Good Day in the Garden

Come sit with me on the patio, have an iced green tea and I’ll tell you about my good day in the garden.

First, I started out on the back patio. I weeded out a bunch of prostrate spurge, sedum and a few black-eyed susans that were growing up through the cracks in the paving bricks. I don’t know what the species is of this particular sedum that likes to grow up in the cracks all over the patio, but it is the one I featured in this blog article. I’m not too fussy about the patio and allow thyme and the sedum to grow up through the cracks most of the summer, but by fall ‘enough is enough’, and there are also weeds, so I have to clean it all up.

I also cleaned up and put away a few pots that I had shoved over to a corner this spring when I ran out of stuff to plant, and potted up some coleus that I am hoping to grow as topiaries, if they over winter okay in my sun room. Then to finish off the patio clean up, I hosed the whole area down.

While I was working in that area, I also weeded and tidied up my miniature hosta garden. I’ve got a few issues there with slugs or grasshoppers eating on a few of the plants. When a plant is miniature to begin with, something eating on it can devour it very quickly. This picture is of Hosta ‘Pandora’s Box’ which is flowering now.

Then, I cleaned up the front porch, and rearranged some of the containers. I threw out some impatiens that just sat there and did nothing all summer. I’m not sure what the problem was, but I’ve had problems before with impatiens and the common denominator seems to be where I bought the plants. (It couldn’t be me, right?) So, I’ve made a mental note to skip that particular nursery next year when I make my buying rounds.

I also cleaned up a little side bed between me and my neighbor that contains some hostas, daylilies, and a few other perennials and mulched it with cocoa bean hulls. The smell was delicious and for some reason I craved a chocolate bar when I was done.

Then to wrap up the day, I trimmed back the English Ivy. Remember it? It’s the same ivy I tried to get rid of last spring and posted about here and again here. I never did get rid of all of it. I believe that I will always have it in that bed, unless I decide to totally tear out all the shrubs that are there and basically start over. However, as a result of my radical pruning in the spring, the ivy actually doesn’t look too bad right now. I trimmed out another 2 bags full of it today which I’ll put out with the trash later this week. I won’t ever put it in the compost bins, because it could easily take root back there and then I’ll have a whole new “situation” to deal with. My advice today is don’t plant English ivy (Hedera helix) unless you are ready to commit to it forever. F-o-r-e-v-e-r.

Well, thanks for stopping by. Oh, one last thing. We need some rain! If it doesn’t start raining by sometime tomorrow, I’ll be pulling out all the sprinklers for the 1st time this season and giving everything a good soaking.