A comment from the Gardener

April and May are the busiest times of the month in my garden. And this year some parts of my garden were hanging on by a wing and a prayer so I was very much looking forward to being able to get my hands dirty and get things made pretty once more. On Monday and Tuesday Rick and his team were here to weed and edge all the garden beds and then install 16 cu feet of shredded bark mulch. It is amazing how just edging and mulching the beds made things look vastly improved. The black iron garden arch which has been resting in the woods since last November was reinstalled. One of the clematis plants that previously grew over the arch survived and it has been reintroduced to the arch (and disconnected from the holly tree which it had adopted). The second one (which was always way more vigorous) has succumbed and I will need to replace it.

I played with dirt on Sunday and concocted what I hope will be a good growing medium in the new but narrow planter box. Then I filled it with a "scrap quilt" of marigolds.

Today I planted out ageratum plants out front and then needed to find a good home for the dozens of marigold and blue salvia plants that remained after I had filled the planter box.

In another few weeks I'll post an updated photo of my garden. That will come after Rick and I have decided what to do with the garden bed to the immediate left (out of camera range) in this photo. It's the one that has the new screen hiding the ac units. But we'll have to come up with an idea incorporating big boulders to hold back the soil and mulch so the latter do not wash down onto the patio. My favorite chaste tree, which had to be sacrificed for the patio, previously did a good job of holding back the soil. We'll come up with a solution I'm sure.