LibrariAnne

After finding aphids on my potato blossoms, I decided to order some ladybugs and praying mantis eggs to try to keep some of the pesty insects at bay. They arrived today!

They were left on the doorstep, so they definitely experienced some not-cool temperatures, but everything inside seemed okay.

There were a LOT of ladybugs in that bag! They quickly grabbed onto the potatoes, hyssop, and plenty of other plants in the veg beds. Hopefully they’ll hang out in the area and not stray too far. One little lady found the aphids right away!

Hopefully she (or he) ate a big ol’ post-travel meal.

Then I unpacked the mantis eggs, which were slightly less exciting but still kind of neat.

They sure don’t look like much at this point, but hopefully they’ll hatch and make a home in the garden.

More photos at Flickr.

It was mega hot again today and I came home to the first two lily blooms of the year:

Hooray! There are lots of buds looking ready to bust open any day, and I’m ready for the glorious color!

More photos at Flickr.

So I finally decided that I’ve had enough of the neighbors walking on the seedlings in our front garden (nee yard) and put up a temporary fence to keep the garden safe.

It stretches all the way along this side of the yard, so hopefully it will be effective. We could theoretically fence off the other edges, too, but I’m not convinced that’s necessary. As you can see, I also planted three new bushes there – blueberry, black raspberry, and red raspberry. I usually like to get edible plants from heirloom seed or from the farmers market (or other reputable organic sources), but I gave in and got these from Lowe’s – the farmers market had nothing to offer and the seeds I’d planted here got trampled to death. I’m guessing that I’ll need to protect these from the birds once they start fruiting. Anyone have suggestions of effective ways of doing that?

In other front garden news, a number of the other plants I put in are doing pretty well! The dark lord geranium is looking good:

I also noticed that something is sprouting up through the mulch on the side of the house – I think it might be grapes. Can anyone confirm or deny?

In the back gardens, the daylilies and asiatic lilies are budding and getting ready to bloom.

The lilies beside the garage are really, really tall! Some of them are approaching the point of being taller than I am!

The golden sweet snow peas are still blossoming, with a gorgeous purple color:

There are also scads of pea pods! I’ve been eating them right off the vine while I wander through the veg garden. They are so sweet and the texture is divine!

So the other day, after I finished hosing off the aphids that were hanging out on the potato plant blossoms, I noticed what I thought was an odd-looking ladybug. It wasn’t a ladybug, it was a colorado potato beetle. Yipes! I picked it off and killed it, and found, picked, and destroyed the leaf under which it had laid eggs. I searched but didn’t find any others, but then a day later, I found these!

They’re larval colorado potato beetles, and they were chomping the hell out of the potato leaves, as you can see above. Ugh! I think I’ve gotten rid of all of them now, so hopefully we’re done with that. I did order some ladybugs and praying mantis eggs which should arrive soon. I fully expect them to fly away, but hopefully a few will hang out and make a home in my garden (and a meal of any other pests). We already have some good pest-eaters in the garden, one of whom made an appearance this week:

Oh no! There are some icky little bugs on my potato blossoms!

What are these things, and how do I get rid of them? They don’t appear to have done a ton of damage – yet! – but I don’t want to give them the chance. All advice and suggestions will be appreciated!

The golden sweet snow peas are totally blossoming and fruiting!

These are some of my favorites to eat right off the vine. They are crunchy and sweet and the pods are not at all stringy or fibrous. They’ve got a very delicate, sweet flavor and a pleasing texture. Mmm! I also love the beautiful blossoms and the variegated foliage. A real winner all around!

It rained almost all day today and while I was mostly aware of that through my office window, when I got home I noticed that things are just freaking gorgeous in the back veg garden! I threw on my gardening boots and took a quick trip through the main back veg garden.

The wintercreeper is slowly growing up the back fence – I can’t wait until the fence is hidden behind plant-green instead of icky old green paint. It was all I could do not to just yank this iceberg lettuce out of the ground and eat it right on the spot.

One of the beans I planted is flowering already! They haven’t grown very high and I’m wondering if they should be flowering at this height. They were seeds leftover from last year and I’m not sure if they were still 100%.

The sugar snap peas are also blossoming.

As are the golden sweet snow peas, which are also already making pea pods!

I can’t wait till the peas grow more and I can eat some of these off the vine. So, so delicious. The hyssop is starting to flower, too, and will hopefully be attracting pollinators like crazy pretty soon. I love how the purple flowers set off the slight silver-y-ness of the foliage.

More photos on Flickr, of course.

No, I’m a fucking squirrel.

This little guy was hanging out on the front garden today, eating maple tree whirligigs. I say, eat up! Just go poo somewhere else so the seeds don’t take – we already have an army of seedlings growing out there.

Life’s been really busy the past couple weeks! I haven’t posted nearly as much as I’d planned to, so here’s to catching up.

The common mullen that I’ve let go next to the front door has gotten huge and is starting to flower:

I realize that mullen is generally thought of as a weed, but it’s helping keep the yucky yucca at bay (not entirely, of course, but somewhat) and I was kind of curious to see how big it might get. From what I’ve read online, it is a biennial, so it’ll die after it blooms this year anyway. Apparently if you crush the leaves, you can use the sap to treat insect bites. I haven’t tried that yet.

