Recently in DIY Category

This evening we had our first zucchini from the garden! Four small ones turned out to be just the right amount, when Georg sauteed them with onions and mushrooms and peppers. They say that when you grow zucchini, you should always try to pick them small. Otherwise you end up inundated with humongous zucchini, foisting them off on people and so forth.

The zucchini plants have some pests. Not the evil squash beetles yet; it's cucumber beetles, which are smaller and apparently not as destructive. I mixed up some Neem oil and sprayed them. After we picked the ones we ate, of course! I saw the beetles hiding in the mulch so I sprayed the mulch good too. I hope it helps.

We've been hearing the owls a lot lately, and tonight was no exception. It always makes me happy to hear the owls. They've been moving around a lot from the sound of it. I suppose they're hunting & that's why we hear them from all over.

Tonight after dinner we did see something unusual: a deer! We heard Jane barking again, and our first thought was, oh crap, the snake again. We went outside and saw that she was standing at the fence looking out, which suggested it probably wasn't the snake. It's pretty dark out here at night, but there is one street light, and we could just make out the deer, standing in the middle of the yard a couple of houses over. At first I thought, "hey, did they put in a deer statue without our noticing?" They already have a fake mini wishing well so a deer statue wouldn't be a surprise. But then the deer moved its head and we knew it was a real deer.

There wasn't much more to the interaction. We stood there watching the deer, the deer stod there watching us. Eventually we went inside and the deer took off. At least now we know what's been eating the tops off our sedum down by the road.

All in all I think this has been the best day ever for Jane. First a snake, then a ride in the car, then the snake again, and then a deer! What a day! Then again, as the Onion reminds us, best days aren't that hard to come by for a dog.

This morning we met our newest neighbor: a 5 foot long black rat snake. I know what you're thinking, people always overestimate the length of snakes. Well, this guy helpfully stretched out next to a concrete block wall, allowing us to measure him with fair accuracy.

When we first saw the snake, his whole body was crinkled up in this weird pattern. That actually made him easy to identify. He lay perfectly still while we stood there trying to figure out what to do. Then Georg went inside to research the snake, and I walked around to the other side of the garden. At which point the snake disappeared. Kind of freaked me out, until I saw his tail disappear into a watering can. It must have looked like the perfect hiding place for a snake.

Black rat snakes aren't venomous and only bite when they think they're being attacked. Still, we put heavy jeans and shoes on just in case. We got a large clean trash can with a lid, scooped the watering can inside, and slapped on the lid. Then carried it over to the empty lot behind the house and dumped it over the side. Poor snake! He fell partway out of the can but he didn't move. I brought Jane over to the fence near the snake, to try and scare him into heading the other way when he was finally ready to travel.

I had a few errands to run and it wasn't that hot, so I took the dogs with me. We had only been home for a little while when we heard Jane barking again. Sure enough, that danged snake was back!

This time we had a plan to put him in the trash can, drive to the Eno park (about a mile up the road) and release him. There must be plenty of wildlife in the park for him to eat. We spent a little time trying to coax him into the other watering can, when he suddenly decided he was tired of us and slithered off into a hole in the retaining wall between our yard and the next.

I guess that must be his home. He went straight to it, so he must have known the spot. Once I got over my horror at the sheer size of the beastie, I had to admit that the black rat snake is actually not a bad snake to have around: a non-aggressive, non-venomous snake who eats rodents. And we've got a lot of those.

My only concern is that Jane may try to play with him and get bitten. We discovered the snake in the first place because Jane was barking at it in her "Hey! Pay attention to me!" voice. However, we're willing to live and let live if he'll stay out of Jane's way. Which I hope he'll want to do after today. Poor snake. I feel kind of bad for him. He must have been scared.

It was kind of neat to watch him watching us: while he was hiding in the can, every once in a while his head would peep out, spot us, and sink back in. Then later, when he was lying by the wall, I watched him scope the scene: he'd hear us and get all crinkled up, then when we were still he'd wait a few minutes, stick his tongue out a few times, then gradually relax his body and start moving. Then someone would make noise (usually Jane) and he'd freeze and crinkle up again. I read online that the crinkling is a response to stress.

I forgot to mention that Jane really impressed me today. When we saw her barking at the snake, we only had to call her once and she immediately came to us. How many dogs would abandon a live animal right in front of them, on the first command? Well okay, a super well trained dog definitely would. But Jane never even finished beginner obedience classes. And she still minded us without any complaint or hesitation today. We spent several hours dealing with that snake, and never had a single problem with Jane. She is the best dog! (I suppose Thirteen is even better, since she spent the entire incident sleeping inside and never even saw the snake.)

Famed mail order nursery Bluestone Perennials is having an end-of-the-season 50% sale on everything until June 1! The prices are outstanding: packs of 3 perennials for $6 - $7. I didn't go crazy, but I did order a few things. Mostly blue and white flowers, which we're trying to get more of in the garden.

It's kind of getting late in the season for planting perennials, especially little mail order perennials. I think we might just  stick them into a bare spot in the vegetable garden where they'll get regular irrigation. Maybe even leave them in their pots and sink the whole pots into the veg beds. Then in the fall we can find permanent homes for them in the flower garden.

I have to plug the Durham Garden Center on Hillsborough Road. Georg heard a radio ad for them, and we went out today. It was great! A really nice selection with excellent prices. It's not as big as the plant section of a big box store, but way more of their stock is the kind of plants I like. They had some things I had never seen before, like pink verbena-on-a-stick.

