The first spring, and summer in a new place means a garden of surprises. Plants keep popping up all over, some are volunteers, others have just bided their time and are now starting to appear through the mulch.
I have plans for all of them, plans that involve dividing, and moving many of them to new places throughout the property in order to frugally fill up my garden. Some like the Peony just seemed to have come out of now where, I narrowly missed digging it up this spring while building a stone pathway through the front garden.
Then there was the little white daisy that kept wilting every time the sun came out, I found out it was planted on top of a cement path that the former owners had covered up, struggling in 6 inches of mulch. It’s much happier now living out in the back yard.
My goal this year is just to have something to see through the kitchen windows that overlook the backyard. There are a few temporary beds scattered under the trees, and a raised kitchen garden bed. The tomatoes are thrilled to have a sunny spot where the almost constant, and unusually wet rain hasn’t touched their leaves.
We are now growing two fairy rings of mushrooms in the lawn, I tried sprinkling them with baking soda in the rain today. So far the jury’s out on the effectiveness of this garden trick. The grass round the kitchen bed is completely unaffected by it, but the weeds have not returned… yet. Time will tell, it certainly isn’t killing the existing weeds, I guess the vinegar has to do that.
All we need is a warm sunny day to use vinegar on the weeds, we do get sun occasionally, but so far it’s a far from normal amount of rain. I am still hoping that all the mosqies will drown in this rain. Wet ‘n soggy…