the hidden place and the other time

Got back out into the garden today; grubbed out the lavender bed in the side yard and the formerly annual bed in the front. I think I'll pop down to Watson's Monday or Tuesday and pick up some more things that might be happy in that bed--I'm thinking azaleas for the partial shade under the pine tree, some more hollyhocks for the spot they seem to like, a few more lavender plants for around the rock, and some low-growing stuff for the front of the bed. Of course, this year I also have a bunch of morning glory (don't worry, not bindweed, the *good* morning glories!) seedlings that will be ready to plant in a couple of weeks. I planted the lavender that I'd bought to fill in some spots in the lavender bed that are looking pretty bare.

As I was out digging in the lavender, I noticed that my Spanish lavender (blooms earlier than French and has big fat blossom heads with purple flags on the ends) was being visited by a whole passel of bees. Encouragingly, unlike the last several years, 95% of the bees were domestic honeybees! I've seen more of our native bees out back, since the Japanese maple by the back door is blooming (the local wasps enjoy those blooms, where are actually too small to get a good photograph of), but in the lavender bed, the honeybees were definitely queen. But that was the most honeybees I've seen in one place in years. I suspect that we have someone in the neighborhood who has a hive, mostly likely on this side of the highway, or else we have a wild hive in the greenbelt. There were too many honeybees there for us to be too far from the hive(s) the bees are from.

I also have a pot that I need to put some annuals in, and I need to make more of a plan for the former garden which has slowly been turning into a herb/perennial garden. The hostas I planted appear to have given up the ghost, so I need to figure out what might like dry shade. There are a bunch more beds that need to be grubbed out (though hrhwillows has been doing an excellent job, it's kind of a big yard!) which I'll be doing likely Wednesday or Thursday. The willow trees also need to be beaten back again, and it's easier to do it in the spring than the summer. The New Zealand flax is struggling back to life after being almost killed by the cold this past winter, and I need to figure out something to do with the bed it's in while it's getting its act together. (According to this article, the flax will take at least two years to come back to its former prettiness. Must find a decent ground cover, or maybe some more grasses to put around it.)

I also need to figure out what to do about the bed the lilacs are in. It's pretty weedy. Eventually, the lilacs will take care of it by shading everything out, but that's not going to be for another few years. Mulching is possible but impractical (the bed is about 2' wide and about four and a haf feet off the ground, atop a rock wall). I may end up putting landscape fabric down and putting a light layer of mulch over the cloth. Best scenario would be to find some rapidly-spreading ground cover that would choke out the weeds, but the weeds...are horsetail. Horsetail (aka Equisetum is a fantastically successful plant. Even more successful than, say, dandelions.

I'll figure it out. Right now, I am doing photo editing. Mmm, photo editing. :)

The hollyhocks finally bloomed...and they're black! I had forgotten that I'd picked up black hollyhocks to be the tall backdrop the the annual bed.

That is the sound a flame weeder makes.

I used the flame weeder, and we'll see in a couple of days whether it was effective on the stuff I used it on; can't really help but be, after all. Then I and the puppy pulled weeds. He mostly ran around with his ball and then tried his hand at pulling weeds and carrying pulled weeds to the yard waste bin (neither of which really worked) and then just hung with me for a while. He'd rather have been inside crashed out on the couch with the people on the couch, but I insisted that there needed to be Outside Time.

You would think that running around with blackberry vines in one's mouth would be a self-limiting behavior. Evidently, if you're a puppy, it's not necessarily.

He's now flopped down on the floor, looking like he's falling asleep. Me, I'm going to take a shower and then try to get a running start on the next Black Angel Crossroads story. Goodness, it's a lovely day out, though.

...as attested to by the pictures I just posted.

I went out for a run. Outside! Hooray! Happy Kris!

I got up early this morning to go to Watson's Greenhouse down in Puyallup, since I'd been told it was fabulous. And it was. A very, very dangerous place for a Kris. I didn't buy the fifty-dollar hydrangea that I wanted, but I did buy two others, as well as larkspur, more lavender, and a few other things. Carpinito Brothers yeilded carnations and another hydrangea. I also stopped at the Puyallup Farmer's Market, which was quite nice; nobody selling local meats, but a good selection of everything else. (I didn't have any cash with me, so I was browsing instead of buying.)

Came home and proceeded to put in all of the plants I bought. I love our trees, but their surface roots I could really do without. By the time I was finished, I was quite literally dirt from head to toes, courtesy a number of roots that sprayed dirt all over the place when I pulled them up. The lavender bed is finished for the year (including soaker hose for better watering), I think i may have everything in the cutting garden I'll grow this year, and I now have an experiment running to see if petunias will survive our garden window.

It's really hot here, but for some reason I honestly didn't notice all that much while I was working. I always handle heat a lot better than I think I will; probably a consequence of growing up in California. The sun came out and it's feeling a lot less muggy than it was, which is nice.

I am tired and sore and now it is time to rest for a bit and wait for it to get cooler. Perhaps a nap is in order in the coolest place in the house, currently the living room.