Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Un-weeding

May 8, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener


While I was weeding The Ambitious Border Friday and Saturday (Sunday I was simply too knackered in my back and shoulders after two days of forking and kneeling – and I’m only 33! I definitely need to shape up if I want to keep up with the garden…) I couldn’t help thinking some of the weeds were simply just too cute to throw away, like this little baby:

Okay, so that picture is a recycled one from my post on the lawn, but to be honest there were areas in The Ambitious Border that looked much the same. Before I started the weeding, my Mother-In-Law mentioned that she wouldn’t know what was weeds and what wasn’t, and to be quite honest the mess in the border didn’t give any indication of what was supposed to be there and what wasn’t, but by Saturday afternoon she could definitely see what was supposed to be there, because there was nothing else!

Anyway, back to the little blue beauty! It has a creeping, spreading habit, and then it sends up its little flower spikes “soaring” 5 inches above the ground, so I figured that a) the lawn would inevitably encroach on the clear area around the 5 New Dawn roses I planted by the two hammock trees (a blood plum and an oak) so I might as well try to control which weeds will grow there, and b) these plants have such small, shallow root systems that I can’t imagine they will compete too much with the roses for food, especially considering that they are right next to 20-foot trees.

Today I realised, much to my joy, that the little blue beauty has a name; Ajuga Reptans (“creeping lip-less” in Danish; not the most flattering name!), and it’s actually not just a weed but also a perfectly accepted ground-covering perennial that can be bought from nurseries and garden centres!

I do hope they will spread out nicely on the bare soil around the roses now that they have no competition from grass and other weeds.

So there, an upgrade from weed (although pretty) to a desirable perennial! Thank you, Google!

Posted in Ambitious Border, lawn, perennials, Roses | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

Progress Report

May 6, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener


I might not get a LOT done this weekend, but what I do get done makes a visible difference!

Another stretch of the Ambitious Border has been weeded (shouldn’t it actually be “de-weeded”?), and now I only have one meter left before I reach the end of the bed. -Then, of course, I might extend it, because the ambition is to let it follow the entire length of the hedge, but I do have to pace myself.

Between the spots where I had annuals last year and the spots where the acanthus and the globe thistles have gone AWOL, I now have enough space for most of the perennials that are currently in temporary storage beds, so I can actually start thinking about where to put each group of plants.

Next weekend I’ll be up here with the Flâneur Husband, so we can plant the border together and get the vegetable beds sown up. And maybe extend the border a little to make room for sowing some annuals?

Friday’s weeding

Saturday’s weeding

Posted in Ambitious Border, garden | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Ambitious weeding

May 5, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener


Yesterday I started on the weeding of the Ambitious Border… Oh dear; more like “the area where perennials grow in the lawn”, actually, but at least I have now cleared a section of it – and managed not to damage the plants in the process!

I only did about a third of it, though, because  a) it’s backbreaking work and b) I’m up here with my mother-in-law this weekend, and it seems unsociable to have one’s head in a flower bed while having company, doesn’t it?

Mind you; I’ll do another section today, and then perhaps the final furlong on Sunday, so when the Flâneur Husband comes up here next weekend it might actually be possible to see what’s lawn and what’s flower bed!

The peonies, bleeding hearts, astilbes and a single hosta have been liberated so far, and next up are the day lilies and goldenrods. There should be an acanthus in there somewhere, but I can’t spot it at the moment, and I’m sure my mother also planted some globe thistles when my parents visited last spring… We’ll see if I find them in the mess!

Posted in Ambitious Border, garden, spring | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

An Evening in the Garden

May 2, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener


I went up to the garden after work yesterday, simply because the weather was so spectacular (and sadly looks set to grow colder, greyer and wetter over the weekend).

Anyway, the forget-me-nots are now in full bloom and an absolute delight where they’ve been allowed to spread because I’m not mowing the lawn as close to the “woodland” area towards the road as the previous owners did. They happily compete with the grass in this rather shady area, and they turn a dull, useless area into something very pretty:

-Right next to them is a bit of omphalodes verna, which in Danish is called kærminde; “treasured memory”. Now, not only are the names quite similar in many ways, but the flowers are also very similar, so they create a little blue corner.

The past weekend I planted 30 dahlias in the Sunny Border, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s too small, but maybe it’s just because I need to get cracking with the Ambitious Border right opposite it so the Sunny Border won’t be the sole focus.

Also, I need to visualise what it will look like when all the dahlias are 1 meter tall, the Chinese anemones begin to send their delicate flowers hovering over the coarse(-ish) foliage, the outlandish shapes of the blue iris flowers exploding over the grass-like spikes , and of course the red L.D. Braithwaite roses that my parents bought the Flâneur Husband for his birthday. We’re some time away from this scenario, but these are all plants I know, so I know what each will end up looking like, and together they will be spectacular.

-And of course the bed is backed by perennial sweet peas, honeysuckle and a purple clematis surrounded by blueish-purple geraniums at it’s feet.

Come summer, this will be stunning, for sure.

