Garden Projects Galore!

 Hola everyone!  

Work never stops around Maison Newton, just as it probably doesn't stop at your homes, either.  Regardless of where we live, there's always something, it seems, that needs to be done - or should be done even when we drag out feet and try to ignore it...

The largest garden project I did last month was lining the front beds (finally) with concrete blocks.  I had reported the first part of the project on July 16, 2020 - you can read about it here if you like.  It took several more days after July 16th (hot, sweaty days), but I did finish laying blocks along the border of the longer bed on the north side of the front yard. 

In progress:

Finished north front bed:

The bluegrass lawn now looks much better.  We had a major rainstorm at the end of July, and I treated the lawn a second time, and then spot-treated a third time for sod web worms - the little buggers!  And during the month of August, while we've gotten some rain, it's not near enough to keep the lawns lush.  I've been deep watering - CHA CHING on this quarter's water bills but a gal's got to do what a gal's got to do.  I live in southeast Wisconsin - WE WANT thick green lawns here with no brown spots.  Brown spots are anathema!  Or maybe I'm just a lawn nut case.  

I'm very happy with how this project turned out.  The band above the stone veneer on the front of the house is concrete and along with the concrete walkway, the low block wall coordinates beautifully and adds a great finishing touch to the front yard.  BONUS - I actually got MUSCLES on my upper arms from all the heavy lifting (each block weighed 14 pounds).  Now I'm trying to keep those muscles and wondering if I'll have to take up weight lifting during the winter...

Last month I took some photos of the state of my backyard flower beds.  In two words:  GIANT MESSES!  So, I finally sucked it up and realized I had to at least try to clean some of the mess out.  It still amazes me how when I took photos on June 29th everything was gorgeous; and when I took these photos below on or around July 21st, everything had turned into a disaster over one month's time!

Above is an overview shot of the back (east) garden bed, which includes the arbor vitaes planted in the corner to disguise the utility pole.  The large shrub in the middle is a Rose of Sharon that I received when it was about a foot tall as a seedling from one of my friends.  The Roses of Sharon on either side of the bed did not do well last winter - probably because we went straight from summer while they were still blooming right into winter.  Autumn skipped us last year and everything was a mess.  The shrub on the left side doesn't look too bad - from a distance.  But close up, a good third of the original shrub is totally dead and needed to be pruned down and removed if possible without injuring the rest of the shrub that did sent out greenery this year.  The shrub on the right side was severely damaged (hard to tell from this distance), nearly all of the original tall shrub died off.  Only a few of the remaining branches sent out greenery this season, and it appears that a new shrub sprouted from what I think might be the root ball under the center of the shrub.  It's hard to tell, because these Roses of Sharon are prolific seeders and I have mini-shrubs coming up EVERYWHERE in that East garden bed, sigh.  The Rose of Sharon on the left side sent out a few blossoms and has a few buds remaining to open; the center Rose of Sharon has good buds and flowers, but not as many as in prior years.  The Rose of Sharon on the right side has no buds set at all.

You can see at the bottom of the photo that the patio is partially covered in dead branches that I'd pruned from the ornamental cherry tree out front (that exercise over three days probably started the muscles forming in my arms, since I did all of the sawing of larger than 2 inch branches manually, and my loppers, used for branches up to 2 inches in diameter, are also solely powered by my woman in her sixties flabby upper arms.  It was quite the work-out.  

I waited for the large branches taken off the tree to dry out, as they are then easier to cut and fit into garden trash bags for disposal, at least for me.  Any leaves that come off during the cutting/bending and stuffing into bags process are swept up and used as mulch hidden under the lowest of my plants and shrubs.   

From this distance, the East garden bed doesn't look so bad, even though nearly all of the day lilies had blossomed and I was waiting for the now bare tall stems to dry out sufficiently so I could pull them out of the plant with one good yank!  You really don't see all the weed trees that have popped up seemingly out of nowhere, the wild grape vine that I have been endlessly battling for the six years I've lived here, and miscellaneous mayhem weeds that have popped up over the season among and behind the arborvitaes.

More will follow in the post(s) above...