They also sell pots -- not that many but again, mostly in styles that I like. They even have rough dishes and troughs made of a course concrete mix, like hypertufa (although I don't think it actually was hypertufa). Really pretty! I'm going to look around the yard and see if we have a good place for one of those. And they have a small indoor shop with organic fertilizers and pesticides.

I'm so happy to find a good nursery with good prices that's 5 minutes away instead of 45 minutes. Since they're so close, we didn't have to load up like we would at the farmers market. We got a few things: two packs of gazanias (which I think are among the cutest annuals out there, and I don't understand why they aren't as popular as petunias or marigolds), a pack of white-and-green shade annuals for the new bed, an african daisy with really interesting spoon-shaped petals, an ice plant with yellow flowers, a "ham and eggs" lantana, a peach verbena and a hardy geranium.

In the fine tradition of directions that make no sense to anyone but me: take Hillsborough as if you were coming to my house, but instead of turning onto Cole Mill, keep going. Go past the part where Hillsborough runs parallel to I-85, past the transmission shop that was so nice to me a few years ago, and it's on the right, just past the office of the persnickety plumber who redid our bathroom. If you get to Sparger you've gone too far.

Yesterday we went to the big open house at Plants Delight. It was great fun, as usual. The best part is their extensive garden, where you can see how the plants look massed together, and in combination with other plants.

We only bought a few things, that we haven't seen anyplace else: a hardy fuschia (wow!), a bright blue hardy geranium, a spreading ground-cover-ish perennial called fringed campion silene, a crazy-cool phlomis with a tall stem and a series of yellow pom-poms of flowers, and best of all, a cross between hardy amaryllis and crinum lily called amarcrinum.

Today we finished adding soil to the new bed, which is looking nice if I do say so myself. The zinnia seedlings are starting to come up and we're slowly filling it in with other plants. The big thrill of the day was that Georg put a drip irrigation system in the vegetable garden. Yay! While he was doing that I planted everything we had bought yesterday. I didn't want the amarcrinum to suffer the same fate as our hardy amaryllis (eaten by voles! Heartbreaking!) so I made a wire cage to plant it in. It was kind of a pain to clip all those wires, and I tried to do a good job of folding all the cut edges in so no one in future will accidently cut themselves digging in that spot. I accidently made it way too big, but what the heck, now the amarcrinum has lots of room to grow. At Plants Delight they had an amazing clump of hardy amaryllis. I can dream that someday our amarcrinum will be like that.

ps: I almost forgot: we have a tomato! One tiny little green Early Girl tomato. Today at lunch we had a salad with mint, green onion and sugar snap peas from our garden. I have to say, just-picked sugar snaps are a revelation. Almost a different vegetable. It's like the first time you eat a home-grown tomato. I think it's partly because they're so fresh, and partly because we're picking them younger than the ones you get at the store. My only regret about the sugar snaps is that we didn't plant more! Each plant doesn't make that many peas. We might only get one or two more meals out of them. Next year I'd like to plant two or even three times as many.

It's been 2 months since the new roses were planted, and today Georg and I took a gander to see how they were doing. It's been raining so much that we haven't needed to water them, and so I hadn't taken a close look at them in a couple of weeks.

Mme. Alfred Carriere: Dead, dead, dead. Our one major rose failure. My fault entirely. I had ordered 5 from Ashdown, and they shipped four in one box and one -- this one -- in a small box by itself. The other four kept themselves moist enough, but Mme. Alfred Carriere dried out more by itself. I didn't realize this, or didn't realize how important it was. I watered them all at the same rate, which wasn't enough for poor Mme. Alfred Carriere.
      By the time I realized what was going on it had died back mostly. But three little shoots of new growth showed up, and I thought it was going to be okay. Then we had that hard freeze over Easter. All the new growth froze off, and it's been dead as a doornail ever since. Alas!

Crepescule: Has bloomed several times already, with three more buds ready to open and several more tiny buds. It has lots of new growth, seems to be growing fuller rather than throwing out long canes. It will get more sun when it grows taller, though it seems to be doing fine now. A touch of powdery mildew, nothing to worry about.

Colonial White (Sombreuil): The smallest of the roses that survived, it's doing well. Has two new canes up. May not flower this year, but that's okay!

Awakening: Looks great. Growing fast, sending out lots of sturdy canes. Only problem is, they're growing straight up. We want them to hang down and cover that slope. No big deal, we can peg it -- bend the cane down and attach it to a peg in the ground. In fact I should do that soon. I hear it's easier to do when the canes are young and still flexible. It has one big bud that will open soon.

Reve D'or: I think this one is doing best of all the Ashdown roses. Growing fast, in just the shape we want, has bloomed several times. I need to weed around it though. I'm going to try and do that tomorrow.

Secret Garden Musk Climber: These two came from Roses Unlimited and were planted much later (one a month ago, one only two weeks ago). They both look fine and are starting to send out new growth. Though of course they haven't had time to establish as well as the others. No flower buds yet. I've read that you're supposed to pinch off the flowers in the first year, so they put all their energy into root growth. Yeah right! I couldn't stand to do that.

Cutting: Two weeks ago I knocked a small branchlet off one of the Secret Garden Musk Climbers, and tried to root it. It's supposed to take two to three weeks, and I think it is starting to take root. It doesn't look at all wilted, and when I gently tugged on it, there was resistance. If it hadn't rooted, I guess it would have pulled right out. My only concern is that the leaves are turning yellow. Maybe it needs more light? Tomorrow I'll move it into a spot that gets some direct sun.

