Spring Garden

One benefit of having had a strangely warm spring was that everything had grown in a month early and we've had the opportunity to really enjoy it before the mosquitoes arrive.

As beautiful as they can be, gardens are very hard work.  My climbing roses are blooming now, but what you can't see is that the arbor needs to be replaced.  The bed on the right has irises and lilies and needs to be dug up completely since they are not blooming well anymore.  And, this is but a tiny area in my yard.

Geoff Hamilton rose is in bloom.  This rose is so pretty, but it's so hard to control the blackspot on it.

Abraham Darby ...

On the bright side, the hostas off my patio are looking better than ever and there's little work involved here this year.

For Mother's Day last year, I got 2 oak-leaf hydrangeas. They didn't bloom last year since they were newly planted, but this one is starting to bloom.  (The other needs to be transplated to a sunnier location.)  The brown spots on it worried me, but apparently, it's common and I think all I need to do is remove the affected leaves and it should be ok.

We also added a veggie garden that I'm really excited about.  I've had 3 homes but I've never had the best veggie garden because my yard has always been shaded.  After seeing neighbors use their front yards for veggie gardens we decided to do the same.  I think it's pretty concealed from the street by the forsythia and tree on the right.  My wonderful husband did all the hard labor removing the sod and adding soil for planting. 

I've never planted potatoes before and decided to give it a try.  Of course, I planted them wrong!  They should be planted in a trough and covered as they grow.  I guess the potatoes grow up along the plant but care must be taken not to expose the potatoes to light or they will turn green (and poisonous!).  Since we'll have to add soil several times while they grow, we're going to build a frame around them.

I dedicated our old veggie garden location to herbs.  You can see tomatoes to the right that seeded from last year's plants.  I removed quite a few, but didn't have the heart to pull them all out.  We're going to have a lot of tomatoes.  Sauce, anyone?

I have some organizing under way inside but with so much to do outside and with perfect weather forecast, I think I may spend the day in the garden. 

Happy Thursday! 

Edit:  I was featured on Hometalk for my Shed Makeover.  It's been fun perusing all the projects there.  Take a look!