I'm baaaacccckkkkk..... Hola everyone. I hope you had a safe and joy-filled 4th of July! I celebrated in my back yard by myself - no trip up north this year, no 4th of July parade or fireworks to watch (although that didn't stop people in the neighborhood from setting noisy things off for seemingly half the night after I went to bed!). I pulled out my mini-Weber grill and made myself a honking big Porterhouse steak. It was enough for 2 meals - soooooo good!
It's been a busy and trying time this spring and now, it's already July 8th, yikes. The weather was, as per usual, not particularly cooperative. It was cold and wet and too mushy to work outdoors for quite a while. I rushed out and did as much as I could on the relatively few nice days we had, and gnashed my teeth most of the rest of the time working outdoors in weather where I ended up inside in the bathroom literally peeling off soaking wet clothes and jumping into the shower a couple times a day. UGH!
The weather is so bad out now I can't be outdoors for very long at all, except in the wee hours of the early morning, when it gets down to about 75 outside. We are under a "Heat Dome" and will be through at least July 18th. Temperatures feel like their in the 100s, dew points around 68 to 70 at the "Oppressive Tropical" level that makes it very difficult for me to breathe if I exert myself at all. And maybe worst of all, no breeze. Nothing, Nada.
Anyway, these are some pics of the yard I took during April and May. We had some very nice days when I was able to work outside practically all day, stopping only to rest every now and then. The air was "dry" and I could breathe with ease, and I didn't break a sweat until a good long workout, usually after about an hour working outside weeding, cutting the lawns, scrubbing birdbaths, trimming shrubs - you name it. Never ending! But at least once I stopped working and took a 10 or 15 minute break, the sweat would dry up and my body would cool down, heart rate would drop back down to normal. But not in the weather we're having right now!
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This is the south line of the inner backyard. The boundary to my plot is partially delineated by the line of arborvitaes
on the other side of the garage and driveway to the south. Because this side of the garage has no rain gutters, there is a lot of rain run-off and snow melt, and mildew builds up on the lower portion of the siding. You can see it - yuck. That was all scrubbed off, and will be scrubbed again at least one or two more times during the summer season. The falling apart
service door to the garage is going to be replaced - I just don't know when. It's impossible to find a handyman this time of
year and I need to get somebody out here to actually look at it and tell me what would be the best way to proceed because
of the way the door that is there now is structured and inset into the building. Of course, with the coronavirus pandemic blasting away across the nation this summer, it's not worthwhile trying to find somebody to come out. And I would feel
uncomfortable around a stranger during this trying time, even with a mask on. As a high risk candidate if I was infected, I am extremely careful about to whom and what I expose myself. It's a pain in the neck, but better safe than sorry. |
Above is a pic taken in April of my formerly little "Baby" squirrel who showed up a few winters ago, puny and undersized and had lost half of her fur to mange. She moved like greased lightening though, making up for her lack of size against the bigger and especially the mean Alpha male squirrels who will often chase the smaller females and juveniles away. She's all grown up now and a mommy herself! She must be genetically small and not just stunted because the litter she was born in was larger than normal - that's what I had thought may have happened when I first laid eyes on her - she was that small. And she showed up in December that year! Her babies are small too, and have rather straggly tails just like hers. But they are also fast as lightning runners and she's trained them very well how to size up the situation in the competition for the nuts I throw out. They show up, like Baby does, after the morning, noon and early evening rush hours, SMART! I wish this photo was better but I've never been very good at taking pics. She sitting above the bright yellow "We love nuts here, you'll fit right in" sign that was a birthday gift one year from one of my sisters. And of course Baby is munching away on a nut.
The decorations on the fence are now completed. Two of the three painted terra cotta pots I hang out on those pot clips during the summer needed some major repainting so I worked on those and coated them with 2-3 coats of clear poly before hanging them outside (this pic was taken before that was done).
Below is a pic from late April (or maybe the first week in May) when we had a few nice days and I got ahead of myself eager to sit outside at my patio table! I lugged out my old dinette rug from the basement (it's outdoor/indoor) that I first bought when I moved into this home in July 2014 and centered my patio table and its 2 chairs around it, and pulled out my trusty old 9 foot wide crank open umbrella. I wasn't the only one who was eager for nice weather and spring, though. As you can see in the photo below, my neighbor had also set up his deck and the top of his red umbrella is showing above the top of the fence.
