Primroses and Rose Campions

The heat of summer is coming on in Bowie. It's not in the 90's yet, but we're going to be in the mid to upper 80's all week. Amidst the heat and afternoon thunderstorms, the garden is flourishing.  Early June is the bloom time for the primroses and the rose campions.

I finally (after trying to track it down for two years) know what the silver plants with the dark red flowers are.

They are rose campions.  Due to some detective work done by a friend (thanks Karen) I know that these are rose campion.  And a few more details (they are short lived perennials [2-3 years] that reseed easily and can be planted with yellow flowers for a "hot" garden.)

Speaking of yellow flowers:

the primroses are taking over the garden in cahoots with the rose campions.

Looking down the path from near the holly trees on the left in the panorama

The two compliment each other well in color and in bloom time.

Across the back fence we have 4 butterfly bushes coming along nicely that will start adding a wildlife dimension to the blooms very soon.

Butterfly pictures should start showing up soon. We've seen one or two butterflies already, but they'll be more as soon as the butterfly bushes start to bloom.

Field Trip to Montpelier Mansion

To celebrate a few days off leading into a long weekend, we went on a field trip today.  We visited Marietta Mansion, Montpelier Mansion, and Belair Mansion. It's a beautiful afternoon with temperatures in the low 70's, sunshine, and a slight breeze.  We couldn't ask for a better day to go out and walk around some well manicured grounds and gardens.

The highlight of the afternoon was the formal garden at Montpelier Mansion in Laurel.  I told Gloria that I wanted to get out to take some pictures - and I hit the jackpot for some garden shots.  They have a formal garden with Irises, Peonies, Roses, and herb among other plants. This weekend is a great time to see the peonies and the irises.

The formal garden looking up towards the mansion.

Near the entrance were several groupings of Irises.

The Irises posed for their close-up.

Then we passed through the formal herb garden and got to the peonies,  GORGEOUS!! 

Simple and fancy at the same time, the outer petals create a simple setting for the inner fancies.

Gloria has asked for more peonies in our garden.

I'm not sure what color to call these.

In the center of the peony beds there were several rose bushes.

(speechless)

And near the edge of a cleared area I saw this fellow.

I'll never have the time for such a formal garden, but it was fun to find one nearby that we can go visit together. We'll be watching heir website for activities at the mansion for more chances to go up and enjoy the grounds.

Creating a photo log of the back hill

By far the biggest garden we have is on the hill in the backyard.  There are numerous other bits and pieces around the house, but the back hill is the biggest continuous bed.  I've been taking pictures of sections of it for years, but last summer started stitching together some of the sequences to create panoramic scenes of the whole hill.

This year I'm taking the panoramic scenes a step further and creating a series of pictures over time to show the garden as it grows through the season.  So far I have three pictures and have put them together in a sequences collage.

 The top picture is mid-April right after I had spent a weekend putting down the mulch.  I was not very careful in overlapping the original pictures, so the stitching did not work well.  It's actually two different stitched images placed next to each other.  The center image is late April, and the third one is mid-May (then there is room for several more to be added later.)

Here are the images separately - to see more detail.

<-- 2 pictures Mid April

 Mid April 3 pictures ->

Late April

And today (mid-May)

Since I'm still learning what I'm doing out there, this will give me a chance to see what is blooming when. So next year I'll have a quick reference guide that is very specifically tailored to my garden.

Now I am going to ask for help.  I have several plants that I don't know what they are (so I'm not sure what to do for them.)  Here is a gallery of pictures.  If you know what these are, please leave a comment and tell me. I'll group them by numbers to make it easier to keep track.

Plant 1 - along the garden path in several spots - getting to about 12 -18 inches tall

Plant 2 in the center left of the hill - lots of sun

Plant 3 - at the far right on the hill - plenty of full sun.

Plant 4 - ground cover - mostly behind the crimson barberry in the center behind the arbor. 

If you know what these are - please leave a comment and let me know so that I'll know how to care for them.

It's Mulch Time

It's Mulch Time.

After building (and filling) the raised garden bed last week it was time to get to mulching the garden on the hill.  This is the first year I've tackled the project myself and not paid a landscaper to do the heavy lifting. (But I guess the heavy lifting was last weekend and the dirt for the raised bed,)

So I started by making two trips to Lowe's to get 30 bags of mulch.

It took two trips because I couldn't fit that much into one load in the Rav.  This is when I remember my red pick up for so many years ago...

Once I had it all unloaded I had to get it staged.

Mr Hill, meet Mr Mulch.

Of course once I had it staged, and the fence closed (most importantly "and the fence closed") I had helpers trying to see what was going on.

What's you doing Daddy?

So, to make a long story short - it's DONE.  It took most of the day, but I still had time to run up to the store and get the makings for cheeseburgers on the grill and a bottle of Dragonfly from Far Eastern Shore Winery.  Gloria had spent the afternoon cleaning patio furniture, so she was ready for dinner alfresco and a bottle of wine.

Here's the results of another long (but rewarding) day in the garden.

The red mulch really makes the daffodils pop.

Later this spring we hope to see signs of life on the blueberry bushes and the butterfly bushes (center and top of hill respectively.).

The entrance to the garden path, with two guardians with solar lanterns to light the way.

A dogwood tree near the top center, and a lilac bush to the left and down from the dogwood.

This is a big garden - I was beat by the time I made it to this end.

