Green to Gold

It's September already and I realize I never got around to sharing our beautiful garden!  

  This is our first Spring and Summer here so we had very little idea of what would appear in the flower beds.  We brought quite a few plants from the old house and dug them in here and there late last fall, but what would happen in Spring was a mystery!  

  And there was COVID19 to consider.  Because of COVID19 we ended up with a super LOVELY garden, not only due to all the time we spent working on it but also money.  Since we couldn't go on vacation, we splurged on the garden.

  In the Spring we planted Clematis along the fence.  They were a little too far along for Spring plants, so hopefully next year they'll be more in step with the seasons and fill out.

All around the deck and gazebo, we have a collection of hostas, many we brought with us from the old house.  

I needed a place for my memorial stones, and so here is the dog's memory garden.  This was where the former owners had their compost bins and was very neglected.  Starting from scratch after cleaning that all up (we now have compost pick-up once a week),  I wanted a flowering dogwood but learned they do not tolerate Black Walnut trees, so we selected a Cypress, a Staghorn Sumac and a Lemony Lace Elderberry.

Beside the doggy garden we were surprised by poppies, poppies, poppies!  We enjoyed clusters of poppies in early Summer all along part of the back fence!

I'd brought along the Evening Primrose and they survived the move, looking good!

There's this patch under one of the walnut trees that made a good spot for a faery garden.  I found these blue shiny stones BURIED in the front lawn... how they got there we'll never know.   But obviously they wanted to sparkle and shine again so here they are.

A friend gave us this exotic plant with lovely leaves and strange, intricate flowers... they look fragile but they are hardy and lasted a long time.  At the old house the plant was beneath a maple tree where it didn't get what it needed but here it came forth with this lovely crown of blooms!  (Thank you Olga!)

Over the course of the season, we watched the garlic grow.  The scapes developed into curled dragon heads which then opened and looked entirely alien!  The "garlic pearls" are now being eaten, but we planted a few too.

Another treat was this lovely phlox!  It's right on our driveway and smelt wonderful for a good long while.

And our vacation money?  It brought home for us this incredible garden rock.  Mom always wanted one, and here it is, all 1522 pounds!  It's not going anywhere.  

And we have Black-Eyed Susans, big clusters of them!  This was also a lovely surprise, and a glorious finish to Summer.  (Don't look at the lawn... it's all crab grass and weeds!  We're furiously pulling it out by clumps before the seeds spread!)

Taming the ruins

COVID19 has dashed all our plans to meet and greet the neighbours, explore the sites in and around our new town and left us with lots of time on our hands...
  So what did we do?  At least we could be outside so we gardened, a LOT!  The yard and gardens were a neglected mess with lots of interesting mystery plants in flower beds buried under weeds.  These gardens were loved at one time, and now we've worked towards restoring and enhancing this precious green space that we're spending so much time in...


  





Along one side of the house there were hip high weeds and some plants mixed in, and perhaps some stones??  We took on the challenge!  


Here is the complete transformation of the moss rock garden, from wild thing (all those weeds!, photo to the left) 

to bare spot (naked after removing all those weeds) 

to finding the “Roman Ruins (a previous wall of flagstones) 

to delivery of the moss rock (all 540 pounds) 

to building the new wall (using the old and new flagstones) 

to lovely garden (adding 3 shrubs and some thymes/other ground covers)!  

All we need now is some mulch. 

The moss rock is from Stones 'n More in Harriston, a small but lovely spot for plants and garden rocks, and very friendly service!  (They deliver!)

And then there was the patch in the backyard...

When life hands you lemons...

This Winter was a hard one for the shrubs and evergreens in our neighbourhood.  All around, you can spot very brown and dead cedars, evergreen ground covers, etc... and flowering shrubs that are only sprouting from the ground with dead branches.  
  We lost our lovely Wegelia, a few other bushes and, most noticeably, the thick evergreen right at the intersection. 

This beast accepted the harsh spot it was in for years, with the sidewalk salt, exposure, dog pee, etc... but the Winter of 2017/18 killed it.  Yes, it was as crunchy and prickly as it looks.  

So we chopped it down to expose the trunk and our great handyman Tim cut it off at the base (thank you so much, Tim!).

So now we had this big, empty spot, which gets lots of afternoon sun. So we thought... rocks!  We wanted to have a big one, 3 feet or so, but Grand River Natural Stone would not deliver it to this spot for fear of damaging the sidewalk.  So we had to go with what we could move on our own, and three pretty, white marble pieces were hauled, shlept, pushed, maneuvered and dragged into place!  

That was a job!  But once the rocks were in place, we could plant the 4 hostas we got from the Centre Wellington Dog Park plant sale (thank you, Karen!), and the White Bigroot Geranium and the Tom Thumb Creeping Cotoneaster we purchased from Little Tree Garden Market.  There's also a nice cluster of Golden-rod that was trying to survive under the evergreen, so its happier now.

Ta-da!

Now we need rain.  As you can see, the Maple is already dropping leaves and we fear it's going to be another dry Summer.  

Please wish our garden plants a long, healthy life!

Before the frost

We had to get some aluminum sulfate to try and neutralize the pH level so grass will grow in our yard and Little Tree Garden Market had plants still for sale at 60% off!  Whoa!  We indulged!

Since moving in, we both disliked the hydrangea plants on either side of our front door.  These plants have huge, showy flower heads too heavy for their stems which fold or break from the weight.  A very pretentious, impractical creation, in my mind a ridiculous twist of Mother Nature's glory.  We wanted them gone.

And so we started digging...

And digging... There were huge roots, but they gave in to my ratty determination and mom's axe!  In the end...

this is (part of) what came out of the hole and what went in.  The right side was messier.

Now we wait for Spring and hope that our new babies will survive the wintery weather okay.  A bag of mulch should help cover their roots and tuck them in for a good sleep.

Looks a little naked, but then so does the rest of the property:  we had the hedge that hid the house along the sidewalk cut down to about chest high, and the magnolia cleaned up.  Thank you to Jake Neely at Companion Gardening for lots of helpful information and guidance and a fantastic job of tidying up our whole yard, helping to make our Flying Leap look a bit more loved on the outside.   

This photo was taken a few days ago, the Willow tree in our backyard already had pussys March 17th!! This is far too early! The clematis also has leaves, and the roses have leaves opening, as well as the trees and everything else. Normally, we should still have snow on the ground and maybe the crocuses could be showing their heads, nothing else. It's been so warm and sunny that the grass has been growing and Mom already mowed the lawn! And now we could very well pay for the +20C temperatures we've been having: it's supposed to drop to -4C tonight, which will kill a lot of this new growth (especially the Magnolia trees which are so delicate.
In our yard, we attempted to cover as many plants as possible, at least from the strong winds which would make -4C more like -8C. Is this enough, will we save them? I'll let your know!