Mystery Rose: Cleaning up some debris on the sunny side of the house, we found a mystery rose growing against the wall. It must have been there all along, and I don't think it's ever bloomed. The plant looks healthy though. I'm going to give it this year and see what it does. If it doesn't bloom, or we don't like the flowers, we'll dig it out this fall. (The rose people call that "shovel pruning.")

I finished the path! Fourteen bags of mulch in all.

The hardest part was moving Tiki Man. He weighs 180 pounds and I probably should have waited for Georg. I just really wanted to do it myself. I had a hand cart -- which we found in the shed a couple of weeks ago! We have no idea where it came from or how long it's been in there. Maybe it came with the house? Anyway, good thing we didn't buy one.

The hardest part actually was when Tiki Man tipped over and I had to lift him up. Well no, the really hardest part was when he tipped over the second time. I almost gave up then. But I got him upright, wiggled him into place and then stuffed more dirt under one side so he would stand up straight. I think maybe I should plant something in front of him. Maybe nasturtiums.

The Massive Archiving Project is done, at least the copying phase. My friend Joe's duplication equipment made things go about 4 times faster. The burn time is about the same as my computer, but my computer only has one drive. Not having to rip to the hard drive, then burn onto a blank doubled the speed. Plus Joe has two duplicators, doubling the speed again. I spent about 11 hours over there last week! I hope I didn't wear out my welcome.

Next we have to make labels. Which might turn out to be even more time-consuming of a job. Because I am a perfectionist who isn't happy with the labels iTunes prints, oh no. We can't do anything the sensible way. (Well, we did the duplication the sensible way. But not the labels. Definitely not.) I have a label template set up in Quark Xpress that I really like, and I'm trying to figure out how to import label information from iTunes into my Quark template. My main problem with the iTunes labels is that they lack key information, like composer, featured artist (i.e. if it's a duet with a guest singer), and label (i.e. Capitol or Decca. Too many uses of the word "label" in that sentence).

Today I was tired after all that copying yesterday, so I only did a little yardwork. Put in a few eggplants and a purple verbena, and made a path from the sidewalk to the vegetable garden. Well, I didn't get the path finished because I ran out of mulch. I always drastically underestimate the amount of mulch I'm going to need. If I think I've got way too much, I'll run out. And if I think I've got it just right (as I did today), I've got less than half what I need.

So I weeded the path -- this was the hard part, digging out those hateful vines -- laid down landscape fabric, and put down the mulch I had. This evening Georg got more mulch, which I'll put down tomorrow. It will be a nice path when it's done, I hope!

For dinner we made a sort of hash, with leftover chicken and fresh vegetables. Including an onion from the garden, and the rest of the spinach. It was all bolting so we pulled it all out and cooked it. Ah well, it was nice while it lasted. We'll plant it again in the fall and hopefully we'll get a couple of months out of it again.

I was reading an article somewhere -- it doesn't matter where, somebody runs this same article every spring -- about how everyone wants to grow vegetables and then people inevitably realize that with all the money and labor they sink into the garden, they are growing tomatoes that cost $5 each or what have you. I think that, first of all, equations like that are meaningless because few people grow food crops to save money. A suburban gardener isn't a small farmer; they're doing it for fun! Just like the reason I make clothes: so I can have exactly what I want that fits me right, and because I like sewing. That's pretty much exactly why I grow vegetables. So I can have unusual varieties, that taste good and fresh, and because it's fun.

Secondly, those appalling cost analyses of your home-grown produce are only that appalling in the first year. When you add up buying soil, the lumber for your raised beds, tools, tomato cages, fertilizer, etc etc etc ... yeah, you're spending an awful lot of money and you haven't even bought your plants yet. Not to mention the backbreaking work of creating the beds.

But the costs -- both in money and labor -- drop enormously in subsequent years. (And I also think the harvest gets better as you gain experience, which further improves the equation.) This year we spent ... well about $3.50 on compost to add to the beds, and how much on seeds and plants? Probably about $20 total. No, wait, I splurged on those fancy-pants fingerling potatoes. Let's say $30. I think that's a fair investment for as much as we're getting.

I got so wrapped up in the bolting spinach problem that I forgot about today's garden work. Well, this morning we planted the last rose out front by the road. Again this meant a lot of bed preparation. Mostly weeding. I had to use the mattock because the roots of those weeds are so entrenched.

When the rose was in we went to work on a new bed at the end of that bank. When we tilled up there a couple of years ago, and planted all the dayllilies, we just didn't go all the way to the end. And the last few feet on the end got all nasty and weedy like the whole bank used to be. Today we dug up the most aggressive weeds, covered the rest with cardboard, and piled a thick layer of soil and leaf mulch over top. It's a small area -- about 4×5' -- but it's been looking bad for a couple of years now, and I'm so glad to finally have it dealt with. In theory it should take a year for the cardboard to break down, which should be enough time to kill the weeds underneath.

While planting the rose, we accidently knocked a branch off of it. I had read that roses can be propagated from cuttings, so I figured I'd try it. It was kind of ridiculously easy. Just strip the bottom few leaves off, score the length of the stem, dip it in rooting hormone, stick it in potting soil, water and cover with a plastic bag.

My only concern is that I didn't do the rooting immediately, I spent some time reading about how to do it, and during that time the top of the cutting wilted. I read that wilted cuttings are less likely to take root, and I really hope I didn't let it go too long. I misted the cutting to try and rehydrate it. I hope that was enough!

