In the garden by the front door

Took some pics of the plants near by front door. The first is the view from the front steps.


Lamium is the low white and green leafed plant, which is spreading quite a bit. It looks fine though, and in the spring it has nice yellow flowers. Joe Pye is the tall plants behind the lamium with flat topped aster to the right. The blue flowered plants are Balloon Flowers, and their flower is quite striking.

There are some hostas in there too, although I think I need to move them as they're getting crowded out by the lamium. You can hardly see them. Celendine poppy is the name of the plants with little yellow flowers that are also spreading about.



This is fireweed, which is to the left of the sidewalk in the first photo. I'd like to make a little sitting area at this point, so I'm probably going to move these plants in the fall.



There's some Philadelphia Fleabane at the front of this part of the garden by the evergreen tree. It's a nice little plant.



These are tall coneflowers that are near the front of the yard - in the background of the first photo. They are quite tall - over four feet, and seem to spreading a bit too, which in this case is a good thing indeed. Colourful and long lasting blooms. I'm putting some more of them elsewhere in the yard.

Seven year wait

Seven years ago (I think) I planted prairie roses in my yard. They have done OK, as they have spread about a bit in the yard. However, I've never seen them flower. Until today.

I'm pretty excited about this one bloom, and it looks like there might be a few others coming.

One of the reasons, or maybe THE reason, I haven't seen blooms on my prairie roses before this may be due to the fact that they seem to be infected with whatever the heck this orange stuff is.

It comes off in my fingers, and there doesn't seem to be any bugs about. I'm not exactly sure what it is. One suggestion is that it's some type of rust, which is one of the myriad of things roses are susceptible to - so I'm told. I tried cutting them back and cutting out the parts that have the orange stuff. We'll see if that helps.

The battle has been joined!

I have begun my yearly battle with the gout weed that's in my yard. Gout weed spreads by the roots and has taken up too much space in my yard. Moreover, it's bland looking - just green - and about knee high, which makes it difficult to see anything else even daylilies - at least until those flower, which is still more than a month away I think.

The gout weed battle is likely a losing one, as it'll probably come back in the places I've ripped it out of. Nevertheless, I can hopefully give the other plants near it more of a chance of doing well before the gout weed comes back.

I also transplanted a few ferns from the north side of the house to the south side, but still in a shady spot. They'll likely die back this year, but should come back next year without a problem.

Still have other plans for the yard including putting in some sitting areas and trying to get rid of some grass with the newspaper covering method.

Mother Nature is missing out

I planted some more things in the garden, and cut the boulevard grass today. As I was doing so, this thought came to mind: "Why isn't there a bug specifically eating dandelions?"

I think Mother Nature is missing out here by not having something - anything - eating dandelions. There's a great surplus of the plants - at least around my yard, so said bug - or mammal, or marsupial, I'm really pretty open here, would have no shortage of food.

So, I say forget genetically modifying wheat or corn or whatever. Let's genetically engineer a dandelion eater. That's what the world needs now.

Or my little bit of the world anyway.