Another Great Weekend Gardening

I thought I would have last weekend to garden, but poor Denis came down with the flu on Friday, and by Sunday both J and I had come down with it too. Saturday last weekend was a glorious day, or so I'm told, I spent the day with my wee one who was very poorly. But a week has passed and we are pretty much all better.

Today was another glorious day. All week the weather was threatening to be awful for the Victoria Day weekend, but it has been pretty nice so far. Yesterday was sweatshirt weather, but today was sunny and warm. Denis even got the sprinkler going.


I've almost dug out the first of the 4 raised beds I'm putting in the garden. Now to brave Home Depot to purchase the wood to make the raised beds.

I suddenly found myself cleaning out the shed this afternoon. It was not on my agenda, but it is something that was in desperate need to be done. I cannot remember the last time I cleaned out that thing. The plan this summer is take the shed down as it is decaying. It is also where I plan to put a deck.





I also purchased 2 columbine plants to go with the 2 bleeding hearts I bought last week. They are planted in the garden under the lilac bush. I'm really happy with how the garden is coming this spring.

I have been knitting too. Today, my brand new, favourite knitting store (The Knitting Loft) started a sock KAL. I started this vanilla sock pattern with an afterthought heel by Nurturing Fibers. The yarn is Biscotte Bis-Sock in Valentine's Day. Since it is a vanilla sock pattern, I thought it would be a great time to do 2 socks at a time. I've almost got the  toe finished.












This is my nearly finished Zippo in Persian Red Kelbourne Woolens Germantown. I'm loving the yarn and the very simple pattern. I think I only have 48 rows or so until I cast off.

Well, off to do some much needed laundry. I do love working in the garden, I just wish I had 'staff' to do all the inside chores I absolutely hate.

Cheerio

Spring 2019

The last time I really blogged was prior to my son coming home. Now isn't that a surprise. Well, he's 10 now and strangely enough I actually have more time to myself these days so time to blog again.

And now for something completely different: blogs about my garden. Not only do I have time to blog again, I'm finally finding time to work in the garden.

Spring has been slow it seems this year. We had a frost warning last night and the forsythia are still vibrantly in bloom.

Here's how my garden looked last Sunday.

 This poor rose at the back of the house was planted by my parents. It has been there my entire life. It is so overgrown and crowded. I will be moving the crocuses from in front of the rose. and I need to put a ring around the peony before it grows much larger.

 The rose bed is looking good, but the edges are grass-less. I bought 5 roses in Niagara-on-the-Lake this winter and the went in here. I've started taking down the old chain link fence on this side of the garden because there is now a 6 foot tall wooden fence 6 inches behind.

 This is how far I've got the old fencing down so far. It is very slow going as there are trees growing between the fences. My Dad put that fence up 50 years ago. It has certainly done it's work.

I really wish I had taken a before picture of this space behind the shed. It was a mess. Now it is all cleaned up. The shed was built by my father and sadly it is in a very rough shape, so I will be pulling it down this summer. I want to replace the patio with decking. It is a large area off the backroom, perfect for a seating and a dining area.

 Here's the rose bed with the new roses planted. It was getting into evening when I took this photo and the only sunlight was coming between the boards of the new fence. I trimmed the apple tree last fall to get as much shade off the rose bed so hopefully this year the roses do much better than last year.


Here are some of the new roses I planted. I'm going to have to go out into the garden one day and record where I planted each rose.

 This is Bull's Eye. It will be very different in the bed as I don't have any roses with the semi-double form. It is suppose to grow from 4 to 5 feet tall in height. That will be awesome.

The rose starts butter yellow and turns snow white with age with the fuchsia eye.






 

This rose is Agathe Incarnata. The blooms on this rose depend on the UV intensity and heat and can go from a pale pink to white. It is a historic Rose and goes by many other names. I believe it will only bloom once. This will be the only rose in the bed that is not a repeat bloomer. But it looks so pretty I decided to add it to the bed.






This beauty is called La Rose de Molinard. It is suppose to grow to between 5 to 6 feet. The colour described as antique pink with a lighter colour on the outer side of the petal.

 I think this is my favourite of all the new roses. It is called Garden Party. I hope it produces a lot of flowers. I'm really looking forward to seeing this one in bloom.

 And the last new rose is called Zaide. This rose is in the centre of the rose bed up near the old deep red roses. I hope they complement each other. It should be a real show stopped.

When I had finished planting the roses, I spent about an hour digging weeds out of the area around the rose bed. Then I put down 5 bags of top soil topped with grass seed. I put the grass seed right up to the edge of the rose bed. The lawn has become very bare at the edges of the beds.



Whew. That was a lot of work I got up to last weekend. Tomorrow I'll update the blog with a post about this weekend's work. Last week at school we had a concert for 'We Belong', Denis was sick from school for two days with J with him one day and me with him the second, and both Denis and I attended the Divisional Track Meet on Thursday. It was a super busy week. Only 7 weeks left in the school year, so the weeks won't be getting any quieter.