By this point it was time for lunch --great salad at Nosh, yum -- and Divaville. After the show I went back out, sowed sunflower seeds in the new bed we made this morning, and did some more weeding. It was easier to work in the evening, much less hot. The weeds grow so fast out there! I got the weeds cleared from two of the roses, which leaves two more to do. I still want to go back into the bed and weed around the daylilies, but the critical weeding -- the part that 1. can be seen from the road, and 2. is in danger of smothering the roses -- is mostly done.

Whew! I guess we got a lot done. I didn't even mention how Georg bought a four-way splitter for the outdoor faucet and completely reorganized our hoses and soaker hoses. That is going to be so nice, to have easy access to water wherever we need it. The only place we'll still have to lug watering cans to is the roses way out front.

Another wonderfully productive weekend. We started out by emptying the shed of paint cans and old cleaning products, and taking them all to the hazardous waste collection place out by the dump. Which is free! I had no idea. I guess they make it free to encourage people to do it. If they charged, people might hide their old antifreeze cans in the regular trash or something awful like that.

Next we went to the dump. Where they had free compost! They called it "leaf mulch" though I wouldn't call it mulch. Really more of a light compost made of leaves and sticks. It did have chunks of stick in it, but very few bits of plastic trash. Which the regular compost is unfortunately rife with.

Back home we spent the afternoon planting the gardenia by friend Joe had given us. It doesn't sound like that much, but we had to start from scratch and create a new bed for it. The soil was horrible solid clay. With a scruffy old rose growing there, that had to be dug out. And the location is right under the electrical meter and breaker box, so we had to be very careful not to dig too deep and cut a line. And just in case the job wasn't enough of a pain, at some point in the past we had piled up a bunch of old bricks and concrete blocks there to get them out of the way.

So basically, we had to move a big pile of concrete, then dig a big hole in heavy clay, but carefully, carefully, then remove the clay, and then finally we could plant the gardenia. I hope it likes its new home! It's a nice sheltered location against the southwest wall of the house.

After that I took a rest during the hottest part of the day, then went back out and planted a flat of marigolds that I had bought a couple of weeks ago. We also watered, which was a good opportunity to walk around and see how everything is doing. We were pleased to see that the potatoes are starting to come up, sunflower seedlings are starting to emerge, and best of all, two sugar snaps and two tomatoes have flowers! Woo!

On the downside, the spinach is bolting. I knew it would happen when it got hot, I just hoped it wouldn't happen quite so soon. Oh well, we've had several good meals from the spinach and it looks like we'll have several more before it all goes. It creates a slight dilemma though. We had planned to plant pumpkins in that spot after the spinach was done. But we don't want to plant the pumpkins until early-mid July. I hate for that spot to go unused for two months, but what can we plant there for such a short time?

We might try greens and put a row cover over them. Shaded from full sun they might do okay. Any other suggestions?

Today has been one of those incredibly frustrating days where you're busy all day and absolutely nothing gets done, except giving yourself a headache from trying to keep track of everything. Enough about that; let's talk about fish emulsion!

See, I had never fertilized my garden before. Because organic gardeners believe, at least I have read in many places, that synthetic fertilizers actually burn away the natural nutrients in the soil. So that the more you fertilize, the more you need to fertilize just to sustain normal plant growth. It's like tilling: the theory is that repeated tilling does more harm than good to the soil, and so tilling every spring is worse than wasted effort.

I wasn't inclined to fertilize anyway. Because that sounds like work, and I've already got more work than I can handle just keeping up with the garden. I'm all in favor of a theory that confirms my basic laziness (see freedom lawn) and so I was happy to swear off fertilizing.

So the only fertilizing I've done is to add compost to the garden beds every once in a while, and that's worked out pretty well I think. But lately I've been thinking that maybe my plants would do better if they had a boost. And I went over to my friend David's house and his garden is looking fantastic, much further along than mine, and when I asked him his secret, he said Miracle Gro. And my favorite gardening show host, who is all organic, uses fish emulsion as a fertilizer. So I bought a bottle of fish emulsion. What could be the harm?

Fish emulsion, as it turns out, is nasty stuff. I never really thought about it before, but of course it's exactly what it sounds like: liquified fish. It's a thick brown liquid, about the consistency of heavy cream, and it stinks! It didn't smell so bad in the bottle but mixing it with water seemed to release the scent. Lugging gallon after gallon of it around the garden and pouring it over the plants, hoo boy did it stink. The smell was probably worsened by the sun and heat yesterday too.

You mix a capful of the fish stuff with a gallon of water, then use it to water your plants as normal. I didn't realize my watering can held two gallons, and accidentally mixed it half strength. Which I'm glad about in retrospect. We had a terrible accident a couple of years ago with some improperly mixed insecticidal soap that ate away every plant surface it touched. We started with buggy squash plants and ended with sad little mounds of shriveled mush. After that I'm leery of any concentrate that has to be mixed, and happy to start out with a weak mixture just to be safe.

So anyway, I was out in the yard yesterday, in the sun, pouring this fish water over my plants and trying to hold my nose at the same time. The watering can is too heavy to pour one-handed when full, so this didn't work as well as I could have hoped. Jane on the other hand was in heaven. Following me around grinning (I know dogs don't smile, but when she's happy she sort of looks like she is smiling so I think of her that way) like "What is that wonderful smell? This is the best garden ever!" I kept her away from the area where I mixed the fish water, in case some of the stronger concentrate were left on the ground. There wasn't a toxicity warning on the bottle, but it certainly couldn't be good for her to eat it.