I'm tired, but it is so rewarding to do something where I can see results immediately.  The new plantings take awhile to see if they've taken hold, but something like building the raised bed, and putting down the mulch has an immediacy like I can find when I'm cooking.  Not the sort of intangible results of leading a software development team (my full time job.) I'm sure that this is a big part of why I'm finding the gardening to be so rewarding. (But being able to play with the electric trimmer and the chainsaw do have their charms as well.)

I put the snow shovel away

Enough of THIS:

We had a chance to get beyond basic clean-up of the garden over the weekend.  We’ve been talking (and researching) about different options for a raised garden bed for a few weeks.   In a couple of the places we’re lived, I’ve build garden beds for Gloria to plant flowers or vegetables.  Last spring we got a couple of big planters for the patio (a ½ whiskey barrel and other pot just a little smaller,) but this year we wanted to go bigger.  But we also wanted something high off the ground that would be easy to tend.

I’ve looked at plans for DIY beds and at kits available from local sources.  I wasn’t sure about the DIY options because I didn’t know how we would be able to get the lumber home so that I could start working on it.  Not to mention that the scratch built boxes are a lot more work.

So last week, Gloria found a kit at Lowe's that makes a 4 foot by 4 foot by 6 inch raised bed. They’re designed so that they can be stacked. We were out most of the day Saturday, but after we got home and took care of the kids, we went up and picked up 4 kits. So I had the makings of a box 4’ x 4’ x 24 inches.

Sunday’s project was putting it together. It was pretty easy and went together quickly. It was also nice that the corners are designed with a spike that anchor it into the ground and serve to lock the upper layers together.

½ way up

The completed box

Then it was time to add the dirt.

This is most of it, I had to go back and get 3 more bags of garden soil.  It totaled to 30 cubic feet of dirt. I had 12 cubic feet of plain topsoil and 18 cubic feet of flower and vegetable garden soil. 

The bird seed was also in the Rav and had to be unloaded. I left it up there for the picture figuring on making a comment like:

I wonder what I'll get from these seeds?

I did a little research this morning and it came in somewhere around 2600 pounds of dirt.  I put in over 1 ¼ tons of dirt yesterday.  The research was after taking a couple extra strength Tylenol.

But now it’s ready for planting.

Gloria has already picked out a selection of bedding plants to go in there and in the two planters from last year.  She has 3 kinds of tomatoes, 4 bell pepper plants, some romaine lettuce, a rosemary plant, and some basil. (There might be something else, but I can’t remember all the specifics from as far back as Saturday, it was a long weekend.)

While I was working on the new garden bed, Gloria was cleaning and putting preservative on the patio furniture.

They've gotten a "weathered" look that we're trying to recover from.

I did take a break after the box was built and started working on dinner. I butterflied a whole chicken. I made a rub of pesto and some roasted red pepper sauce we had and rubbed it under the skin of the chicken. I put it back in the refrigerator for a couple of hours while I filled up the garden box with dirt. Gloria made our springtime favorite salad – asparagus and tomatoes. We had some pasta salad and I decided to cut up a pineapple and grill some spears since I had the grill hot.

I got the chicken going and we got ready for our neighbor to join us.

On Saturday we had gotten some new wines form our friends at Far Eastern Shore Winery http://www.fareasternshorewinery.com/ . They have two new wines, Lotus and Dragonfly.

We approve of the new wines. J  We actually went through 3 bottles while we were relaxing from our toils of the day.  I think that had something to do with my not being too sore when I went to bed last night.

Well, dinner was relaxed with fun company and a feeling of accomplishment after a busy weekend.

I still have work to do in the front yard, and I need to put mulch down on the back garden.  But, I put the snow shovels away in the shed and we’re moving on to Spring.  (The final confirmation will be the cherry blossoms in the back yard.  They’re budding now and should be out within a week or two.)

New Years Snow

On the second day of the year, we had our first snow of the year. From what I could tell from shovelling the driveway and clearing off the cars, I think we got about 3 inches.  It wasn't enough to really need the snow blower, just a snow shovel was able to handle the job this morning.  But there was enough to make a great cover where all you saw was snow - not snow with blades of grass sticking out.  So last night I went out to get some more pictures. We still have our Christmas lights up and they were still turned on.

This is my favorite shot from last night.  This is a weeping cherry tree at the front corner of the yard. I like the light reflected off the snow under the tree. The slightly blurry section just right of center in the tree was caused by my camera lens fogging up in the cold.  It's not big enough to ruin the picture and adds a little "magic" to the picture.

Needless to say there are more pictures...

These two are from the backyard and the snow that was still falling helped create a glow around the denser lights. In the upper picture  I like the reflection of the glow from the snow under the bush on the right side and under the trees in the center.  The lower picture has the glow created by all the snow covered branches of the red maple that anchors that side of the yard.

And I had to get some pictures of the holly grove outside the fence in back.

This one was taken with a flash, so a lot more of the snow is visible, in flight and on the trees.  The lights are not as obvious, but snow on holly is so emblematic of winter that I had to get some pictures.

And a couple other pictures...

The first one is the top of the cherry tree in the backyard - above where I was able to reach to hangs lights. The second picture is a bush in  the front yard showing off in holiday lights and the new year's snow.

We have a fire going in the fireplace and are just relaxing today, enjoying the last day of my vaccation.