Another stunner – albeit more in personality than in looks – is this little guy:

It’s the starling who has taken a shine to one of our nesting boxes. Now, of course I love any bird that will nest in our garden, but I also love how this little guy goes about finding a mate. When you see ducks mating, more often that not it seems more like a rape than the basis of a family, but this little guy spends most of his time in the tree where the nesting box is located, flapping his wings, pushing out his chest and calling out to the entire neighbourhood “Here I am, where are you? I have a good home for us and our offspring!”

And then the sun began setting, I went to bed and this morning I left very early to get to work on time, but it was definitely worth it!

Mind you, Copenhagen is not a bad place on a sunny spring evening:

Posted in City Life, dahlias, garden, iris, Roses, spring, Sunny Border | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Garden Sadness…

May 1, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener


On Sunday April 28th at 8 o’clock in the evening I got the lawn (okay, most of it) mowed, so I did manage to get it done within April!

Now, I agree that it does look a bit tidier now than with the 10″ grass jungle, but it also looks so much less interesting, because all the small flowers that had come out all over the lawn have now been cut down.

Here are a few examples:

I also suspect that the mowed lawn will be much less interesting to the wood pigeons and the pheasant and all the other birds that have taken to strutting their stuff on the lawn while foraging, not to mention the smaller animals like insects and the like.

*sigh*

A lawn is a desert painted green, but there’s no helping it; it must be mown, though I probably will never get around to doing it on a fortnightly basis. Still, little by little I’m carving out sections of lawn and turning them into flower beds that will allow for more diversity both of plant and animal life. And I promise: I will NEVER weed the lawn!  Just look at the above beauties; I can’t imagine why some people are less than thrilled to have such flowers growing in-between the grass!

 

(I only got around to mowing perhaps half of the lawn; the area in front of the covered terrace and the area from the drive to the front door. The rest will be done the coming weekend when I have a three-day weekend up in the summer house with my mother-in-law in tow. I actually look forward to having some company up there that isn’t classified as “wildlife”. Also, when my mother-in-law gets bored, she starts cleaning or cooking… Either is welcome!)

Posted in lawn, spring | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

I’m Never Lonely in the Garden

April 29, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener


This morning I saw one of these in the wood pile on the covered terrace:

Picture from Wikimedia Commons

Isn’t it cute?

I was a bit nervous about it being a house mouse, because that’s not really what you want in your garden – or house! – but extensive comparisons of online pictures reveals it to be a bank vole, which is much less worrying.

Sure, they might go for bulbs and so on, but you can’t eliminate nature so you might as well enjoy it, and either way this is a protected species in Denmark, so we just have to accept that from time to time we might loose a tulip bulb or two.

(It does mean, though, that we really need to go around the house and ensure the foundation’s ventilation holes are covered with small grills, so they stay in the garden rather than under the house. They might not be interested in coming inside the house, but we obviously don’t want them under the house, either.)

This little fellow brings us up to three protected species of small mammals in our garden – that I’m aware of – with the shrew and the bats, and there’s something oddly pleasant about this. I’m glad to share the garden with most animals (except slugs), but I’m thrilled when I spot a protected species that seems to find that our garden is a good place to live. It must mean I’m doing something right, even though (or exactly because?) the compost pile needs tidying-up and the lawn needs mowing…

Posted in garden, Wildlife | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments »

Travelling with plants…

April 28, 2012 by Flâneur Gardener


Yesterday after work I went home and started packing up for a weekend in the garden, and here’s mu luggage, photographed after 1 bus and 2 train rides (with the final bus ride to go):

  • 1 fuchsia – purchased in pot
  • 5  dahlias grown from tubers
  • 24 dahlias grown from seed
  • 2 dahlias grown from cuttings
  • 7 tomatoes grown from seed
  • 25 sweet peas grown from seed
  • 2 lavenders – purchased in pots
  • 20 or so gladiolus corms
  • 2 dahlia tubers

-So you know; just your average luggage when going on public transport!

Good thing nobody stared at me during the journey. No sirree, nobody at all… Except, of course, everybody who saw me logging around more plants than you find on your average well-planted balcony!

Today I’m planting out the dahlias in the Sunny Border; the forecast is for fairly mild nights during the next week, so I hope they will survive the change…  The Sunny Border will have no shortage of plants, that much is sure, especially if I sow a second batch so I have some spares to fill in any gaps. (Gardeners are like the royals; we should always have “an heir and a spare”, just in case… What with weather and wildlife doing as they please, we might as well be prepared!)

The fuchsia will go in a pot in the courtyard. I have no idea if it will be hardy enough for the Danish winters, so I might have to bring it inside when the frost begins, and that’s just simpler with a pot. (Plus the courtyard definitely needs some colour, and fuchsia is good at that.)

I’ve got doubts about the tomatoes; last year I grew them in a self-watering Styrofoam box, and that was actually my intention again this year, but I’m beginning to wonder whether to just plunk them in pots in the courtyard instead, or even in one of the vegetable beds (though I probably won’t do that, as space is limited there). We’ll see what happens!

Posted in garden, spring, Sunny Border, vegetable garden, window gardening | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 31 other followers