Another beaut from Le Cornichon
2005-05-26— Posted by: allegra
Somebody REALLY knows how to photoshlep.
Gardening
2005-05-26— Posted by: allegra
Yeah, not doing too bad these days. Did more yardwork after work yesterday – the moss raking activity will be another month, I fear – and then went for a walk with Katie and John. John is so civilized; he asked if it was a girls only walk or if he could tag along. I left it up to Katie as I didn’t really have a preference. We talked of many things, or rather, they did; I didn’t have enough breath coming back from Dinosaur Rock to do much more than grunt at appropriate intervals. Then Katie and I had a lovely long talk after lights out.
Discovered, in my cruise around the yard, that three of the four yucca filamentosae have set on flowers, but the third one, out front, somehow got ‘stuck’ and the flower stalk got all scrunched up inside itself. I freed it from the crud adhering to it from the last year but I fear it will now get sunburnt and die back. I will be watching anxiously. So I’ll probably only get one inflorescence in the front yard and one in the back. As I moved the sixth rakeful of moss into the back compost bin, I began to wonder about the place where Unca Dave and Paul dumped all the dirt that came out of ripping out the front bed last year (I had tulips and squill coming out at random in the yard next to the compost bin, it was quite funny). Hostas? Some other shade loving critters? The hosta Peggy gave to me at the same time I got the birch, which by rights should have died because I essentially dumped it out of the pot into the front corner of the yard under the walnut tree without even digging a hole for it, is doing magnificently, and the holly growing up next to it – birds planted it, I assume – after a couple of rough years is about a foot tall and looking pretty smug.
Years and years ago Catherine gave me a plant – I have no idea what it is, it’s native – and it has finally gotten big enough to set on wonderful magenta flowers. It seems to be happy in the front bed under the hawthorne tree. Which reminds me, I should trim the hawthorne a little, it’s looking somewhat untidy.
The yard looks better than it has in ages. There’s no garbage or brush lying anywhere (it got quite disgusting), and with all the rain and the lawncare it’s looking quite lush. Paul and I briefly contemplated taking down the cherry tree in the side yard abutting the alley but that will probably be in the five year plan, along with the dreaded replacement of the fence we just repainted. Well, it wasn’t a fix, we were just buying time until we had the money and energy for the post hole digging.
The baby birch tree in the front yard is growing at a stupendous rate – it’s nearly doubled in size since I got it at a church plant sale a couple of falls ago. The schizanthus (sp?) my mother gave me is now so overgrown I will have to dig it out, but I am entirely crappy at stuff like that. And I don’t want to touch the front peony, which is crowding the schizawhooie, which after SIX BLOODY YEARS set on a single bud. So did the middle one. Somebody is going to have to educate me about peonies – the first two years in the house the displays were quite showy.
Tom L has indicated that when the rhubarb leaves die back, he wants to separate out the plant and take some. It’s quite the nicest rhubarb, and that last pie was spectacular if I do say so, and the plant must be twenty years old so it should be able to withstand some amendment.
Paul and I looked at arbours in two different places on Victoria Day Monday and I just didn’t feel like spending 250 bucks on anything, no matter how pretty it was. I was thinking 100 bucks for materials and doing it myself, but it’s rapidly becoming an issue; if I don’t get something up there soon it will be the same story as last year; the grapes will be on the ground and we won’t get a crop off at all, and they are damned nice seeded grapes. The vine must be fifty years old; Tom was startled how thick the trunk was.
The figs are SO BIG it defies belief. Up until this point we’d been doing it Paul’s way and topping & trimming the figs so that their nasty leaves – and dried fig leaves gum up works very well, thanks – didn’t get into the garage eaves. This year we did it Keith’s way – he trimmed off everything that was growing sideways as he couldn’t stand getting poked and prodded every time he ran a lawn mower past. As a result the parts of the trees that really catch the sun, sensing that there wasn’t going to be another chance, set on what must be at least three hundred figs, the largest of which is damned near eating size although nowhere near ripe. It’s not even the beginning of June!
I’m disappointed with the plum tree. Like the cherry it seems to have dropped all the fruit it set on; given how delicious the plums were last year (remember me rhapsodizing about plum duff?) this is very saddening, and we shall have to Do Something.
Mummy, do you remember the rose bush you savagely ripp’d from the front bed? The one that was all diseased and disgusting and set on three mingy buds and then looked like the horticultural equivalent of an absinthe addicted vagrant? You didn’t get all of it. Last year, a single stalk of non bud producing rose came up. You said this was root stock and I thought, ah, no blooms. Once again, my laziness has been my saving grace. I was too intimidated by the thorns and too admiring of the little plant’s enterprise to pull it out again, so I left it to some ‘future date’. THIS year, the flowering portion came up and – okay, I have to get up and count them, back in a sec – there are THIRTY FIVE buds including three blooms. This is leading me to believe that I should open a school called the Allegra Sloman Academy of Horticultural