Wherever I go, there I am

Sounds like a fun project, Bev. Have you thought about taking a picture right now? Then we could see before and after (and progress in between) pictures. :)
 

Bev, I enjoyed reading all about it. Yes, that arbor vitae (?) gets huge! That oniony plant with the white flower..don't know the name but it drove my friend crazy- it spread all over the yard, clogged up the mower, lol. Very aggressive, she couldnt get rid of it.

I liked the bee balm for the butterflies plus it was tall where I needed tall. I thought century plant was some kind of aloe or agave, not sure.

Yes, photos would be nice if you can!

My mil used to cook fiddleheads, delicious!

Your yellow roses must be beautiful!
 
Sounds like a fun project, Bev. Have you thought about taking a picture right now? Then we could see before and after (and progress in between) pictures. :)
Sure! But will have to wait until Monday for current photos -- vigorous coastal weather this weekend! ☺
 

Bev, I enjoyed reading all about it. Yes, that arbor vitae (?) gets huge! That oniony plant with the white flower..don't know the name but it drove my friend crazy- it spread all over the yard, clogged up the mower, lol. Very aggressive, she couldnt get rid of it.

I liked the bee balm for the butterflies plus it was tall where I needed tall. I thought century plant was some kind of aloe or agave, not sure.

Yes, photos would be nice if you can!

My mil used to cook fiddleheads, delicious!

Your yellow roses must be beautiful!

Wow, I'm glad the onions are nowhere near my front lawn ☺
I didn't know fiddle heads were edible! Not sure I could handle that texture...
A photo diary might just be the thing to keep me on track, too! Now I wish I had taken a "before" of the jungle. It took 5 SUV loads to get rid of all of that 😅
 
My "mid-project" photos: :cool:
Only allowed 5 max to upload, so these show the high points. Clarity is not so good, because I resized them for posting...
BevGarden01.jpgBevGarden03.jpgBevGarden02.jpgBevGarden04.jpgBevGarden06.jpg

Somehow a lavender rainbow got into the Mary Garden photo -- love that one! The last one is my first success of the season -- blooming miniature yellow roses! :D
 
Thank you NancyNGA!

I showed those and other photos to my neighbor Lorna (who doesn't get out too much these days) -- she was complimentary about how much work I've already done :). To me, it still looks like a mess, but now I can get to the clearing out and planting in pots!

What fun this is -- I bought this small modular home partly because of that back walled garden (I won't buy a stick-built house here, since this is a reasonably active seismic zone and I don't want to invest a ton of money) -- it's fine to live in a 55+ neighborhood of these homes along a private lane, and with neighbors who have lovely small gardens. My house has a lot of south and west exposure (passive solar!), and on the "public" sides I keep a nicely trimmed lawn with a few bushes and large pots with blueberries (I just found out they need fertilizer, but have to find out when best to apply) and herbs.
So when this private garden is spruced up, it'll be a nice space too! :cool:

I wonder if anyone can recommend any of their favorite hanging-vine type plants that do well on the humid, temperate Oregon coast?
 
Quick change of gears -- watched 4 hours last evening (repeat broadcast) and 5 hours this morning (live) of a person testifying before a committee (keeping that as neutral as possible, because sometimes politics and public interest topics have a way of blowing up in forum conversations :eek:nthego:).
Whoa! Kind of an existential struggle between "safety" and "freedom" going on, but it still surprises me how little non-nerds pay attention about how social media systems really work.
Sheesh!!! 'Nuff said, I think.
That's what happens when it's a rainy day and I can't get out into my sweet little garden. Gonna make a cup of tea and play some games here!
 
Walled-garden clean-up and prep is done - yay! There was one pot that had the most awful, prickly tendrils that had wrapped around the tree last year, so in the Fall I tore up one pair of garden gloves cutting it down to the base and bagging the cuttings for disposal. Yesterday, I tried to dig the stump out of the pot, but it had rooted all the way down -- had to dump the whole thing. Don't know what that was, but I think it would make a terrific deer fence if necessary. Anyhow, it's bagged up and ready for the semi-annual yard debris pickup -- I'll only have four bags this time -- progress!
We should have 10 days of mostly sunshine and 60+ degree temps! On a friend's advice, I picked up some "confetti" plants to put in the shorter garden pots, and three purple-flowered clematis for the tall blue pot in the Mary garden area. They'll all get planted tomorrow!
The front lawn is in really good shape this year (a two-year process to get it up to par...), so mowing is now on a weekly schedule. :cool:
The previous owner left me an auto-sprinkler system :love_heart:, and I'm going to re-program it for 2-days/week, 20-minute intervals. Will see if I can outsmart the machine and get it re-done.
After all the planting is done, there's one more project I've wanted to do for a while -- pull out and relocate/rearrange some of the paving blocks. Don't think I'll have to buy more than a dozen new ones to finish the design. Should be interesting, and definitely appeals to a nerdy brain to get those in order. :p There was some settling so it's not really a level area, but I can live with that...
Another fun adventure -- finding a chaise lounge that is not zero-gravity! Just a reasonably light-weight one that folds out flat and that folds up when I'm not using it. The old-school style is not easy to find!
Will take more photos when the plants are in, thanks for reading!
 