Yep, those bare garden beds, and they still needed a good cleaning when I too this pic. You can see on the right that my backyard peony is about a foot tall, and to the right of that the white lilac bush is just starting to leaf out. And if you look to the right of the bottom of the lilac, you will see one of my hostas that already was quite full and lush. They liked the cool wet days during the late spring we were having. You may also see what look like mini white streaks in the pic above. Yep - it was one of those days when it started snowing outside, and later mixed rain with occasional bursts of snow came along. The snow didn't stick, though.
Ah, and then the rains came - TONS of rain. On May 17th-18th, we got hit with a massive storm and it just poured buckets and buckets. My sump pump, that I thought had maybe died and gone to Heaven because I hadn't heard it kick in for at least the past 3 years, suddenly turned on the first evening of the storm scaring the baloney sausage out of me as I sat in the back bedroom I use as my den/study/library. The sump pump is situated right underneath that room, in the basement, and pumps out to the backyard which that room overlooks. It took about 30 seconds for it to register what I was actually hearing, LOL! THE SUMP PUMP! Geez Louise - it sounded as if it was going to explode. But it didn't. It did it's job beautifully, thank you so much sump pump. No, these pictures were not taken in the evening, it was like 2 p.m. in the afternoon, LOL! That's how dark it was, and pouring buckets outside at the time (photo above) as you can see water splashing off the roof of the garage to the walk below and the rain divets created as the pounding drops hit the "pond" by the back east fence line. You can see the pools of rain - and of course the grass was just loving this. I had to cut it every 4-5 days for a month afterward. But as a gardener, we needed rain. I just didn't expect to get it all at once.
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This is the mud and water building up around the retaining wall on the north garden bed where the multistemmed giant
arborvitae "tree" is. You can see more of the tree in the photo of the patio umbrella, above. It's humongous! |
It did dry up - we had a nice week of sunny dry weather with a gentle breeze that felt sooooo good! The dew points weren't tropically oppressive (as they are now). I had tons of energy and could breathe easily while working. So different from now, ugh! And work my butt off I did. I got a lot done, including putting the Shezebo in order after everything in it and on it had been tucked away for the winter the autumn before, other than the bare frame.
The screen curtains were hung. I added a lot of white sheers this season that I am slowly hand-hemming since my ancient Sears sewing machine from about 1970 died so some of the hems are pinned rather than sewed. I have been slowly hemming them when out in the Shezebo. In this weather, with the oppressive air and the uncomfortably high humidity and dew points, I am just not comfortable sitting outside to relax or sit inside the Shezebo trying to hem those curtains. It bugs me, but that's the way it is. This is the south-facing side of the Shezebo and it gets blasted with full sun for most of the day. The curtains have helped cut that down some while still allowing any breeze there is to circulate. That's the north fence line in the background. On the left you can see my beautiful Japanese maple and on the right, the then in bloom white lilac. It was like fairy land in the backyard for about 2 weeks while the lilacs were blooming. The white seems to glow in the evenings and early night and the scent, never overwhelming, filled the air. And that big tall green thing behind the Shezebo - that is the multi-stemmed arborvitae that has literally grown into a gigantic tree! Unfortunately, it's on the wrong side of the yard to give me any kind of shade, ach.
The rug, table and chairs that had been situated earlier in the spring near the back of the house were moved int the Shezebo. I already had the striped curtains for the past several seasons to provide me with some shade as the sun angles across the sky (my yard gets more than it's shares of sunshine) and the sheers now fill in the gap between the panels, which are hung from the corners outward on 3 "walls" of the Shezebo. I haven't yet finished hanging all of them up, I got smart after hanging them up and realizing they were far too long and needed hemming. Now I've been hemming them (slowly) inside the comfort of the house. Since I'm rolling the existing hem up twice, I didn't want to take a chance and try using iron on hemming tape only to have it fall apart when the sheers need to be washed, so it's the old-fashioned overstitch by hand method, as the mood strikes me. I have 2 more panels to hem before hanging the rest to fill in all the gaps.
And some pictures from around the garden during April and May, various stages:
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Not sure what the flowering shrub is, it's against the rear of the house in a flower bed where the
AC unit sits. There is a potentilla shrub to the left of it that you can barely see. The milkweed
that appeared last year out of the nowhere in that flower bed has spread and is on the left in front of the
potentilla. Volunteer lambs ears, the seeds of which no doubt blew into this bed from the
neighboring bed along the north lot line along with some black eyed Susans that will bloom
later in July into August are intermixed. |
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The Japanese maple loves that corner of the north garden bed. The plants are essentially allowed to do
whatever they want in that bed and many of them move around from year to year. There are primarily
black-eyed Susans underneath the tree, two different varieties of spirea, one tall white striped grass, a
volunteer hardy old-fashioned day lily that you really can't see tucked away and growing under the
Japanese maple, some succulents that I don't know the name of, a purple shrub of some kind next
to the Japanese maple (growing up behind the spirea), a single aster that sets the tiniest flowers I've
ever seen and the bunnies have really done a number on chomping it down this year, so not sure
if it will make it or not this summer, and some lambs ears mixed in here and there.
