a minimum, I need to do when my foot allows:

Take out the dwarf and spindly things.

• Take out the thready Orange Kudos agastaches and put them in the bigger vase shaped pot on the table. The thin leaved hybrid agastaches wilt a lot in this climate.

• Take out the buckwheat, Electric Blue penstemon and failed nepeta. They all resent the wood mulch, garden soil, and nearby irrigation emitters.

Add bigger plants

• Behind the Perfect Profusion bun add a bigger Black Adder agastache for depth and background presence

•  Where the orange agastaches were, replace them with an Orange Glow knockout rose. 

(Andrea's, tucked in with other plants, is not too big but tall enough and upright.)

• Where the buckwheat, penstemon and nepeta were, replace them with 
• Engelmann's daisy
• one of the Radio Red salvias
• Caradonna salvia

Caradonna salvia, Orange Glow Knockout rose and Engenmann's daisy

Mingle things

Mingle Texas mealycup sages in and around and behind the other plants for a looser look. And aristata blanketflowers too -- will need to try those again from seed.

Plant the rock border

And I still want to soften the moss rock border with spreading groundcovers as I had planned last winter.

What's Going On

I can get out into the garden a bit in the boot, and do small chores. I deadheaded the columbines today. 

The Playboy orange rose is flowering nicely. The blooms change from yellow and orange to coral pink.

The Jupiter's Beard flowered and flopped, and was just going by as it mingled with the purple clematis on the tower. I've since deadheaded it. It made a nice relaxed look all jumbled together. The clematis is not as purple as I wanted, but the reddish magenta goes with the soft rosy Jupiter's Beard nicely.

The Coronation Gold yarrow gets too much water with an emitter right at its base. It flops badly but looks great, Next year I either need to pinch that emitter off or set some support rings in front of it. And tucked in behind the yarrow I found a perfect little blanket flower, a relic from a past year.

Neither of the Palmer's penstemons that I put in this strip has survived.

The Spanish broom that planted itself right at the house wall under the portal is in flower now. it's awkward and badly placed, but kind of nice.

The poor robin tried again this year to make a nest on the light fixture right above the patio slider door. I had to put the rabbit up there to discourage her. She was so confused and alarmed but this year she was brave enough to fly up and sit on top of it. 

She eventually gave up and went off to find another spot for her nest. I think it must be the same robin from last year. She really wants to build a nest where it would be most inconvenient for us and disruptive for her chicks as we come and go through that door.

It's June

I made it through three months of early spring without being able to do anything at all in the garden. It's been dry and cool, although today is the first day we hit the mid 80s. Jim watered for me as best he could all spring and we had just three small rain events since April 1.

✃ I cut back by a third the Black Adder agastache in the pot and the Windwalker Red salvia.

✃ I tip pruned the butterfly bush in the corner of the kitchen courtyard, cutting off the new growth at the ends. It hasn't set flowers yet. I really want to get this gangly shrub more compact -- we'll see if this second pruning after the winter total cutback helps.

It's June and I am walking in the boot. I can get out into the yard carefully. I can trim the Virginia Creeper vine, and deadhead a few small things.

It all looks okay, although the plants around the circle garden continue to be puny and barely alive -- the Kannah Creek buckwheats in particular and the tiny Electric Blue penstemon disappoint. The small nepeta is all but gone.

Other circle garden plants like the Mexican sage were just newly planted last year and need to grow on.

I try not to sit on the patio even though I can maneuver out there and the days are fine. I struggle with looking at what needs moving, what to add, pots I want to arrange, what to take out --- and even though I am recovering mobility, I can't do any of it.

I got the kneeler bench and it will help but not quite yet. I can see a day coming soon though, even this month, when I can start to buy some nursery plants and put some pots around. I can see a day coming in July when I can kneel (with support on the kneeler bench) and plant some things and move a couple small plants.

But I won't be able to make real changes even when I feel stable enough on my foot to plant. It's too late to get plants online, most are out of stock til next spring. 

It's June, I'm recovering, it's nice out, and I'll just have to wait another year to make design changes.

Going Fast

The yellow peony had its best bloom show ever this year, but it was too early and has completely gone by already. The irises too are over. The pink ones from Andrea bloomed well. I only got two white Immortality irises and they are done now.

