Thursday, July 11, 2013

Ad Hoc Gardening

Hello All!
I suppose it has been a while since I last blogged...oops!  This has happened to me before...

Since we last spoke, I had a nice Christmas with my family, hung out at home for a while, went back to teach at 2/3 time and have been in regular physio to get my body back into the habit of listening to my brain after my back surgery.  My back is still sore, it fatigues quickly and I can't lift or carry anything that weighs more than ten pounds.  It has improved drastically though and I am very thankful for the ability that I have re-gained and for how it is increasing all the time!

Because of my back, I was essentially banned from any heavy-duty gardening this year.  I was initially quite disappointed by this since the most I could do was pick dandelions from my front yard with a picker that was designed for people with arthritis and bad backs.  I can't even mow my own lawn!  Doing things like digging and carrying/spreading large amounts of weed-preventing mulch were out of the question.

This has lead to quite an ad hoc garden this year.

Some friends of mine gave me some of their surplus tomato and chives which I was able to get into the ground.  The birds and squirrels inadvertently planted some sunflower seeds over the winter.  Some perennial yellow daisy-like things came up.  There are white bell-like things growing where there's not even a garden.  Some stowaway purple things and day-lilies came through the fence from the neighbour's side.  I have a "wildflower" garden happening under the spruce trees in the back.  Until Canada Day weekend, I had a pretty good crop of milkweed growing in the front garden.

Some of my family came to visit over the long weekend and my brother Rory was inspired to make my gardens more reasonable.  He was excited to do some gardening on someone else's dime and it has made me so happy to put up that dime!  He pulled out the milkweed in the front and put in a pretty blue hydrangea to compliment the other plants in the front garden.  The hydrangeas were on sale so I got a second one to add to the random assortment in the side garden in the back yard

I was able to pull out the weeds that were growing between the actual plants in the side garden and plant some lettuce, carrots and beans.  They are a bit late on the scene, but I figured that they should produce something since the planting instructions encourage staggered planting throughout the summer to provide a continuous harvest.

The back garden remains a wildflower haven!

Here are some pics:
Window-well Sunflower

Sprouted Lettuce

Stowaway Purple Thing

Surplus Tomatoes

Wildflowers Under Spruce Trees

Yellow Perennials

Side Garden.  Foreground: Sunflowers, Yellows, White Things, Wildflower Garden

New Blue Hydrangeas 

I'm going to link up to the wonderful blog my friend MaryMary shares with her sister, Outside At Home.

4 comments:

  1. Hey Carla, I think the stowaway purple thing is columbine and the yellows are maybe coreopsis :) Columbines are hard to grow (I find), so that's a lucky addition!

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    1. Thanks Rachael! I should write those names down...

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  2. So nice Carla! I love the wild flower garden. It's awesome. And lettuce, carrots and beans are great ones to plant late. You could also plant them in August - the lettuce and carrots are into the cooler weather. Thanks for linking up!
    Mary

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    1. Mary, I love that you love the wildflower garden. It's my code for so many weeds that I can't remove. It's a much nicer way to put it, I think. And one person's weeds are another person's wildflowers...

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