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A later photo of the peony bush just about ready to bloom and the white lilac bush with blossoms open! It's so beautiful. And notice how dry the ground and the grass is looking in this photo (above). That's because after the gigantic rainstorm we had May 17-18, we had next to nothing in rain for the next several weeks after that. This is another feast/famine summer. It never used to be this way, but this is the "new normal" thanks to global climate change. It sucks.
Do you see the ant on the peony bud?
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Arborvitae cluster anchoring the northeast corner of the backyard.
Three large regular green hostas underneath across the front of the bed.
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Above, a photo of the east garden bed. It it filled with three different colors of Rose of Sharon, regular old-fashioned day lilies, ground ivy that I have thus far managed to keep out of encroaching out into the lawn (it's impossible to kill it in the garden beds with chemicals without harming the other plants and pulling it out endlessly only seems to encourage it to grow more). Also has a volunteer grape ivy vine and various weed trees sprouting here and there, I am in a constant (losing) battle against them but I keep hacking away at them every season anyway.
A fuller view of my yard looking toward the east. That beautiful red maple in my neighbor's yard gives me wonderful early morning shade in the summer until about 10:30 a.m., so on days where I am able to breathe outside (lower dew point air) I can work outside without getting burnt by the sun. It's wonderful! The only icky thing - those wires. Ugh! The run along the lots line of every home in the subdivision. A necessary ugly evil - they're power lines, phone lines, high speed internet access lines of various kinds, and I've no idea what all else is up there!
Above is the line of aborvitaes that separates my driveway from the backyard of my neighbor to the south, also approximately delineates our lot line. It is a sort of weed haven underneath those arborvitaes, but you can see some weed flowers sprouting (more about those in a subsequent post), along with a patch of lambs ears volunteers that spread out from the south lot line garden area I installed in 2015.
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| Early May, 2020 photo of south driveway bed. |
There it is. Boy, was THAT some backbreaking work. That entire area was filled with gravel and weeds. The brother of the neighbor in the house next store (to the south) helped me a lot by digging out a lot of it himself. I spent hours picking out boxload after boxload of gravel that was then stashed in the garage, in case I should ever need some white marble gravel. The rest, as they say, is history. I transplanted some day lilies from the back yard to part of this garden and they have prospered as they are wont to do even in the worst conditions. Other plantings were transplanted lambs ears also from the north garden bed in the backyard that have since spread willy nilly as they will. What I thought was the entire peony from my backyard was transplanted to this garden bed. But I didn't quite get all of it and it resprouted the following spring in the backyard right along that north fence line next to the white lilac. As you saw in the photos above, it is now a beautiful plant. And the one in this south driveway bed is very happy, too. It took a few years for it to establish itself but it has bloomed for the past 3 years, each year with more flowers!
Added to this bed over the next few years were a hydrangea, a pink bleeding heart, a deep purple columbine that since has spread wildly and mutated into several different shades of purple and lavender columbines, some clumps of Shasta daisies, some other form of daisy that I don't remember the name of, purple cone flowers, and a beautiful ever-blooming day lily hybrid in a delicious peach color that anchors the west side corner of the bed. I have started (but have not yet finished) lining the bed with heavy concrete retaining wall blocks and have much pulling and killing of grass yet to do. But it's slowly getting there. This part of the driveway is merciless battered by the sun for most of the day between May and September, and I can only work out there for so long before I am driven inside. Oh yeah, there is also a bird bath. Got to have one of them around - the birds go gaga over them.
Photo above shows the iris in bloom and blossoms just beginning to set on whatever that shrub is - I've no idea what kind it is. This is the other side of the driveway, a garden bed along the side of the house. That door, off the driveway, leads into a small hall with the stairs to the basement and a step up into the dinette/kitchen. I access the patio through a slider out of the dinette on the other side of the fence so the patio/backyard is totally private, and I don't have to go out the side door and through a gate in order to access the patio/backyard.
Another view of that south bed along the side of the house below:
Whew! I'm tired just putting up these photos, and this isn't all the garden and lawn area yet. Now you see why I'm endlessly working outside whenever I can, LOL! But it's beautiful. It's a pain in the neck sometimes, but I love it anyway :)