I couldn't get out into the garden on the knee scooter or crutches to get decent photos, but I did get a couple shots on the phone from a distance -- not great, but here they are:

Not great shots and it all went by too quickly

The Biokovo geraniums were gorgeous, again too early and they have started to go by now, but I did get a few shots of them as they are starting to fade.

Biokovo geraniums fading but still so pretty

The seedling volunteer columbine I transplanted under the Chinese privet a few years ago is a nice plant now. It is also starting to go by. The original plants in the dining room window garden are puny but they did flower.

Swallowtail transplant

Everything is going by too fast and too soon. It's the roses that are coming out now in mid May and I am able to get down the step from the patio and stagger walk a bit to take some pictures.

June is still weeks away, but they have started.

Playboy has opened a bloom

Red Cascade is flowering

Knockout Blushing Pink has mostly gone by already but should rebloom

Peggy Martin rose, however, is sensibly holding off until closer to June. It is not flowering yet.

Potting Them Up Finally

I've been worrying about the Radio Red autumn salvias that I picked up last fall at Newman's. They've been in their black nursery pots since then, drying out so quickly in the potting medium and I have been fussing over keeping them going all winter and through a too hot March and now into spring.

I do love their deep red flowers. 

I wanted to repot them into good potting soil and put 3 of them in the prairie pot garden at the deck and plant one in the ground. But then my injury happened and that never got done.

I've now lost one -- it's dry and crisp. Good thing I overbought. The other three finally got put into larger pots with good potting soil today. It was a small job but awkward for me in the moon boot and hobbling about. 

I can't get to my potting bench below the railroad ties, so I used a card table in the garage and limped the few steps back and forth to the faucet for water and made a mess of things.

It only took ten minutes and they are now adequately potted up finally.

Drought Tolerant

I'm so tired of constantly reading about "drought tolerant" plants. Every garden design, every plant being profiled is drought tolerant, to the point where the term is meaningless now, it's just what all plants are if they are not bog plants.

What does it even mean to slap that term on every plant, every garden? Does that mean the garden will survive on an inch of rain once a month? Once a week? Winter water? 

Nothing grows with NO water, so how much?

There are obvious desert plants like succulents, cactus and desert scrub shrubs, but almost all others are universally labeled "drought tolerant". Do those plants look great or just not completely die until they get more frequent water? 

What do they look like while they are "tolerating" dry conditions? And how dry? For how long?

From Le Jardinet's blog post of a New Zealand dry garden

Beth Chatto's dry gravel garden is everyone's inspiration and it does have great ideas and examples. She admirably provides no supplemental water. But the average annual rainfall in her dry garden is 20 inches! Air humidity is high. It's England -- the dry side, yes -- but surrounded by ocean and temperate currents.

That is not a dry garden. Also that is not my garden. It's double, almost triple what my garden gets annually in a good year. It is not my cold steppe arid environment. 

Drought tolerant once implied something meaningful. Now it’s broadly applied to:

• Mediterranean plants
• prairie plants
• xeric plants
• dry shade plants
• plants that survive a rainless couple weeks periodically
• and plants that need regular irrigation to look decent

Those are not equivalent categories.

This comment from a post at Le Jardinet in Seattle was interesting. She talks about what a truly drought loving plant could be:

Not drought-resistant, nor drought tolerant but drought-LOVING. An important distinction. If plants are to thrive rather than merely survive or tolerate the conditions we impose on them, this is a strategic mind-shift.

I like that distinction. "Drought tolerant" is as helpful as "plant right side up in soil". It doesn't describe what the plant might look like when you plant it in your garden.

Kneeler

I have been wedded to my knee scooter for months of recovery but eventually I'll be off it, and when that happens this summer I can get back out into the garden. And to garden safely as I continue to heal and gain strength in the leg, I decided I will need . . . another kneeler.

This time a garden kneeler.

They've been around forever and each time I see one I think it's just another piece of equipment to tote around and get in the way. But now? Now I can see the benefit.

The main advantage for me is that it has rails to hang onto as I leverage myself up from the ground. I will really need that to keep from having to push up with my foot to get up.

Protecting the foot from any load or bending is going to be my focus for a long time, even after I am in shoes. 

Andrea came over this week to do a little weeding for me, and she brought hers. She's used it for ages, and as I watched her it made so much sense. 

She was most comfortable seated, reaching down to do things at ground level.

But it flips over and you can kneel on it too, then use the side rails to support yourself getting up.

So I'm going to get one to get ready for summer.