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
