Weekend Warriors

I never got around to writing about the evening I weeded my brother's garden. I showed up and got eaten by blackflies. After spraying myself with so much DEET I worried that my skin might melt off, my mother joined me in fixing up a bed running the length of his house. Turns out, he's got some lovely gardens in place, once all of the weeds wer removed.

Then his girlfriend came over, and that's when the plan went awry. She brought with her a bunch of annuals and some pots and soil, and since planting up colourful pots of flowers is much more fun than yanking out dandelions and mint (oh, the mint - he's got a serious infestation. I hope he likes mojitos), that's what we ended up doing. We did weed some areas, but at the end of the evening, his pots and the raised strip by his door looked fabulous. He was very appreciative. I also managed to scam a small piece of his very-eager clematis, and will go back for some hosta; he has this variety that seems to spread quite a bit.

This past weekend was stellar - amazing weather, a huge garage sale, plants, sun, beer, barbecue - everything a girl could ask for. On Saturday morning, we went to the Great Glebe Garage Sale. This chaotic annual event is about 10 x 10 city blocks of garage sales, and the entire city seems to go nuts. One of the best aspects of it is that there are so many nice gardens in that neighborhood, which I get to examine at close range, and many people are selling off parts of their plants. I picked up the following:

- 2 japanese painted ferns
- 3 pots of variegated perennial grass
- a geum (don't know what colour - oops)
- something else that has little white flowers on tall stalks, don't know the name of it.

I also got a great old galvanized tin pail, which now has 6 holes drilled into the bottom of it and holds a bunch of pretty annuals.

On Sunday my mom and I made a pilgrimmage to the local garden centre and bought a whack of annuals. I got $45 worth of annual flats. That's a lot of flowers. I spent the rest of the day potting up colourful containers, weeding, flipping the rest of my veggie garden, planting out all of my vegetable seedlings, trimming the edges of the yard, planting the new perennials that I bought Saturday, installing my soaker hose in the veggie garden, transplanting another fern for my shade garden from the woods, cleaning up the deck and doing minor outdoor-decorating tasks. The place looks terrific now, and in a few weeks when the flowers start to go nuts, it will be beautiful.

I am worried about my hanging baskets. I bought 4 of those black iron and coir things, and then four big hanging baskets of: profuse hot pink mini-geraniums, trailing purple petunias, bright yellow drooping strawflowers, and blueish-purple scaivola, as well as a flat of bright orange and pink gazanias. I split each of the hanging baskets into four and made four mixed baskets, with the gazanias added into the dirt in the top to keep the baskets looking full, not flat-topped. Well, now they're all a bit droopy, either from the trauma, the sun, watering badly or all of the above. I hope they pull through - I may put them in a shadier spot for a week or so just to let them establish themselves, and then put them back into the full sun. The one that gets the most shade at the moment seems the happiest.

I ended up hardening off my tomatoes and peppers and squash for a couple of days under the deck. I put the tray out into the sun for a few hours on Sunday and when they didn't turn white and crispy, I figured they'd be ok to put into the veggie garden. I planted them, put the sprinkler on them, and then what do you know but it rained overnight. So with all that water I think they'll be ok in the sunny 29-degree weather today. Keeping my fingers madly crossed. I was also an idiot and tried to carry everything to the garden in one load, and in so doing, I managed to break the stems of three of my zucchini plants. I just planted them very deeply, we'll see what happens. I have 8 or so of them so it should be ok.

I had to buy a flat of cucumber seedlings. I know, I am ashamed to admit it, but the ones I direct-seeded were eaten by something. Only one survived and it doesn't look too hot. From six, I ended up with one, and I am mourning my losses. But the new seedlings have a bit of a head start and were at least started by the nice ladies at my local garden centre, where you can see all of the little shoots growing away in the greenhouses. I love that place, I've often thought of getting a part-time job there just for fun. Hoping perhaps that it would satisfy my garden urges and save me some cash, or at least support my plant habit. But when? I am too busy on the weekends maintaining my own yard!

At any rate, the initial work for the 2006 version of my garden is pretty much done. After this, I will need to plant beans, mulch with straw, build up the soil and mulch my shade garden, and then just mow and weed and deadhead as required.

Phew!