We get bailed out

This has been an eventful week and a half, both in the garden and out. I have had limited time to work on the garden between a wedding out of town, my son's graduation ceremony from high school and a few related family events, science fair and invention convention, multiple large school projects and upcoming exams, a wonderful string orchestra concert with attendant rehearsals and madness, and a few family members, friends and colleagues experiencing medical and personal crises. I suppose the rare bits of time in my garden have been a bit of a panacea for the madness all around me, but even there I had some tense moments setting up my leaky-pipes watering system with Josh. He is not very good at noticing where he is stepping (not on the beans!!!) and I am less than adept at figuring out attachment systems (I put down two entire hoses facing the wrong way and could not connect them, and had to redo the whole thing.) Needless to say it was not our most harmonious collaboration.

Last weekend I was weeding and moving some plants around when a woman passed by with two small children, on her way to the park. She spoke to her children about the nice garden and we started to chat. Debbie asked me how I could tell the difference between the weeds and the flowers. I started to tell her how  I learned the hard way by letting the weeds grow and flourish long enough to know they were weeds and not what I planted, but after a few years I am getting the hang of it although I now have more weeds than I would have if I had known better when I started. She ended up spending an hour or so checking out my garden and her kids disappeared into my house to play with mine while she told me she was interested in starting to garden and looking to buy a house. I gave her my blog URL, so maybe she is reading this. I was really struggling with the weeds, as we still had not received our hay, and having been out of town and otherwise very busy, I have not kept up. So when I saw Jack chatting on our front lawn with Josh on Monday after work, I think I whooped for joy, and was thrilled to see a pyramid of hay stacked on the back fence. I have yet to finish laying it down, but I got a good start. Hopefully this weekend I will get the rest out. I did throw an entire large bag of potatoes which had sprouted beneath the hay in the section of the garden where I did not plant the carrots and onions as originally planned (as per map #1 last November). I also put in the ends of 15 green onions and a celery stump to see what they will do.

It turns out that I was mistaken about my failure in growing carrots. Shortly after my last post, thousands of closely packed carrot sprouts materializes in rows between the garlic, along the water hoses. I guess I am smarter or luckier than I thought, and put them in the wettest spot possible. I made a frantic call to Chloe about how to thin them out. Her advice: they don't transplant well (I tried anyways, maybe I will get lucky again), and don't thin them completely but let some grow to the size of baby carrots, and thin them at that level, so we get both baby and mature carrots at different times.

We bought a black tulip magnolia tree which we are hoping to plant this weekend between our driveway and the corner of the garden facing Iulia's house, so she will see it from her window too. She is planning on cutting her spruce tree which is a few feet away on her side of  the property line, so we should have a net gain in light. While Josh was at the nursery, he picked up some pickling cucumbers to replace the ones which have not yet sprouted (and perhaps never will), some pineapple mint, rosemary, and dark purple petunias which I planted in a box along the driveway together with some mystery sprouts I begged from Iulia and a sweet potato. I have no idea what will grow, sort of like the mystery surprise of the garden.

So far, at least from what I remember planting, the following items have yet to show signs of life:
Last year's rosemary which we thought was perennial. I chucked it and put in a new one.

Coriander

Not one of the poppies which we
seeded directly outside sprouted. Not one. Josh insisted that Alex just tosses them in the garden and they come up. Alex also produces lettuces the size of big watermelons and pumpkins as large as my shed, so I can't assume that what works for Alex will be repeated in my garden.

Hay, hay, hay!!

No freesia action yet. They are in a pot beside my door looking very empty.
The daffodils which I planted around my spruce tree have not bloomed two years running (not since I planted them, so tonight after returning from the science fair, I sent the kids to get ready for bed and went out in the rain to transplant them, as well as a few stray cosmos that sprouted among my morning glories (bad spot). I put the daffodils along the front and side gardens where there is much more sun, which I hope will encourage them to bloom. By the time I was getting the last ones in, it was getting too dark to see much. As I dug the hole to bury the bulbs, two green dots glowed at me from the earth, and then another two. I reached in and pulled out a small worm with what looked like two glowing eyes (more likely it was his butt). I got really excited, having never seen a glow worm, and called the kids out to see. Zara was pretty jaded (yeah, so what) but Orianne was appropriately impressed.
I have just today seen a single blade of green on the big lavender plant, but I cannot figure out what happened to the smaller one I planted that Maya and Kate gave us. I was giving up hope but will wait and see.
The Blue bird Rose of sharon is just dry sticks. I need to go back and see if I wrote about it last year.

On a positive note, the peonies, columbines, lamium, Lysimachi, evening primroses and gooseneck loosestrife are going nuts and looking great.

Baby mantis on clematis

Another exciting change is that my neighbour Ovidiu has given in to Iulia to allow for climbing flowers on the fence. She planted a gorgeous clematis and some climbing roses, as well as a row of beans set back a few inches on a frame. I am being as diligent as possible to clear every emerging bindweed (white wild morning glories) from the garden to keep my side of the fence clear and my neighbours both happy.

I also added some suspended pots off the side of the cucumber frame and seeded them with chives, green onions and some other garden herb I can't remember.Things are looking good!