I used the fish emulsion on the blueberries, the vegetable beds, the hydrangeas, the butterfly garden, the asparagus and the roses. Did not use it on the tiny seedlings because I was leery of the effect on tender plants (see insecticidal soap disaster, above). Everything looked fine this morning so I guess it's safe to use it again. You're supposed to apply this stuff every two weeks during the growing season, and also you can put it in a sprayer and spray plant leaves (this is called "foliar feeding"). I don't know if I'm going to manage either of those. For one thing, that sounds suspiciously like work. And for another, the smell is only going to get worse as we head into summer.

What a nice day in the garden. Actually, to be honest most of the day was spent on garden-related shopping. We went to the farmer's market, which has gotten really busy now that it's warm. We had a short list of things to buy -- a lime thyme, a French tarragon, an epazote, poblano peppers and tomato plants, if the heirloom tomato people were there -- and we found everything on our list except the poblanos.

The heirloom tomato people from last year weren't there, but there was an herb vendor who had heirloom tomatoes. We got Cherokee Purple and Zebra Green, a green tomato with reddish stripes. We've already got a Better Boy and an Early Girl. All we need now is a cherry tomato. I really like Super Sweet 100, it's done well for us in the past, but I've only seen it in 4-packs, which I'd rather not buy because we only need one. Here's hoping we find a single plant soon! If not I'll just buy a 4-pack and give the rest away.

We also bought a few things we hadn't planned on: borage, "toothache plant" which I've also seen described as "eyeball plant," a special gaillarda, a couple of geraniums with really unusual foliage, some hens and chickens, and one of my favorite annuals: bat face!

The garden center at the farmer's market closed last year, and we noticed this morning that the space had re-opened. It's now called "Market Imports" or something and sells lawn art as well as indoor tchotchkes. It looks to be really expensive, and I don't think we'll be buying much (if anything) there, but it was really fun to browse. I think our favorite things were the chickens and piggies made of scrap metal. They also had a watering can made of a 55-gallon drum that I really liked.

We also hit the concrete lawn ornament place across the street, where I scored the moai two weeks ago. We were looking for a bird bath, of which they have many, unfortunately none were what we wanted. At one point I said to Georg, "I'm just looking for something more contemporary." We looked at each other and I said, "I know, in that case what am I doing here." They have a pretty wide range of styles there, just not contemporary. Still, we did have fun looking at everything and I took a bunch of photos.

We ran a few errands on the way home, and then it was time to plant! I got all our purchases into the ground. Except the hens and chickens which Georg planted. I also planted a Cecile Brunner rose which my friend David gave me. The funny thing is, I went to his house yesterday to surprise him with a rose, and it turned out he had a rose for me! I gave him a Secret Garden Musk Climber, which I had just ordered for myself, because I knew how much he likes old-fashioned single roses. I planted the Cecile Brunner in a big clay pot because I'm not sure yet where I'm going to put it in the garden. It looks really nice in the pot actually; I might leave it there, as long as I can remember to water it!

The garden is doing pretty well if I do say so. It's such fun to watch the perennials get bigger every day. Some of them are starting to bloom, and luckily we have the pansies for color until the perennials get going. The only big bummer is that something ate all the artichokes I had potted up last weekend. The entire seedling was chomped right off! I still have the two that I planted in the new bed, but the eight in pots were razed to the ground. Dang.

While I was planting, Georg weed whacked down by the road. By the end of all that we were both pretty tired! So we decided to have dinner at the Q Shack instead of cooking. On the way home we stopped at Lowe's to check out their bird baths. Turns out they don't have any! While we were there, I picked up another packet of artichoke seeds. They don't fruit the first year anyway, so it doesn't matter if they get planted late. Also we browsed the plants, and discovered that they have poblano peppers! Yay! I've been looking for them for weeks, and had just about given up. In fact we were on the verge of buying some other kind of pepper at the farmer's market, but in all the hubbub we forgot. How lucky was that?

Busy day in the yard today. We started out by covering the blueberries with bird netting. Last year we only got one berry each before the birds picked the bushes clean! This year we have a much bigger crop coming, which we'd like to eat ourselves. We had already done the bird netting, when we covered them with plastic. But we didn't know what we were doing, and we put the stakes too close to the bushes, and when it got windy the netting got all caught in the branches.

Turns out bird netting is annoying stuff that gets caught on everything. Disentangling the netting from the blueberries was a tricky chore. Unfortunately we pulled a few baby berries off, but only a few. We moved the stakes further away from the bushes, and pulled the netting taut over the frames so it wouldn't get tangled on the branches. And we did a good job if I do say so myself. I dare the birds to eat our blueberries now!

While we were down at that end of the yard, we noticed an open flower on one of the roses! My first rose bloom! It's the Reve D'Or, a noisette climber. It was described as a buff-yellow but it looks off-white to me. The flower is beautiful. I love antique roses. Both the single kind with only five petals, like the Tudor rose, and the kind with many many petals, like noisettes.

Unfortunately the Crepuscule up by the house isn't doing so well in terms of flowers. It has about a half-dozen buds, but they get all crumply and don't open. I think this is called "balling" (no dirty jokes please!) and we suspect it's because the weather has been wet and the rose isn't getting enough sun. That spot got full afternoon sun last summer, but the oak tree seems to have grown and is now shading that area.

