New garden pics

THank you! I hope I am done. My friend Cindy and I went on a save the wild flower mission again yesterday and I bit off way more than I can chew getting in and out. The area is for sale for housing so what we dug up, I replanted in my woods as close to the same kind of setting as I found them. THat is how the wild purple phlox and the flag iris came here. They were digging that up and it is now a parking lot. I didn't want that to happen to where we were. So much that is so pretty and such a real part of Missouri soon to become yet more urban sprawl. I have been working a little bit each day on the area of woods directly behind me. Taking out the bad, and making room for the native. I can't change anything about anything anywhere else, but maybe at least this little bit can be restored. The apt buildings when they were built just dumped that hard pan all the way down the hill. My guess is that would be about 1970 considering how ugly these places are. Nothing in this section of woods grows as it should be, all scrub trees. So have nipped out the honey locust to make room for the few oak and walnut seedlings I see and so on. I did put one bit of sweet William on the edge by my attempt at the topiary deer. I will say honey suckle really does clean up and look a billion times better when severly trimmed. The rest I cut out. Along with that horrible woody vine.

Wish this was in my yard. IF they dig up this area we may have to rescue it somehow too. I don't think I could bear for it to be run over an piled up.

Any guesses on how old this tree was? I think it was a sycamore but I never ever saw one THIS big.

AT least that area is safe because anything they would try to put there will sink or swamp.

I made these for this friend and her friend. Wish they were in my garden, they looked really good potted up. I can attest to the fact that they survived one inch hail. Everything was outside and Hyia an I were sitting in the truck unable to get out. I thought All that work, will all be destroyed, but not a chip or a crack.

I don't think I could have anything like that here because it would most likely be stolen. Ah well. I will see Cindy's when I visit her garden. She has the tall one. I thought it funny when I took them in to Red Star to be fired because if I had to hit the brakes hard, heads really would roll.

A little of this has helped things get to growing too..mostly my heart, but you know what I mean. I think all flowers love baby laughter. Good that I get to be here for at least one more spring. I would like her to be old enough to remember what Nana's garden was all about.

Wow, that came out great; what a lot of work went into making that. Aww....fun on a swing!

I got a closer look at that big tree today and it is not a sycamore, it has to be an oak. IT must have been something in it's day.

My friend brought me columbine, trillium. and mint julep today. I have a very strong mint on the other side of the building to ward away ants and am moving it cutting by cutting until it can have the whole wall.

Everything that was transplanted into the woods, the plants that should be there but are not, didn't even blink at the move so I am glad.


Victor says Sweet William smells like heaven. He went over and his tail started wagging. He acted surprised. That wasn't there before.

I and my friend did some wildflower rescue in a new building site. So sweet William has come to live with my deer. Just for fun I planted a wee bit of lettuce there too

A few of the un chosen have decided to live in my garden which is a o k with me.

second year bed, half native, the rest either seed, or starts from friends, is well on it's way. I didn't know how much would change with the privacy fence gone, but there seems to be no complaints.

Now to get going on the community garden spot we are sharing with a friend at the Ymca. Doing a little experimenting with different ways to grow tomatoes including the bucket with drilled holes and compost idea. This is suppose to be Hyia's project that we are doing together. A lady we share the spot with wondered about my big limb. It now has a wren gourd on it. And soon I hope a hanging mason wasp nest. I watched one of those suck down a little green worm like it was a slurpee. Leaving behind only a baggie smear of skin. Yes I want those at work I do.

Hoping build it and they will come. This fall it might be a scarecrow. Besides it won't look like a big ol limb with tomatoes all around.

In the right spots with the right amount of room. My brother says he cannot get his plants to mass. I have the opposite. I think they worked it out without me.

There is no place left to plant anything. I keep going out and thinking "oh I'm done" Yay
Pepper poses the Just getting rolling pic.

Today the Mother in the apt next to me had salad from my garden with her children. one a teenager, one is 10. They brought out their lizard and he had some lettuce too. They said it was good and I am glad. We watched butterflies and it smelled like heaven with the iris, the wild phlox, the honey locust and honey suckle coming from the edge of the woods. It had just stopped raining. You could not ask for better weather.

I covered the sedum head sculpture because I was afraid of hail but it didn't come. They made it through one hail storm of an inch for the most part without a chip, but I still don't want to chance it. I am growing fond of it

My garden is Brice approved. He declared the lettuce corner his favorite spot.

silly ol owl has yet another friend.

humble, elegant and apparently very yummy to my friend's rooster.

the rose is from my mother's bush. This rose started as a cut flower given to her by a grand daughter. The rose rooted in the vase so was planted outside where it grew for years. Last year it was over abbundant and i wondered if it was in trouble because i have a theory that a plant does that when it knows it is going to die. So i cut off one branch from the back, that was in shade. It had at least a dozen more. I took that branch and cut it into 4 pieces, which grew three rose bushes. I gave two to my brother and kept one for myself. Now i will tkae one branch from this one and try to start it and put it back in my Mother's yard where it started from.

Those strawberries look awesome! We have a really small patch and we've gotten... 4 or 5 so far but there are a ton more on it that are ripening fast! : )

THank you : ) THey might survive if this rain ever stops.

WE have an epic hatch of cicadas today. Just about every leaf has either a shell or an insect on it. I wondered what it was that squirrel was eating sitting on my topiary deer. Also the birds hadn't touched their cup of seed this morning and have been singing their brains out. Now I know why. FEAST! They must be super yummy.

Do you think stone baby's head is itchy?

so pretty at least to me

The other creature that seems to be having a boom is snails. I have never seen so many on the branches and trunks of trees. I think they have abandoned the mud below as well. 3 inches more rain last night on top of day after day of it. Enough is enough, our river will flood soon if it doesn't hold back.

I should have planted mushrooms. Saw an instructional video on how to culture morels the other day. Food for thought, seriously.

yin and yang

I just love roses; yours are lovely.

I never tire of cardinals or skinks. Always pleased to see their little slug eating selves. I don't know if it is my imagination or not, but they seem to know me and not dart away when I am close by. Probably my imagination. We had a garter snake up here for awhile and I was afraid he might have dented my skink poplution for I didn't see any for days, but all is fine in skink land. I watch them run from the lettuce patch to the strawberry patch and that makes me happy.

I have a clover that has a nice arrowhead white center. I thought it would be fun to see if I could checkerboard. Even If not, this one can spread to all it's little heart's content. I think a yard of four leaf clovers works for me.

Hyia's rose bush

tomatoes have tomatoes on them, and the wren house has wrens in it.
Busy green worm eating wrens are good to have.

THe morning glory from Japan that is suppose to be heirloom. THe flowers are smaller than I had hoped for, and this is blooming way early for a morning glory so shrugs. I hope there is more to this than this. Pretty, all the same.