Butterfly Garden

David and Emily bought me a bunch of perennials for Mother's Day this year, and they spent a couple of weeks waiting for the garden bed to be prepped for planting. We spent an afternoon digging out the grass and weeds, saving the few perennials and bulbs that were still in the bed, and laying down a good layer of landscaping fabric. We dumped in some new garden soil and were ready to plant!

Before...

... All dug out...

... Done!

Our plants include: Bee balm, Delphinium, Liatris, Butterfly weed, Oat grass, Brown-eyed susan, Purple coneflower, Baby's breath, Ice plant (Delosperma), Blanket flower, Parsley (for caterpillars), alyssum, and zinnias. There's also a large Sedum that was already there, some daffodils, hyacinth, and crocuses.

New Garden

It's amazing how quickly the days fill up with a 6 month old! We did manage to get some work finally done on a garden. We finally started to outline and fill in our garden by our huge rock. I've wanted to do this garden for quite a while, since you can see it as soon as you start to drive up our driveway. 

Between the rock and our Juniper

Another moss and a pink stonecrop, with our existing

wild roses and day lilies - this part is closest to the

driveway

We added some brown eyed susans, foxglove, lupine, purple hollyhock, pink hollyhock, a moss, a dwarf monkshood, and some orange flowers whose name I forget. I also planted 25 daffodil and 40 pink tulip bulbs for next spring! There looks like there is a huge empty space in the middle, and that's because there is. I was looking for regular monkshood, which grows to around 1.2m tall but they only had the dwarf variety. I'm absolutely set on having monkshood, so I've left the space and my mission for next spring is to track it down. Our last step is to get a couple bags of mulch to protect everything over the winter.

Between being back to work and "morning" sickness (what a stupid name that is!), time has just been flying by! Today I finally had a chance to go around and take some pictures of our gardens! Our flowers that were supposed to flower in August have finally decided it was time to bloom.

Some of the dahlias we planted are blooming. The plants themselves don't look very big, but the flowers sure are!

The gladiolas started to bloom a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we didn't plant them deep enough and the wind knocked most of them over. We've taken to cutting the flower spikes once they start to bloom so we've had some nice fresh cut flowers inside.

The gardens that we worked so hard on earlier this summer have been doing well. The first one we tackled is filled with blooms. We even discovered some yellow cone flowers that we didn't see last year (lucky they survived the rebuild!), and it seems some seeds from a ground cherry plant that was planted 30 feet away made it in there as well. David has been enjoying harvesting the surprise crop!

Our shaded rock-garden is also doing well, although it will still need some work next year. Some of the ferns I thought I moved have come back, but with the new rock placement it works well. 

Our neighbour's chicken have gotten big and she often lets them roam free...

And finally, a sure sign that summer is coming to an end: the Canadian Geese have begun their fall migration south.

Finally DONE!!!

I am absolutely thrilled this morning! Last night we finished our last two flower gardens! First of all, the shade garden was only missing a few annuals on the front side, so it only took a few minutes to finish it off.

Front of the Shade Garden                         Back of the Shade Garden

While I was working on the shade garden, David started to tackle our last garden overhaul. We had already removed the stones, and David started by removing the top 4-6 inches of soil and "sod" (mostly weeds).

Once the sod closest to rock border was removed, I rolled the rocks back into place.

By the time we were ready to plant, the mosquitoes were out in full force... and by that I mean swarms of them! We finally finished the garden just after 9pm... I give you our finished garden!

Ta da!

 Ok, so I'm not absolutely finished with our shade garden... but it's very, very, very close to done! I stated with the backside of the garden since I already had a very good idea of what plants to place here. I added 3 more hostas, a japanese painted fern, and a "looking-glass" bugloss (heart shaped silver-green leaves) to this side, along with plenty of impatients, and some dark foliage (an annual, but I don't know what they're called). I also moved a echineacea (cone flower) from one of our other beds, and planted it next to the one we bought last week. 

The front side of the garden is still a work in progress. It's all cleared out and I put in a bleeding heart next to the purple salvia. I still need to put in some new soil, and I have a hosta and some impatients to plant as well.

We still have one garden left to work on. David took apart the rock border yesterday. We're going to remove the top few inches of the garden to get rid of the grass & weeds. There are some daffodils and hyacinths in there somewhere too... those will be put back, hopefully in a placement that makes a little more sense. I guess we'll see how we do with that next spring!

Finally: our vegetable garden, we did manage a little work on it... we burned it! At the very least we'd like to "try" to even out the area and lay down the weed-block fabric. In the meantime, we're starting to pile dry hay and dry tree branches in preparation for our first Canada Day bonfire! 

Happy Summer Everyone!

Busy, Busy (photo heavy!)

We've been quite busy tackling our summer "to do list" these last few days, and we've realized that we won't be able to do all those things we hoped to do. 

