May 2021 in the Garden

I finally figured out why I haven’t been blogging like I used to: I journal longhand instead, pasting photos of my garden into my gardening journal, creating pages for plants I’d like to research, noting which seeds germinated successfully and which didn’t (I’m looking at you, larkspur), etc.

However, I do like the convenience of being able to just search my blog and compare year to year for particular events or milestones, gardening or otherwise. So, here I am, back-blogging Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for May 2021.


Early Spring Border / Japanese Garden

The highlights of this border are the dwarf Japanese maple and the tree peony, but it really shines in early spring, when all the bulbs come up and remind me that things will get warmer and greener.

After all these alliums finished blooming and their foliage browned, I dug them up (and LABELED THEM) in preparation for converting this border into something more minimalist that the chipmunks might not find as inviting.

Pink tree peony with yellow center
Birdbath with solar fountain in front of red japanese maple

Front “Cottage” Garden

This is the garden that people see if they come up the front driveway, and the place where I’ve made the most changes over the seven years or so that we’ve lived in this house.

I tried planting Aromas strawberries (no longer available where I purchased them) in this border a few years back, but I wasn’t willing or able to protect the fruit from birds and other wildlife… and the fruit I did harvest wasn’t as flavorful as I’d hoped, anyway. Now I let the plants compete with the chameleon plant as ground cover.

I planted Iris germanica ‘Peggy Sue’ in Fall 2018, and she’s become one of my favorite focal points. This was Peggy Sue on May 15:

…and this was Peggy Sue in full bloom two days later:

The dogwood tree in front of the house has been “on its way out,” as one landscaper put it, ever since we moved in. I suspect it could do with some tree doctoring — at the very least, a good pruning — but I find I’m not willing to put out the money to save a tree that clearly has been infested by dogwood borers.

Now that I see that it may be treatable, though, I find I’m more willing to give it a go. I do love that tree.


Around the Front of the House

“It does look pretty,” my neighbor told me a couple springs ago, “but that’s a weed.”

Call it what you want — lunaria, silver dollar, honesty plant — but I’m certainly not calling this a weed. I’ll do my best to keep it from spreading into my neighbor’s vegetable garden, and maybe not let every one of them go to seed, but I adore the pop of color I get from these guys (and with zero help from me).

There are several of these early single red peonies in various spots around my property, and I’m contemplating gathering them all up this fall and plunking them into my newly-named “Japanese garden” where one of them already lives. They’re the first peonies to bloom, although they don’t last long — perhaps they’re ‘Burma Ruby’ or ‘Merry Mayshine’?


That’s what was in bloom in mid-May in my Zone 6 garden. Not too different from years past, although the honesty plant really did go kind of bananas this year.

I’m OK with that.

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