Archive for June, 2002

June garden update

lisa June 14th, 2002

Black-eyed Susans from the Amanda have finally recovered from being transplanted and look good. Zinnias are coming up! Milkweed getting huge. Everything else is just sitting there. The only thing blooming is the moss rose, peppermint vinca, and irises (plus lots and lots of buttercups! but those are weeds). The mock orange and ninebark are done and need pruning - the vanhouttes got pruned last weekend and look good. This week I planted some seedlings I got from Carol: purple cone-flower and blue morning glories. I also planted some seeds I got last weekend: shasta daisies and something else that I’ve forgotten. And tonight I bought a Sedum Matrona and some coleus, which I’ll plant tomorrow. It’s been raining most of the week, which is good, but it’s been pretty cool, fifties and sixties, which is not so good. We need some good hot days for the tomatoes. Irises are blooming - two purple (something like “Graphic Arts”) and one blue (something like “Codicil”) and the white one is about to pop any day. I planted about tweny bulbs last fall, but only half the bed gets enough sun. Plus Irises take a while to get established sometimes. I’m dying to order more for next year, but I really don’t have a good spot for them - even if I move the bloodroot out of that bed, which I definitely need to do.

Other plants on my wish list: tulips, gentian, monkshood, variegated lamium, epimedium, rose of sharon, hellebores, cyclamen, grass of parnassus, toad lily, primulas, basket-of-gold, phlox, heathers, bee balm, money plant, peonies, campanula.

I ordered a couple of plant ID books from Amazon - the National Audubon Guide to Wildflowers (Eastern Edition) and Peterson’s guide to Trees and Shrubs (Northeastern US Editions), and i’ve been enjoying looking through them. Unfortunately there are still some trees and shrubs I haven’t been able to identify. I think one of them is a White Spruce, and one might be a Fringetree, and I think one is a broadleaf Spirea. But there are a few that I can’t pin down yet.

June update

lisa June 5th, 2002

Saturday, we worked on the house - mixed a bunch of concrete and poured footings in the basement along one wall. The sills on the East side of the house are all rotten, so that’s what we’re preparing to replace. Meantime, the house is being held up by about twenty five screw jacks, some spit, and some hope. It has to be done, though. We’ve started this renovation at the skeleton. Once the bones are back in shape, we can worry about the rest of the house.

Mixing concrete by hand is a pretty tough job. I think we mixed up 10 bags of Quikcrete altogether.