Good morning, and can we please move on? Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Sigh... you know that saying "same shit, different day"? Here in Denver it’s been "same shit, different week". Once again it was cold for the weekend, warmed up as we headed into the work week with highs in the mid-70’s on Tuesday; Wednesday the wind started blowing and temperatures started to slide; Thursday evening brought spits of rain; and yesterday the highs remained stubbornly in the low-50s.
We do have a slight variation forecast for the week ahead: today we may get to the 60s, and the nicest day of the week will be tomorrow when the forecast calls for us to twitch up — barely — to the 70s. Then the next wet-and-cold front comes in and by mid-week the forecast is for highs in the 40s.
As for "Mother’s Day" being the start of the warm-weather planting season? Fuhgedaboutit. The combination of an early Mother’s Day and a late spring warm-up means I’ll likely delay planting out warm-weather crops until the end of the month.
Update [2010-5-10 13:44:50 by Frankenoid]: Here's After Hours
Along with the weather, I've faced challenges coming from my neighbors' home improvement efforts. On Tuesday I came home to discover that the house next door was being re-roofed or, more accurately, deroofed, and none too carefully. Oh, the roofers had tarps up to deflect falling debris from my porch but, apparently, they had put them up after realizing that debris was falling on my porch... and in my flower beds. And the tarps smashed the shit out of the bulb foliage near the porch and property line. And the wind apparently caught some of debris and flung it like Frisbees further than one would have imagined possible. And they only thought to tarp in the front, not the back. And when they were using a wheelbarrow to transport the debris from the house to the truck (parked right in front of our house, and right next to my new planter-box beds) not all the debris remained in the wheelbarrow or made it into the truck. The neighbors were most apologetic, and the roofers did clean up the large chunks at the edges — but I'm finding bits of asphalt and cedar shingles and other detritus everywhere.
Then yesterday, a huge maple tree two doors down had to come down. It's sad, but the tree is not healthy and is posing a danger. Although the doomed tree was the one farthest away from our place, the sunlight patterns will be changing a bit in our front yard.
But despite weather and other set backs, I am making some progress in the garden. On Wednesday I did manage to get the last few perennials in the ground in the front yard (while simultaneously picking shingles out of the flowers). I still have a few plants to go in the shady spots in the back yard, but all in all I've done well in getting that which I've bought locally planted.
The cool and cloudy weather also made it an opportune time to set out the brassica seedlings — actually, they are more "sprouts" than seedlings, having barely emerged. Thursday evening, as the rain started spitting, I hurried out with a teaspoon (yes, a teaspoon — the brassica babies were in plastic egg cartons and a teaspoon is just the right size to scoop out the little plants), grabbed some wire folding fencing to mark just where the little plants were going so no one would accidentally tromp on top of them (yes, something I've learned to do from the experience of living with three males with big feet), and quickly popped the little plants into the ground.
But I do wish it would warm up sooner, rather than later, if for no other reason than I'd really like to get the plants out of the house and outside! I have squash and cucumbers and flowers and tomatoes and eggplant and peppers — so many plants that have outstripped the space I have for them — plus I'm tired of hauling water downstairs (and having to remember to haul water downstairs) (and shit... I just remembered that I forgot to bring the morning glories and tuberoses in from the front porch last night... I hope they didn't freeze).
Oh well, it is what it is. This weekend I'll be planting, one on each side of the front porch, the two Zéphirine Drouhin Zéphirine Drouhin roses which arrived from Heirloom Roses on Thursday (and thank gawd they hadn't arrived last week, or the roofers would have destroyed one of them!)
I'll also be plugging hardy nanus gladsin between the spring bulbs, and planting some of the standard glads. I also have a bunch of dwarf Glamini glads to go out along the front border and in the planter boxes.
And the grass — oy, I have to get the grass mowed, or I'll need to use a machete, rather than the little Lawn Pup, to get through it! And the compost bin desperately needs the infusion of grass clippings to finish cooking last year's garden debris. Although I like what thoroughly mixing the grass clippings into the bin does for compost production, the process of doing the mixing in is very labor intensive. I've been lusting after the tumbler from A.M. Leonard, which has an optional sifting screen" which attaches to the front — I'm going to watch the site and see if it goes on sale at the end of the season.
The rest of the back yard also needs a good picking up — I haven't done a lot back there except prepping and planting the veggie patch. As I didn't clean out the autumn clematis last year, there's a lot of dead vines and leaves that need removed — it's putting out a lot of new growth at the base, so I'm just going to cut it all back and tear down the old stuff. And the shed is — again — a nightmare tangle of crap haphazardly stacked inside. The Mister needs to get busy building a small shelter near the electrical box into which we can put the propane powered generator we bought last fall; I insisted that, given the cost of his discus fish, it would be stupid to risk having an extended power outage and having his fishies freeze. Right now, however, the generator is taking up prime space in the garden shed.
And, of course, the front porch needs to be cleaned — between garden detritus and roofing de-bris it's a gawdawful mess.
That's what's happening here? What's going on in your gardens?
P.S. Through the gardening season, be on the lookout for Saturday Morning Garden Blogging After Hours posted mid-day Mondays.