This week I came home from work one day to find that the twelve purple leaf plum hedge shrubs I planted had been pulled out of the ground and were scattered on the neighbor’s driveway. I suspect, though the adult neighbor denies it, that their evil spawn did it. They leave him unattended all the time and the whole family seems to be lacking in the smarts department. I would not put it past them to lie to my face. Anyway, I soaked the roots and replanted them. Hopefully they’ll still survive.

In happier news, a bunch of the things I planted from seed up front are sprouting! We’ve got black hollyhock:

(thanks to Charli for those seeds!), a large area where I mixed several kinds of seeds – white swan echinacea, creeping baby’s breath, a white flower mixture (thanks to Charli for all three of those!) and purple dark opal basil:

borage:

and bee’s friend:

The edibles I planted up front are also sprouting. I’ve got alternating red velvet lettuce:

and mammoth red rock cabbage along the front walkway:

I also planted some Sunberry seeds along the neighbor’s driveway, but I haven’t seen any evidence of them sprouting yet. We’ll see.

So those are today’s photos. On to older ones. Last weekend K hung the bat house on the side of the garage – it only took us a year to actually put it up!

We painted it black last year, so hopefully it will get nice and toasty and attract plenty of bats. We hung it high (it’s actually over a window – which K repaired the screen in before hanging the house – he was able to insert some 2×4 pieces into the window cavity so we had a nice solid place to mount it), which bats will apparently be attracted to as well. Our neighbors have about six hundred bird baths and other surfaces in which they allow water to stand so it would be awesome to have some bats in the ‘hood to eat up all the mosquitoes that breed next door.

Lots of the veggies in the back garden are growing like mad, which you can check out on Flickr. I’m mildly concerned that something is snacking on some of my potato leaves

Ants, maybe? There’s not a lot of damage yet, but if anyone has any tips, I’d love to hear them.

In totally non-garden-related news, we’re doing a kind of neat project for the summer at the ‘brary. Our theme for summer reading is Get Creative @ Your Library, and staff members can volunteer to create something which will then be raffled off to patrons who participate in summer reading. I decided to make a Grumpasaurus, who I have dubbed Grumpasaurus II: Electric Grumpaloo

I made him a little bigger than the original Grumpasaurus, who still lives in my office:

I tried to make G II a little less sinister-looking than the original, and I also played around with his spikes a little, making them bigger at the top. Hopefully someone will want him!

more photos at Flickr

Things are going very well in the front garden. I received most of the stuff I ordered online, and put them in the ground this weekend. Most of the plants don’t look like much yet, and some of them are actually not even really visible yet (rhizomes and stuff), but here are the ones that you can see.

Salvia Plumosa:

Snow in Summer:

Purple Verbena:

White Creeping Phlox:

Blue Girl Rose:

Black Knight Butterfly Bush:

Snowdrift Aster:

I also finished mulching the area in between the neighbor’s driveway and our house, and planted some Purple Leaf Plum Hedge (they’re the nearly invisible sticks along the left edge):

I’m also very excited because the veggies I planted along the front walk are sprouting!
Red Velvet Lettuce (you can tell the poplars are shedding):

Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage:

All in all, it’ll be awhile before the front garden really looks like a garden, but it’s progress, so I’m happy!

I finished edging the front yard today. Woot!

The mulch and newspaper had spread out quite a bit onto the sidewalk over the last year, and the composted grass underneath with it. I spent a few hours out there today (hooray for NPR podcasts on the iPod!) and got things looking pretty tidy.

The first plants I ordered also arrived this week. The first plants are officially in the ground up front!

This is dalmation bellflower, which will have purple flowers when it is in bloom (and more established). I got two of these tiny little plantings, which should spread over time. I’d been hoping that more of the plants I ordered would already be here, but hopefully most of them will arrive shortly. A few of them won’t be here until fall, since that’s when they should be planted. I think this weekend I’ll plant the seeds for the edibles I ordered for the front, and I’m going to look at the farmers market tomorrow morning to see if any of the vendors have  small berry bushes.

more photos at Flickr

Behind the garage, there’s a bit of space that has been mostly taken up by this really ugly weed tree. It shaded the area, hung over the garage, and made it impossible to access a majority of the space back there.

We had pruned the lower branches but it was definitely growing back in full form. The photo above is older (I show it because it illustrates the bushy lower branches that grow in every summer), but here’s what it looked like a little over a month ago:

Today I got motivated, dragged K out with me, and we took that motherfucker out!

Nice stump, eh?

Another day soon, when this has dried out a bit and we have more energy, we’ll take the Sawsall to it again and get it down even closer to the ground. I’m also planning to spray it with pruning seal, so it can’t continue to grow.

Here’s a view of the entire area, including the existing compost bins. We’ll also take out those branches and chop them up sometime soon. I just didn’t have the energy after doing all the other work today.

I need to come up with a plan for how to use this area now that it’s more accessible. I’m toying with the idea of making new compost bins farther in (perhaps using these? A bit pricey but cool) and then extending the existing veg garden into this area, but I’d also like to do something to hide this ugly fence. Oh, and to keep people from hopping over the fence, which they seem to like to do (on the far end – they go through on the other side of the garage). We hung a No Trespassing sign on the fence today after clearing out the brush, but I’m wondering if there are any quick-growing plants that would climb up the fence and be thorny/otherwise discouraging to potential fence-hoppers. The other factor is that there’s a manhole cover at the far end (that dirty, smudgy looking area), which obviously can’t be covered up or made completely inaccessible. Anyone have any ideas? What would you do it if it were your area?