Time to enjoy the fruits! The trash collection service took away 4 big bags of lawn and garden cuttings a week ago and I got all the new plants in as of last evening -- yay!!! And I found a perfect chaise lounge including cushions for $49 -- unbelievable :D
My first hummingbird arrived yesterday, so I quickly went and bought some already-flowering fuschias for the last two pots and put them in just before dark. Other new plants put in last week: purple clematis and something called "confetti" which will expand and overflow their pots at some point.
Think I'll wait until June to take more photos since there will be lots in bloom.
Tomorrow my friend Lorna (the expert, although she demurs at that...) and I are returning to one of her favorite wholesale plant locations to pick up a few succulents. When we were there two weeks ago, they had a large supply of tri-colored pastel cacti called something like "ocean drifts", if I remember right. So we're going back tomorrow to see what my self-imposed remaining budget will allow.
It's fun to update here -- feels like I have an accountability friend or two to stay on task and now all there's left to do in the walled garden is water occasionally and wait for the blooms to begin.
Thanks for reading!
 
June already! Have new garden pics -- I've decided to embrace the fiddle-headed ferns; am particularly happy with my new fuschias and took a close-up pic of one of the pots :D

The clematis above Mary's statue is in very bad shape, but not dead yet. There seems to be something about the neighbor's tree above the North side of that corner -- nothing except bulbs survive below it. To the left (not directly under the tree) is where I put the potted yellow roses and they are doing fine.
Don't know much about trees and can't do anything about it, so I'll wait until Fall to see if I need to plant only bulbs in the pots on that side. Rats.

It is so lovely to relax with a cup of morning tea in my traditional (not zero-gravity) padded chaise lounge! Oh, and yesterday evening I bought a 38" neon pink flamingo wire sculpture (which is supposed to glow in the dark -- will see tonight). I put it on the west side of the house because, well, it looks perfect there; embarrassing the neighbors is just an added bonus. :p:cool:

June 6 one.jpgJun 6 two.jpgJun 6 three.jpgJun 6 four.jpg

I have no idea why the pics lay sideways when I insert them here -- they are "upright" when I take the photos. Anybody have an idea what I can do about that?

Bev
 
I found out today that the "killer" tree will be pruned way back, but not removed. Sigh. My super-neighbor with all the horticultural know-how told me that it's a laburnum ("all parts of the tree are poisonous") so no more potted plants underneath that bad boy! Except for bulbs -- they seem to be doing alright. I moved my miniature rose pot to a different area, and will most likely put artificial climbing flowers in the tall pot behind the statue. Ah well.
 
Looks like it'll be a while before the killer tree is cut way down, so today I picked up two small pots and transplanted the Confetti plants to them and put in my newest experiment in progress -- a front corner garden. My neighbors have beautiful front gardens and I thought I'd try that too, after severely pruning back a rhododendron bush when the blooms were done. It's a start and I know that the lamppost will not kill anything underneath ;)
Thinking about a "bottle tree" also :cool:

Front Corner.jpg
 
Just a note -- wildfires this season are, for the time being, much smaller, and east and south of us. Aerial retardants are now being used when smoke is sighted after lightning strikes -- a very big change from last Summer, when burns were left alone in wilderness areas. Bad results...
Statistics so far in 2018: lightning-caused fires here = 50; human-caused = 378. No kidding :mad: Total acres burned so far = 5,000 (est). (Last year >200,000)

Maybe we'll make it through this fire season with far less devastation than last year. Here's hoping!
 
Very nice photos of your garden Bev, thanks for sharing! Hope there's not too much damage from the fires, please stay safe. I'm in Colorado and we get a lot of lightning strikes here, and are having some big wildfires here due to dry drought conditions. Luckily not close to my area though.
 
Okay, here's where "Felicity Flamingo" will be displayed (originally I had it on the side of the house near the driveway, but when the lights come on after dusk, it really lights up :D)
Will take another photo after dusk with the lights on. :cool:
You can see behind to the right, where I had to dig out everything that was killed by the laburnum tree. Have a small pot with hydrangea cuttings that should starting making roots any time now and will plant those. Since there's apparently no way to kill a hydrangea (and I've tried...), I'm betting a large bush will fit perfectly there.
Can see part of one of my fuschia potted plants also -- happy with those!!!


Flamingo1.jpg
 
Thanks SeaBreeze! Don't know about the green thumb, but am enjoying the learning curve!

Okay, here's Felicity lit up, and it's just dusk -- can imagine what it's like when fully dark out! :welcoming: So, better to be in the back walled garden... :cool:

Flamingo2.jpg

It's so perfectly flamingo-y! Yeah!
 


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