Unfortunately, the vegetable garden will have to wait another year. We're still planning on throwing down some hay and burning the garden plot to bring everything down to the soil. Once that's done we may try to even out the area and lay down the weed block. But the actual building of raised boxes may have to wait until either later in the fall, or next spring. In the meantime, all those fruits & veggies we started from seed have been moved into larger containers, so we should still get some fresh produce this season. We gave new life to our old ikea plant stands. It's amazing what a good sanding and some stain will do. =)

Carrots, peppers, strawberries, broccoli, and flowers

Broccoli, zucchini, basil, and lots of tomatoes in front,

with some flowers & maple tree seedlings

Part of the reason we've decided to put it off, is not only the expense of our very ambitious project, but also we're planning a BBQ to celebrate Canada Day this year. As the flower gardens are still in a state of weed-infestation, we thought it better to deal with those first. Our new gardens are doing well, the gladiolas have all grown, we have some dahlias growing as well, the Japanese maple is recovering nicely, and the day lilies are getting ready to flower.

The Japanese maple

Day lilies

we may move the group on the left next year...

Finally, I've started to tackle our shade garden yesterday. We picked up an Echinacea (purple cone flower), a purple Salvia (ornamental sage), and two hostas. I started by removing the buried rock border, and taking out some of the plants I wanted to keep. The garden is not only filled with grasses and some weeds, but also Solomon's Seal and TONNES of lily of the valley! There are also some ferns and a couple of hostas as well. Here's my progress so far:

My plan for today is to hopefully get this garden close to finished. We'll still need to pick up some annuals to give it some colour, and put the rock border back into place.

Garden Update

I walked around checking out our gardens the other day, and I thought I'd post a garden update. Be warned... this may be a long post, but with lots of pictures!

Our garden around our big rock is doing well. The day lilies are growing, the roses and hazel are leafing out, and our Japanese Maple is leafing as well. We were very concerned these past few weeks - the maple didn't seem to be doing well. We learned after the fact that we should have wrapped it over the winter. Well, it looks like the top of the tree didn't make it, but we were very happy to see new growth from the base of the tree! 

Japanese Maple                                                 Hazel in leaf

Our garden next to the driveway is also doing very well (blogged here). This one is absolutely full of day lilies, with a few irises at the front. I can't wait for them to bloom!

The lilac bushes were all blooming as well. Unfortunately, we had very high winds last week and most of the blooms are gone.

As for the new gardens we put in, the dahlias still haven't come up yet but the gladiolas we planted in front of the barn have started to grow. We planted a variety pack, so we have no idea what colours we have... can't wait to find out!

Mission Whipper-Snipper

It was with great sadness that we learned our latest attack on the vegetable garden was unsuccessful. So, on Friday we set out on our new mission. We rented a whipper-snipper, and David set to the garden assault.

The next step: remove the tarps, rake up all the grass & weeds, "try" to even out the area (it's an old row vegetable garden), and then lay down the weed block. This is a monumental task, to say the least. The garden area is 30' wide and 25' deep...

Catching up... again

So far, this month has been pretty crazy... as evidenced by the lack of posts!

On May 4th, I performed in Vanier's 40th anniversary choral concert with the college choir. It was a huge work, very... different...

We still haven't managed to tackle the two remaining gardens that were covered in hay in the fall. The gardeners were supposed to come by in the middle of the week to mow our lawn so we wanted to deal with the hay that had been raked off one of the gardens before the mowers got here. Tuesday evening (May 10th) we raked everything up, and decided since it was decent out, to burn the hay rather than fill countless bags. Needless to say, we got a good roaring fire going!

The following weekend we had some visitors Saturday afternoon, and Sunday my parents came by with lobster for Mother's Day dinner. Boiled lobster, corn-on-the-cob, rice & veggie stir-fry, and cheddar-bay biscuits... topped off by a chocolate-fudge cake... yum!

Last weekend was our busiest and most anticipated weekend! First, it signalized the beginning of our vacation (sort of... we traded 2 days for the following week). Our jobs have a temporary lay-off during the summer, so we'll both be off until mid-August. The weekend kicked off on Friday with alpaca shearing at Magpie Hill Alpacas in North Gower (just south of Ottawa). This is the same farm we helped out last year.

Cria (baby alpaca) with full fleece

Half way through...

 All done!

We had a great time, and we both learned a lot!

Sunday, our nephew was baptized, and I must say I don't think I've ever seen a more quiet baptism... not a squeak from him!

We has a few days to ourselves before we were back to work to help one of our suppliers set up equipment in one of our labs on Thursday, and back for workshops the following day. A great time was had by all, as we learned about ELISA antibody tests and protein analysis through electrophoresis...

That's me pipetting our sample into the gel for electrophoresis

Finally, yesterday we had a beautiful summer day... the thermometer read 25 degrees! David and I managed to finish working on 3 of our gardens: annuals were planted around the deck; our garden by the garage was edged, filled, planted (with dahlias & peonies), and covered with cedar chips; and the garden in front of the barn was edged, filled and planted (with gladiolas) as well! We put some garden lights in the two new gardens, but last night decided that they just didn't fit in there. So, this morning I've moved them to the garden around the deck (the photos were taken yesterday).

Facing driveway                                        Facing Back Yard

Dahlias & Peonies

Gladiolas

We also made another trip for plants this afternoon, and.... Ta Da!