In the afternoon Georg unloaded the rest of the soil from the truck and into the new bed. He also cut a branch from the oak tree to let poor Crepuscule get some sun. Meanwhile I did less strenuous work, mostly planting. Let's see, I planted a blue columbine on the north side of the house. Also two six-packs of torenia (a cute shade annual with trumpet-shaped blue flowers) under the hydrangeas. The special alstroemeria from Messenbrink went into the bank along the driveway. I had planned to put it in the bare spot where a caryopteris had died over the winter. But when I stuck in my trowel, I discovered new shoots from the caryopteris! It didn't die! What a nice surprise. Caryopteris is a small (approx 2 feet tall) woody shrub with tiny blue flowers in late summer, which bees and butterflies love. Luckily there was a space next to the caryopteris where I could put the alstroemeria. I also planted a bright red verbena in a red/orange bed down near the road.

Then I went to work on my seedlings. We started a bunch of perennials from seed over the winter. It's such a huge savings -- $3 for a whole packet of seeds vs. $6-10 per plant -- that I don't even mind that they won't bloom this year. The seedlings all did well in their little peat pots, and they've gotten to the point where the peat pots are too small and they can't grow any bigger until they get into the ground. I planted all the baby yarrows in the new bed by the house, the one where Georg was unloading soil today. I also sowed a few hollyhock seeds behind the yarrow. I understand it may be several years before the hollyhocks bloom but it will be worth it.

I also planted baby butterfly weeds, up in the butterfly garden and also down in the red/orange bed with the new verbena. And I put the artichoke seedlings in pots, because I don't have the space ready in the ground for them yet. The pots aren't big enough to be their permanent homes, but it will do for now.

And Georg and I planted another rose. I never even mentioned that after my big order from Ashdown, I also ordered a couple from Roses Unlimited (also in SC), which arrived last weekend. These are Secret Garden Musk Climber, a rare (seriously, I searched a bunch of rose vendors before I found one who had it) & acclaimed climbing rose that someone discovered in an antique garden and propagated. It's supposed to be vigorous, disease resistant and covered with clusters of single white flowers. Perfect for filling in that high slope down by the road. We got one of them into the ground today & only have one left to plant.

Well, by this point Georg and I were both exhausted. Even though I had taken an hour nap in the afternoon! I'm kind of frustrated with myself for tiring out so easily. I guess I just have to work a little every day and build back up to my prior activity level.

I had planned to make a simple dinner, a riff on Barbara Tropp's curried lamb fried rice. Until we discovered that we're out of rice! So much for that plan. Instead we had a lovely dinner at the Barbecue Joint. On the way there we drove past several chain restaurants with dozens of people standing outside, waiting for tables. I will never understand why so many people will wait 45 minutes for a table at a mediocre, noisy chain restaurant, when they could go someplace awesome like the Barbecue Joint and get better food that costs less, with no wait.

It hasn't been quite as cold as predicted the past couple of days. 29° on Friday night and 30° on Saturday night, according to weather.com. And the cold damage has been much less severe than I had feared.

There is some bad news: first, the heliotrope I bought a week ago is a goner. I had no idea they had so little cold tolerance. We put a little straw over it, but not much, and most of it blew away during the night. There's a teeny tiny bit of green at the bottom of the plant, which may well be gone tomorrow. Oh well, I love the smell of heliotrope and it wasn't expensive, so I'll buy another if this one dies.

All the nasturtium seedlings died. I put straw on all the other seedlings, but I forgot all about these guys. There's still time to try again with another seed packet. But honestly, I have such bad luck with nasturtiums every year that I wonder if this is a sign.

Some of the straw blew off the gerber daisies and a few of them look frozen. I expect the plants will come back though. As will the beautyberry, which lost most of its foliage. The butterfly bush also looks pretty droopy, but it will bounce right back.

Also the hydrangeas took some damage. The plants will be fine but we may have fewer flowers this year. This one wasn't a surprise, so I'm a bit bummed but not crushed.

Now the good news: most of the garden looks fine. The spinach and sugar snaps took no damage, with no protection at all. As did the roses; even the flower buds (which a couple of them have, to my delight) look untouched. And all the seedlings I remembered to cover with straw survived: basil, snapdragons, bee balm and butterfly weed. Also no damage to the blueberries, or the cilantro, or the verbascum we just planted. And the fig looks great too! I'm so happy that the fig made it through the winter.

We brought a bunch of plants inside for the night, so many that the kitchen is basically unusable. Here's hoping it warms up soon so we can put everything back outside!

Today we had our first harvest from the garden! Georg picked some spinach for a wonderful lamb and chickpea stew. Actually it was called a stew, but it was in broth rather than a gravy, so kind of more like a really hearty soup. So good. It hit the spot on a cold night.

Weather.com is predicting 26° tonight, which is a little alarming. But they were way off last night ( their prediction was 5 degrees colder than the actual low) so I'm not going to worry. Besides, we've done as much as we can reasonably do to protect the plants. If they're going to live, then they're going to live.

The roses are all in the ground! Thanks mainly to Georg. Who is King Awesomeness of Awesome. I did lots of weeding too. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the soil is up there. I remembered it being horrible, hard clay. But the top few inches were actually kind of loamy and soft. (No wonder the weeds like it so much!) I guess mixing in a truckload of compost and then piling a truckload of mulch on top does make a difference. Who knew?

