In the Back Yard

I still have some flowers in the back. I don't notice them all that much any more since Sam no longer goes outside. I'd love to let him go out but his tummy isn't strong enough to survive all the grass he eats and vet visits can get expensive. About all I do now is mow the grass and spray to kill the weeds.

However, some of the plants have decided to soldier on without me and bloom. Here are a few pictures of the gladiolas in the back yard.

Growing Around the House

Spring has finally arrived. Well at least the flowers for spring have arrived. It still is getting fairly cold at night. But my roses are starting to come out. With any luck and some good weather I should have the yellow roses blooming until December.



















































































Here are two of my flower boxes. I went out and got geraniums for them. They are the only flowers I plan to buy this summer.













Here are the other two of the flower boxes on the front porch. In the far ones are some zinnas I planted. In the box at the bottom is another snap dragon that just decided to grow all on its own. I think it is left over from last year.
























Here are the seeds I planted a few weeks back. I figure that sometime in November they might be big enough to actually produce flowers. Note to self next year plant a whole hell of a lot earlier in the year.




















This is the snap dragon that sprouted up last summer. It survived the very cold weather of winter to emerge and prosper for this year.






















This last picture is of the plants on my back steps. This is Sansevieria. All 19 of these potted plants are descended from one plant. I got the original plant from Jennifer's parents. It's when I had an operation on my lung in 1983. It was part of a planter that you would send to someone who was in the hospital. All these years later I still have it.

Setting up the Garden

I decided this year not to buy a whole lot of flowers. I started adding up the cost and thought I could use the money in a better way say paying off my Bank of America credit card.

I did buy a couple of geraniums for one of the front flower boxes and will probably buy two more for another one of the boxes. I planted some zinnias in another of the boxes. In the last one it looks like one of the snap dragons survived from last year. I'm letting it grow and I'll see what happens.

Back to the seeds idea. I probably should have started this like a month ago but with all the cold weather we had I never thought all that much about it. I also hadn't definitively decided that I was going to plant seeds. I got some jiffy pots and seeds. Snap dragons, petunias and something else. Can't remember what it is. Last night I get ready to plant them. I open up the packages of seeds and all three of them the seeds are tiny. I mean like tiny tiny; like grains of sands tiny. Maybe not even that big. I plant five jiffy pots of each type of the seed. I still have a lot of seeds left over. It occurred to me that once the first batch get going I could plant some more.

They probably won't be ready to plant outside for at least a month if not longer. In the mean time I'll get the space where they are going to go ready. Means I'll have to dig up a space or at least clear out the area where I planted from last year. That of course means less area for grass to grow which is always a good thing in my book.

So I've taken my first tentative steps to getting the garden going.

Front Flowers Flourish

The roses in front continue to bloom out of control.

The yellow rose "bush" (I put it in quotes because it's more like a rose tree) has so many blossoms it is touching the ground. It will continue to bloom for the rest of the year. In fact I've had blossoms as late as December. The red bush will only have this one group of flowers and then just have leaves for the rest of the year.

I've put plants in all of my flower boxes. I've decided to cut back this year. Usually I put three flowers in each of the boxes. By the end of the season they are crowding each other out. This year there are only two per box. I got a couple more Geraniums for the front garden. I'm going to fill that in slowly in the next couple of weeks. I still have to dig up the Hyacinth bulbs. I've got about a third of them done. I was going to due more but I had a pesky bug that would not leave me alone so I gave up for the day.

The Rose Bushes Flourish

I guess there was a great deal of rain while I was away. I know there's been a couple of huge down pours since I've been back.

The front rose bushes are just going crazy. The yellow one is more like a rose tree then an bush. I need to cut it back rather substantially. From the rain and all the flowers it has been pretty well flattened to the ground. Once this group of flowers is gone I plan to do some major surgery.

The Little Flower that Could

This is the little flower that could.

This petunia is left over from last year. See my post about them going strong from last November. I was weeding out the area a couple of days ago. Actually it was on the day the air conditioning people decided not to show up. I noticed a flower. It took me a moment to realize just where it had come from. I pulled out the weeds around it and gave it some water.

I'd decided this year not to plant anything in back. But it looks like I will have flowers after all. It will be interesting to see how well it does. I might just plant one more so it has some company.

The Garden is still going

The garden in back continues to grow and grow as you can tell from the pictures. The weather, however, has now turned rather cold. I don't think they flowers will last much longer. I'm going to let the flowers in back go until the cold weather does them in. The ones in front are going to have to be uprooted next weekend so I can't plant my bulbs.

Hot Hot Hot

That’s what it’s been like in Washington lately. Sunday the high was 92 degrees. It is of course also very humid. To get an idea of how hot it is for the first week in October the low on Monday was above the average high for the day. All of this hot weather and so little rain has finally begun to kill off the petunias I have in my flower boxes on the front porch. It doesn’t seem to make any difference how much I water them.

However, the flowers in the back yard are another story. I have been very attentive and watering often and the flowers in the back are blooming like crazy. Here are a a couple of pictures:






In the next couple of days a cold front will be coming through and it should feel much more like fall.

The garden becomes a jungle

Because Sam's been house bound these past few weeks, I'm not out in the back all that much. The garden has been neglected somewhat. It has sort of taken over the back yard. One good thing is that the flowers are choking out the weeds not the other way around.

The garden grows

Pictures from the back garden. This is the one lone gladiola that I planted this year. Well to be exact I found the bulb in the ground when I was planting other things and moved it to this spot. Last year I had about half a dozen gladiolas (or is it gladioli) and I guess because it was so wet they really didn't do very well. This one this year is just great.

Garden progress

I planted my last plant a few weeks ago. At least that is the promise that I've made to myself. Although one of the potted plants on the front step looks like it might not be much longer for this world so that might change.

I've started to mulch my front yard. I bought four bags of the stuff yesterday. I have maybe half of the yard done. I got pine bark. I kept the bags in the trunk. I wasn't going to lay it out in the morning because it was too hot yesterday. I did it in the evening. Boy did my car smell. I'm assuming the smell will still be there today when I go off and do camcorder shopping.

I'm glad I did this. There was just enough lawn that you had to take care of it and that's been a pain. The push mower I bought I tried to adjust the level of where it cut the grass. I followed the instructions to lower the blades. But I think English was like a third or fourth language for the people who wrote the instructions. Now after I stop pushing the mower the blades just spin. So I've been using my wed whacker but that really doesn't work all that well. So this is working out really well. It will also let me plant more flowers in the front.

The back garden

I finished up the back garden this weekend. At least I finished planting the flowers. There are still some odds and ends that have to get done. I have to throw out the dirt I dug up from the front yard. Mostly it was clumps of clay. Also I need to do a little more mulching and then I should be done unless of course I'm not which I find is often the way with gardening.




Sam out enjoying the morning.


Sam contemplates a daring escape. But then thinks better of it.

This is the exact moment when two huge dogs round the corner into the alley. They are taking their owner for a walk which is the correct way to describe it. The guy really has a hard time keeping the dogs in control. If I'm out walking in the morning and happen to see them coming down the side walk on my side, I always cross to the other side of the street.


Sam checks to see if the coast is clear.

Incredible Roses

This is the rose bush in my front yard. It has rarely been this over loaded with flowers. I have to say it is the most I've ever seen in a spring