I’m giving tulips another try. I’ve laid a wire mesh (similar to chicken coop wire) down to deter any intrepid bulb-eaters and diggers from upsetting the bed. My High Country Gardens order arrived last week, and I’m just now getting to planting them. I’ve decided on the middle rear bed to house my tulip ambitions. Twelve each of Tulipa bakeri and Tulipa humilis are sharing the bed with Eye of the Tiger Dutch irises, about 4 or 5 Muscari botryoides ‘Album’, and 3 large bulbs of Allium karativiense ‘Ivory Queen’. Flanking each end of the bed stand a white salvia greggii and a transplanted salvia microphylla Hot Lips, sparsely leafed after surviving the dry summer heat. I’ve left some room for a rosemary bush to keep the greggii company, and I plan on adding Muscari armeniacum and at least 6 Allium christophii to the mix. I’m still exploring more plants to populate this Cool-in-the-Shade White and Blue garden, especially since the current flower selection consists of early spring bloomers.
All posts by epicureasian
A colony of Cannas
Indestructible. Invasive. Resistance is futile. Where once there were two plants barely 2 feet high, now there exists a large colony of cannas, extending its dominion into my front flower bed. The tubers photographed this past weekend captures the aggressive nature of this plant; the root system covers about a 2′ by 3′ patch of bed, and there are no signs that it is letting up. I began dividing the roots and planting them in pots to grow babies for the new year.
Weighing in on doggy doors
It’s been nearly 2 weeks since we installed a new back door (Nov 5), purchased custom-cut for a doggy door from Lowes. (Apparently, Home Depot does NOT offer this service and even referred us to Lowes.) Primed and ready to paint, the door cost about $275 and came with a jamb. Luckily, the door fit into our existing jamb, with some modification to hinges and such; thus, it wasn’t such a challenging project for dear hubby and brother to install. The hole was cut to the dimensions of Ideal’s Deluxe Pet Door, Super Large size of course, which I ordered from www.petstreetmall.com. The online retailer was somewhat lacking in the automated feedback department because I had to request a tracking number for my order. I suppose it’s a consequence of paying cheap and getting “free” shipping. Our bronze pet door arrived via UPS in good time, and while it was a much darker bronze than I had originally perceived, it still worked with the overall kitchen color scheme. Disappointingly, it had a dented corner (did not appear shipping related) which didn’t affect the door’s functionality. Our foster Foxie and the rascal Doogie took right off to the doggy door, followed by a hesitant Dandy. Dill, however, was our problem child, being sensitive to anything that he came in direct contact with. It took some major coercion the first week to get him accustomed to the door, but I’m happy to say that he is now using it more regularly.
Frames redirection problem.
Site visitors may notice that when clicking on an internal link, the page loads into another frame. Repeated internal views will result in multiple nests of frames. I can use a javascript code to break this frame behavior but unfortunately my free Dynamic DNS service also breaks as well, by removing the domain name from the address bar. I am still investigating ways of addressing this issue.
Fall gardening is all work and no play
A problem I’m seeing due to having no gutters on our house is that water runoff tends to erode chunks out of your flower beds. I’m exploring the possibility of installing lava rock on top of the mulch to reduce some of the ugly pits caused by cascading rainfall.
It’s back to weeding and winterizing the beds this Saturday. The weekend forecast threatens rain, but so far there are no clouds in the sky. I have a dozen plus Iris bulbs from Brecks that need to go in the ground ASAP. I also posted an order with Hill Country Gardens for some muscari, allium and tulip bulbs, and I’m looking forward to a trip out to Covington’s Nursery in Rowlett. They have a great planning guide for the October-November gardener.
I discovered an interesting and cost-efficient way of making your own seed-starting pots out of newspapers while researching lava rock and mulching on the net. If only I were a seed-starter….