We used the "poor man's irrigation system" recommended by David Terry: poke holes in a plastic milk jug, bury it next to the rose, and fill with water. I was kind of surprised by how fast the milk jugs drained. I thought the water would trickle out for 15 minutes or more, but actually it drained out so fast, it was almost hard to fill. I guess it doesn't matter since the water is getting deep into the soil & not sitting on top or evaporating.

We wanted to get the roses planted by today since it's supposed to rain a lot overnight. Although I read it was supposed to be pouring by midnight, and it's 11:30 now, and it sure doesn't look like it's going to pour in a half hour. Maybe it will just start a little late.

I hope the roses like their new home! It will take them a few years to get big if the saying is true: "first year, they sleep; second year, they creep; third year, they leap!" In the meantime I got morning glory seeds to cover the bank. I hope it isn't difficult to make them grow down instead of up. I guess I can encourage them by staking strings down the bank for them to twine on. I seem to recall they like twining.

What a relief to feel like myself again! I hadn't even realized what a mess I was. I think yesterday was the first day I truly felt back to normal. I only worked a couple of hours in late afternoon, but it was a good productive couple of hours. Weeding the bank by the road, where we're going to put the new roses, and digging one of the planting holes. That makes 2 of the 5 holes dug. Unfortunately those were the two easiest holes & the rest won't go so quickly. Still, I feel confident that we're going to get all the roses in the ground before my surgery. Another relief.

I didn't see any more aphids when I watered the roses today, but just in case I bought some neem oil from the organic gardening store in Carrboro. Which seems to be 1/3 organic gardening supplies, 1/3 fancy flowerpots and lawn art, and 1/3 hydroponic gardening supplies. I guess it's the store for rich hippies who grow pot organically, in fancy containers.

Tonight I didn't get home in time to do any gardening, but Georg did an amazing amount of weeding. We will defeat the weeds! They are no match for us!

We had a wonderful dinner tonight. Grilled pork tenderloin and vegetables with bourbon molasses barbecue sauce. I love barbecue so much.

As a lark this year I decided to try growing artichokes. They're doing great so far: ten cute little seedlings. Today I realized that to figure out where to plant them, I need to know how big they're going to get. My vegetable garden says to space them 2 feet apart, but doesn't say how tall they grow. So I searched Dave's Garden for photos, and found this. Holy moley. I think ten of those would fill the entire front yard. That photo is from Southern California; here's hoping they don't get that big in this part of the country!

Did y'all know the Durham County landfill is having free dumping every Saturday this month? They're open late too: from 8 to 3.

We discovered this when we showed up there yesterday morning, and found a line about 4 times longer than normal. Luckily the line moved very fast, since no one had to go over the scale. Unfortunately we weren't dumping, just there to buy a truckload of topsoil. The topsoil is gorgeous. Black, rich, and crumbly. We're adding it to the new bed at the front of the yard. Which is coming together, unfortunately not as fast as I would like. I think it's going to take another 2 truckloads after this one to fill the bed, but we only have one more weekend before I have to take a month off. Well, we can only get done as much as we can. As long as we get enough dirt on there that I can plant my seedlings, I'll be happy.

After the dump I had to go to a work meeting for a couple of hours, and Georg did a ton of weeding on the bed along the driveway. Because he is awesome. On my way home I got my roses from the mailcenter, which took up some time getting them unpackaged and watered and so forth. After that I dug the hole for the Crepescule by the house. The place where I had intended to put it had a couple of big tree roots right under the soil, so I decided to remove a big salvia a couple of feet over and put the rose in that spot. Problem solved! I think the Crepescule is going to look really nice there. The flowers are orange & it's supposedly a robust good repeat bloomer, and disease resistant. Which is important to me because I'm not willing to spray synthetics. I figure I'm making a one-time investment in roses as an experiment. If they can survive with good soil and the occasional treatment of organics like "Cornell formula" (baking soda and horticultural oil), fantastic. If they need constant pampering and weekly fungicide sprays, then I don't want them in my garden.

We also put down landscape fabric and bark chip mulch on the path around the septic tank bed. I really need a better name for that bed. I mean the area where we took out the septic tank a year ago. Last fall I planted asparagus in there so maybe I should call it the asparagus bed. Although there aren't any signs of life yet from the asparagus.

Anyway, last summer the path around that bed got all weedy and it was kind of hard to walk around it. So we put down landscape fabric and that big chip mulch. I must say, I was surprised by how much better it looks. That whole area looks so tidy and pulled together now.

I feel like I did some other things here and there, but now I can't remember. Still, it was a lovely day. Beautiful weather, nice to be outside getting things accomplished. I'm trying to focus on garden tasks that, if I do them now they will save us work later on. Like covering the path now, before it gets all weedy.

Today hasn't been as productive, because first of all, we're both tired from yesterday. And secondly, Georg had to work and then we had a party to go to. Which was a lot of fun, it was the birthday of a friend we don't see nearly enough. We have an extra hour of daylight tonight so I may still get something done.

My rose order from Ashdown arrived today! They had sent me a statement saying they were being shipped on Tuesday, and by yesterday when they hadn't arrived yet, I was beginning to get alarmed and wondering if they had been lost in the mail. But no harm done, they were actually shipped Thursday and only spent two days packed up in a cardboard box.

Two cardboard boxes actually: their big box holds four, and they shipped the fifth in its own box. (I had ordered a sixth, a pale yellow/apricot climber called Lady Hillingdon, but it died over the winter. No big deal, I have plenty enough for what I need.)

