Good morning, and the heat is on. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Denver is finally turning to summer like weather — even if not quite as abruptly as the weather forecasters forecast.
On Wednesday, after highs in the low 70s early in the week, the forecasters were excitedly predicting that it would heat up to 90° — however, the cloud cover stayed stubbornly in place through the morning and the high only made it to 82°. It would have been perfect gardening weather — I still need to finish putting dahlias and gladiolus in the ground — except that with the hot forecast, I'd scheduled taking Elder Son to the DMV to get his learner's permit (a massive fail; the computers were down statewide), then off to Habitat for Humanity to get him set up for some volunteer work over the summer, and took both boys out to a late lunch at a favorite Greek restaurant.
I did wander into the backyard to do some watering on Wednesday, and discovered something I'd never seen before: a writhing ball of just-emerged spider hatchlings. I kept expecting to hear a tiny voice calling "salutations!" But alas, my spiderlings don’t speak English.
On Thursday it did make it to 90°, and it may make it there again on Sunday — but yesterday was a lovely day in the upper 70s, and today is forecast to stay in the low 80s. So maybe I will get the glads and dahlias planted before the temperatures shoot back to the 90s on Sunday.
At the duplex across the street, the new owners have had the existing landscaping ripped out, the soil removed and replaced with bagged "garden soil" — despite the fact that the soil in our neighborhood is a lovely sandy-loam. New sod, which is already wilting from one day of high temperatures, was unrolled over the whole plot.
But, at least they put in sod. Last year at the rental next door, the owner had a crew come in and strip everything but the weed-infested lawn — stands of bearded iris, a lovely clematis, a small bed of perennials a former tenant had established — were ripped out and replaced with nothing. The trees-of-heaven that had been growing everywhere were only cut, but not killed and are re-emerging. The yard is now a mosaic of bare dirt, bindweed and mallow interspersed with tufts of dying grass.
Two years ago the neighbors to the west also stripped out the existing landscaping. The yard was a mess — the house had been owned by an old woman who had lived there her entire life and was unable to keep up with the yard. The next owners had tried to landscape on the cheap and without sufficient knowledge: they ripped out the railroad tie retaining walls but didn't replace them; instead they tried to create a grade up to the house by rearranging, but not hauling away, any excess soil. The soil they threw up around a huge blue spruce choked the tree and now it's irreparably damaged. They tried seeding with buffalo grass — but didn't press the seed into the soil so when it was watered the seed washed away.
The next owners tried to do flower beds like we have — but didn't have the patience to keep up with it. They planted a few specimens, but didn't keep it weeded, didn't pay attention to getting a variety of plants with different blooming times, and didn't control the spread of some of the more vigorous re-seeders. By the time the current owners bought it, the yard was a mass of weeds, blanket flowers, gaura and white jupiter's beard with a dying tree at the corner.
So the new owners dug out the perennials, put in a new retaining wall and laid sod over the whole mess, saying that grass was easier to take care of. They spend the summer mowing it, watering it, and re-seeding the bare spots. The blue spruce is still dying with soil piled up around its trunk.
Elder Son is amused at the people who stop by our front yard, commenting and pointing at the various flowers.
Our yard is very different, overflowing with blooming plants and with no grass at all. Right now there's a profusion of oriental, California, and Shirley poppies blooming along with the bearded iris. The peonies are just coming on as are the roses and clematis, and later there will be lilies, gladiolas, agastache, sages, cranesbill, tickweed, and gauras.
It's been 18 years in the making, but the front yard is spectacularly stuffed. It's worth a stop-and-gaze.
Last week the New York Times printed an article about the practicalities, and legalities, of taking your plants when you move. What really struck me was this section, about a master-gardener's home:
When Joan Sheridan and her husband put their New Rochelle, N.Y., split-level on the market in 2005, they discovered that potential buyers were actually scared of their expansive garden. “It was lovely to look at,” she said of the half-acre spread. “But they didn’t think they could keep it up. I think we lost a lot of buyers.”
After Ms. Sheridan, 65, took early retirement in 1992, she had studied to become a master gardener. That was the point at which the front lawn had disappeared beneath an onslaught of perennials, never to be seen again.
The thing is that a yard such as mine, and Ms. Sheridan's, actually takes less time to care for than a swath of turf. Yes, it takes time to establish, but now I have very little weeding to do, it doesn't need to be mowed, I don't have to worry about turf diseases, and I rarely have to water. I can choose — or not — to put in annuals, or tender plants such as gladiolas and dahlias. My work in the garden is largely done on my schedule.
No, I can't hire a lawn service to come by once a week to mow and spray for weeds and bugs. Then again, I don't need to have a service work on my yard once a week. My yard doesn't demand it.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in you garden.