Garden Report

Happy Mother’s Day week­end. Gar­den­ing sea­son now begins in earnest in Pugetopolis.

We did our part to add to the mayhem.

Begin­ning with some addi­tions to the kitchen gar­den. A cou­ple of ser­rano chiles, four basils and an even dozen ran­dom let­tuce plants. If we cut only a cou­ple of sal­ads a week this will last most of the sum­mer. If we have another non-summer like last year’s they will go until fall with­out bolt­ing. Not much else to do in this bed — except to replace the creep­ing rose­mary that per­ished last win­ter. (Rose­mary never dies — what?)

We put a hand­ful of annu­als in the bird bath bed. Some Peru­vian bells, nico­tinia, and cos­mos, with dusty miller along the long edges. You really can’t see much in the pho­tos the pants were all nurs­ery packs. Instead here’s a pic­ture of the only two tulips that came up this year. Jim likes tulips but we never seem to get them planted in the fall. Too much of the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion kind of folks.

The long bed in the lawn that faces the pas­ture used to have white rock roses along it’s back edge (and weeds along it’s front.) The rock roses did well for a cou­ple of years and then died back unevenly over one hard win­ter. No amount of prun­ing could bring them back into to shape. We pulled them out two years ago and never got around to putting any­thing new in. Yes­ter­day I replanted the bed. I started with some of the var­ie­gated Japan­ese wil­low that showed up on the mar­ket 5(?) years ago to anchor the far end by the ever­greens. Nad­i­nas, and cat­mint fill the cen­ter of the bed. I found one of the nanadins that is sup­posed to keep some of the bronze in the new foliage through the sum­mer. Cat­mint (not cat­nip) has always been one of my favorites but is often hard to find. The local Ace hard­ware had nice bushy ones for 7.99 each. Yay!

Unfor­tu­nately the dark pur­ple but­ter­fly bush in the lower right cor­ner appears to have died over the win­ter. In fact all of my dark pur­ple cul­ti­vars and sev­eral of the pale pur­ple ones died. (The native pale pur­ple one is now clas­si­fied as inva­sive weed by the state.)

Also pur­chased and tem­porar­ily placed in hold­ing were these these sweet lit­tle hens and chicks. They belong on the back side of the rock wall once I’ve got­ten around to fill­ing the pock­ets in with soil. They may end up liv­ing here in the edge of the long bed for a while