dianaschnuth

Welcome to my problem spot.

When we moved in, there was a giant, out-of-control forsythia bush bogarting this entire space. Or maybe it was two. Yeah, it was at least two. At any rate, we dug all the bushes up, due to their scraggly beyond-hope nature. This, unfortunately, left a giant dirt pit, devoid of grass. I tried growing herbs and a rosebush here, but they all failed miserably. The rose still lives here, although you can’t see its teeny bare twigs in this picture. (Draw an imaginary line down the edge of the house, and the rose lives about half an inch down from the foundation on that line. Yeah, that bushy thing that looks like just another weed.) I also planted some of Scott’s tiger lilies over on the left, by the fence, and I mulched them today. (You can see the line of red mulch by the fence, barely.)

But OMG, look at the rest!

*puts head in hands*

It looks sunny enough now, but a.) this is just before sunset, and b.) this is still spring. The leaves haven’t come in on that maple tree overhead quite yet.

I can’t dig or roto-till or anything here, really, because our TV coaxial cable runs dangerously close to the surface of the yard. We’d have to be really extra careful if we dug up the dirt, even just to plant grass. I discovered this while I was digging up the area to make it a weed herb garden two years ago.

So, questions. Andrea, if you read this, this is especially for you. Melody, too, but I don’t think you read my blog very much, if at all. (Prove me wrong!) 🙂 Anyone else who’s garden-savvy, go for it. Please.

1.) There are plants coming up that don’t look like standard broadleaf weeds. Should I try to identify these, or just say Fuck It? Some of them look kinda neat, but don’t flower. I wonder if some of my herbs came back (sage in particular)? I do know that some of these are the forsythia trying to make a comeback with its remaining root system. That fucking thing will NOT go away.

2.) WTF should I plant here? Bulbs? Grass? Or mulch it and pretend something should be growing? We don’t have very good luck with grass; we’ve tried growing it in various parts of the front and back yards, and only succeed in killing it with heat and drought in mid-August, while allowing weeds to sprout up mighty fine. And those were in sunny areas. This is very, very shady in summer.

3.) Should I transplant my hybrid tea rose? The foliage keeps coming back (but no buds or blooms), for two springs now, despite the fact that I continually forget to cover it in autumn. It’s shooting up tiny canes and leaves from the crown, and the rest of it is pretty much dead. But the crown is alive, so the rose is alive. Right? So, should I try to move it before it finishes dying, or try to nurse it back to health and strength before I move it, if at all? The place it’s currently living is between partial sun and partial shade, I’d say.

I feel like such a damn failure sometimes. As long as I can Set It And Forget It™, I’m good to go. If forgetting to water for a week will kill a particular plant in a particular spot, well, yeah. That’s how I roll. Although I am thinking about trying a new ghetto irrigation system I read about in You Grow Girl that might work for whatever I try to plant under the overhang this year. We’ll see…

Last year, I planted Lilies of the Valley, some purchased from Michigan Bulb and some gifted from Scott at work. None of them appreciated the fact that I often forget to water my outdoor plants. And that I had planted them underneath an overhang, so they wouldn’t receive any direct rainfall. Or sun.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage my plants, I moved them from the overhang to a large container outside. I had intended to move the container inside before the snows came — but, like most of my autumn garden chores, that didn’t happen. So, this container of Lilies of the Valley has been sitting outside the back door all winter. I expected that I’d killed them from drought long before the snow came, anyway, and had pretty much written them off.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the back door this evening and found this:

How’d that happen?!

Add one more to the list of Not Quite Dead plants, I guess. Also on the list: my poor, neglected rose; the tiger lilies Scott gave me; my miniature daffodils; and the seedlings I’m growing indoors.

While I’m on the subject of gardening, let me air one of my grievances about my back yard:

All around our yard are these fantastic arborvitae tree-hedges. They’re easily 20 feet tall, and act as a very effective privacy screen. For some reason, though, whoever planted the arborvitae didn’t want to block out the next-door neighbors. As a result, every time I go outside to garden, the neighbors’ dog starts barking at me.

Now, I’m not scared of dogs, and I’m not scared of the neighbors. In fact, we’ve never officially met the neighbors, even after two years of living here. So, when the dog comes out and starts barking at me, and the young adult male son (Christopher, I believe) comes out onto the deck to see what the dog’s barking at, and finds me squinting up at him into the sunshine, it makes for an awkward moment. Especially when the only thing I can think of to say is, “Hello, puppy dog!”

Yeah, I guess you could say I have a way with words. *facepalm*

I’d like to screen off this section of fence with a natural screen, as well… but, now that I see how high up that deck is, I’m not sure I want trees or shrubs quite that tall on that side. You know? I’d like to have SOME sun in my damn yard. I was thinking of planting my hollyhocks there, but I don’t think they’ll grow THAT tall. If my Roses of Sharon have survived the winter, I could plant them over there, and they’d eventually grow tall enough, I think. It would take a while, though.

I don’t know. I do know that I don’t want to have to stay right by the back door for the rest of forever, in the shielded corner where the house meets the garage. If I were a social creature, maybe I wouldn’t mind. As I am, though, I just want to be left alone to garden in peace.

I’ll spare you the continued pictorial of the baby plantlings, but I did want to share their ongoing march toward being full-fledged seedlings.

The score so far: Hollyhocks have two tallish sprouts, and two are just starting to pop. Lemon Basil is slow going, with two seeds just barely starting to grow. Sweet Basil has had the lead until today, with all six pellets having good (if still small) growth, and two pots having two sprouts apiece. Parsley isn’t budging yet; that’s OK, though, because it still has to make a few more visits to hell before it’ll start to grow for real. The catnip has been the come-from-behind sleeper hit, though, with five of the six pellets having at least one plant, and most having two or three. This is a recent development — as in, the catnip grew a quarter inch *today*.

I’ve propped open one corner of the lid of my mini-greenhouse, to improve circulation amongst the almost-seedlings. Some of my hollyhocks have a white fungus starting to grow, which I understand is commonly known as damping-off disease. Supposedly, improving circulation should help, as should misting the seedlings with a peroxide solution. We’ll see how that goes. For now, I’m just propping the lid to see if that makes any improvement.

I’m documenting all of this mainly so I can look back later this spring and summer and remember that there was a point at which I was actually growing things, instead of just neglecting and killing them.

[Andrea? Do you have any hippie gardening nuggets of wisdom to share?]