Fragile flower 

June, starts with fragile flowers

The silky thin petals that start June are showing in the garden beds. Peonies, poppies, the tall bearded iris -- starting to float above beds of green leaves.

You know, tulips and daffodils and all the little spring bulbs are like lilies and daylilies, substantial. Hellebore are downright tough.

Spring Gardening Chores Finished

All that digging did get finished, and the space is filled with things that I will dig up in the fall. Last fall was the first year in a long time that I dug up stuff and stored it, and for a wonder I did store it in the basement instead of the cold room. Next year I hope for the same success. Glads that had been dug, sunned for a week or so, and laid out (in a plastic-lined washtub, probably an antique) have already sprouted this year in profusion. Just this week, the dahlias are showing their noses. Cannas, I don't know yet. Maybe I don't succeed with them? But they're reckoned to be ruddy beasts that nothing can defeat, so I'm hopeful.

I used to use the coldroom, try to prepare the things I stored, forget to put them out ... This time around is working better.

Last year, I threw balls of crochet thread out the upstairs window to provide support from a west window for scarlet runner. I had company in the toss, because the idea scared me a little. This year I thought of the company fondly, and repeated the toss with no fear and more success I think. This year, from a south window. Climbing up into the sun there is something that runner beans have done before!

And the horned poppies have extended their stems, gotten tall and bloomed. A ruddy orangey gold, with a golden center, instead of the dark center that the pink poppies will have. Much smaller petals, just lovely. Only four open so far. Just lovely.

Every Year It's the Shovel

Every year I end up with digging to do. I avoid sweeping but I can't skip digging. Some years it was getting truckloads of compost delivered. The truck will dump it exactly where I ask, so I learned to put a big tarp down in the driveway and let him dump onto that.

I remember one year when I made up a flower bed and then was concerned that I had nothing to plant in it to keep it from growing weeds. I lifted lily of the valley from the north of the house where it has grown in narrow strips between the house and the little sidewalk. And periwinkle. Of course, this year that flowerbed is totally overrun with lily of the valley and periwinkle. I never realized how LoV could grow and clump until I put it in well-composted beds with lots of sun.

I can line some daylily beds with LoV, confident that I can mow it, or the neighbor can. But realizing that it'll clump and keep the creeping charlie out. The quantities of both peri and LoV that I'm putting out for the waste collection appalls me when I think of how much people charge for them in catalogs.

Periwinkle I throw under the ramp, this year. One year, I threw it between the garage and the fence. It roots.

Phlox, too. I hate to throw away phlox. This year I invested in two little helenium plants, and was determined they would go in front of the old clothes pole. At least there wasn't any LoV or periwinkle there. But the lemon mint clump that had grown so huge finally defeated me, right back at the fence. I whittled it down by half, and made a deep trench, and put a black trash bag into the trench, set back into the plastic all the bricks I had unearthed, and just left it for this year.

Tomorrow it's going after periwinkle again, unfortunately not mixed up with anything much -- so I have to roll it over and over like a roll of sod because the stuff holds together so well. There's gonna be gladiola against the south of the house rather than that periwinkle, if the shovel doesn't break. One little patch is done, and planted; I did put plastic between the daylilies to the east of it and the new gladiola patch. But then, because it looks so blank with just buried bulbs, I did take some artemisia, two nice plants, and a bunch of little baby honesty plants that I had pulled up from elsewhere, and I set them it to look cheerful. It's really only now that I deeply wonder why I am so inclined to plants that feverishly multiiply. However, in digging out glads, I may be able to keep future artemisia and honesty from totally taking over?

Or not.

Hurrah again for the Prairie

I spent a very long weekend "up north" where Lake Michigan lowers the Illinois temperatures considerably. The spring there was actually more than a week behind my own micro-ecology here. And I got back to cheer for the false indigo, it is indeed determined to be a non-spindly plant, one that matters, this year.

And those hundred tulips all orange and pink that I planted in the row of daylilies all bloomed, probably on Mother's Day, with some purple honesty to spark them up. I'm very contented with this particular part of Illinois today.

Prairie plants II

Yes, the Illinois weather is still amazingly chill. Sun bright, nights below 32. But I shouldn't have complained about Baptisia, the false indigo. In the back, in the ex-vegetable garden, it went ahead cold notwithstanding and put up three stubby strong-looking sprouts. Maybe this year it'll be a full-size plant, looking at the size of those stubs!