Here's what I got:

Crepescule
Awakening
Mme. Alfred Carriere
Reve D'Or
Colonial White

They're all climbers. Most of them are for the bank along the road, but the Crepescule is for the side of the house. The roses all look healthy, and came in big pots which were still moist. I was expecting tiny little babies based on customer reviews on the Gardenweb forums. Well either the Gardenweb folks have higher standards than I do, or Ashdown paid attention to the feedback and started selling bigger roses, because mine are a nice healthy size. Much bigger than other shrubs I've ordered by mail. (I do concede that a couple of them are a bit small for the pot size, and I guess they must have agreed because they gave me half-off the smallest one.) A couple of them even have flower buds already! That was a nice surprise.

I gave them all a good watering and put them on the shady side of the house, to give them a chance to get used to sunlight again. By the time I get the holes dug they'll be acclimatized and ready to plant!

Now, the bad news. One of the roses was infested with aphids. That one was shipped in the big box with three others, and after two days inside a cardboard box, the other three have aphids too.

I wrote to Ashdown and asked them if they have a policy about sending roses with aphids (i.e., is this normal, do they give a credit for the hassle, etc), and also what should I do. In the meantime I isolated the one with really bad aphids from the others, and also isolated the one that had been in a box by itself.

Also while watering them I used a blast of water to knock off the aphids. Which worked better than I had honestly expected. I guess aphids don't hang on that well. I probably didn't get them all, but if I do it again every day, that might actually get rid of the little bastards.

I've been kind of bummed about not being able to garden the past few weeks, so I indulged an indoor gardening project: a DIY grow light. I built it out of PVC pipe and fluorescent shop lights.

I used this plan and parts list, with one modification: the plan shows the lights hanging from one length of PVC. I thought that might not be enough to support three shop lights, which are surprisingly heavy, so I made two parallel supports and connected them with T-joints at the base. I didn't connect them at the top because I was concerned about my ability to get everything exactly square. Which turned out to be a valid concern; in fact, nothing is square. I don't care; it's not like it's a house or something. All it has to do is hold up the lights, and it does that quite well.

The big surprise of the project was opening the shop lights and discovering a mass of loose wires instead of a power cord and plug. Oops, the plans didn't say anything about that! I guess the shop lights are meant to be hung from the ceiling. I had no idea how to deal with that so I called my dad for help. He told me what to do and with his advice, I was able to wire all three lamps. (I confess, I took the easy way out and didn't ground them.)

Turns out the hardest part of wiring the lights was the sharp edges all over the metal box, which left me with tiny cuts all over my hands. Too bad I didn't know about the black pepper home remedy. Once wired up, the shop lights are held together with a simple wooden frame, and then hung from the PVC frame with a chain that can be raised or lowered. I read on the Gardenweb forum that regular "cool white" fluorescent bulbs work just as well as special grow lights.

Voila: a working grow light. And it only took 6 trips to the big box store! One to buy the PVC pipe. The second to buy the PVC joints, lights, and hardware. The third to buy the second PVC pipe, after I realized the frame needed to be sturdier. The fourth to buy the wiring, which was missing from the parts list. The fifth to buy S-hooks, also missing from the parts list. The sixth to buy another bag of S-hooks, because the ding-danged bag held 3 hooks and I needed 4. By that point it was almost comical.

I finished the plant light last week but didn't have the energy to turn it on and sow my seeds until Sunday. What can I say, it was a long week. I have tons of seeds this year, thanks to a gift certificate for Johnny Seeds from my folks. I'm going to direct sow most of them but some need to be sown indoors ahead of time. And to my amazement, the yarrow and the basil are coming up already! Good grief, it's only been 3 days! I can't wait to see what comes up next. I'm experimenting with some plants I've never grown from seed before. I won't be crushed if some of them don't sprout, but of course I'll be thrilled if they do. We have a lot of new flower bed space to fill, and growing plants from seed sure is more economical than buying them in pots.

(One final note: The PDF plan says you can build a grow light for under $60. That may have been true when it was written, but it sure isn't true now. My lamp cost about twice that. Still, that's about half what I would have paid for a commercial grow light of similar size.)

This morning Georg and I took a stroll around the garden. Something we like to do every day or so during the growing season. To see how things are doing, what needs attention, and just to appreciate the garden as it develops and changes throughout the year.

I've commented on the unseasonable warmth a few times. Though, as Lisa pointed out, taken in isolation it's not unseasonable at all. It's common, maybe even normal, for us to have a few very warm days in early January. What isn't normal is for April-like weather to continue on, and on. With the exception of short cold spells in early November and in December, winter almost hasn't gotten started this year.

And because of this extended warm weather with few frosts, the growing season for 2007 has begun already. Our walk revealed new growth on a bunch of perennials; the self-seeded cilantro thriving; beet seedlings from the seeds I planted a week ago; and daffodils sprouting up everywhere. The perennials can take care of themselves, the beets will be fine unless we have record cold temps coming up, and the cilantro is a freak occurrence that I'm not too concerned about. But the daffodils are bad news.

They're way early, and when it finally gets cold, any new growth above ground is at risk of being frozen. That's fine if it's just the leaves -- they'll look a little ratty with brown ends, that's all -- but if the buds emerge in this warm spell and then freeze, we'll get yucky flowers or maybe even no flowers this year. And that would be a damned shame. I suppose we could protect them by piling up mulch to cover the buds. But with almost 600 daffodils to cover, all of them mixed in with perennials that shouldn't be buried, it's just not practical. Alas, I predict it will not be a good year for daffodils.