Moving My Favorite White Rose

I decided over the winter that I need to move all the plantings out of my current rose border and let it grass over. I have more borders than I can manage, honestly, and that one just doesn’t have the impact that the others do. So, two unidentified white climbing roses and one Dortmund climbing rose need to find new homes, plus a hosta and a smattering of white irises that I only recently divided.

This morning was the perfect day to move a rose: cool and overcast, with the forsythia in bloom, coming off of a few solid days of soaking rain.

That doesn’t mean I wasn’t still nervous as hell. I’ve never moved a rose before, and I didn’t want to kill my favorite long-bloomer. But I went for it, anyway.

Before in the Rose Border

Continue reading

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: March 2017

The mercury rose unseasonably high in February here in northwest Ohio, Zone 6, and I feared for some of my earliest risers. In what I’ve dubbed the Early Spring Border, where I can see muscari and daffodils and hyacinths and alliums from my kitchen window, things are definitely moving along earlier than usual — but, thankfully, in this border, only one very early blooming dwarf iris felt the wilty brunt of this week’s snow.

Dwarf Iris

This is what it looked like on February 25. Today, it’s a sad, floppy thing.
Continue reading

Seed Starting Continued

The tomatoes and eggplants are going gangbusters, the sage and thyme and foxgloves and lemon balm are peeking up, and today was the basil’s turn.

Technically, today I started four varieties of basil, plus stevia, cinquefoil, and cosmos. Tomorrow (after a 24-hour soak), I’ll start the white coneflowers.

I put the new seeds under a humidity dome. I wish I’d gotten a shorter one, since I’d like to have my light closer to the seeds so they don’t get leggy, but I guess I’d have had to put the light that high to reach both trays, anyway.

So far, only the paprika peppers have failed to germinate, and I haven’t given up on them just yet. Gardening season is getting off to a great start!