The Bank of Stoneridge

 Ah, dreams.  Projects.  Good intentions.  

Weather.  Time.  Lack of ambition.

My idea to turn the leach field bank into a corn and squash bounty has hit many snags in the last few years.  Once again the weeds and grass outpaced my gumption and I was looking at a three foot tall wall of green.  I even whined to my mother the other day that I just didn't want to tackle this project.  Then I had a change of heart.

Beginning today and lasting through the next three days, we are under a dangerous heat watch.  Temperatures will climb into the 90s with heat indexes potentially reaching 104*.  I needed to get at least one project done while it was still cool.  I had just mowed all the lawn areas and was frustrated by the bank project lying fallow, and so a wild hair was born. I pulled out my trusty wheeled trimmer and my mulching lawn mower, and got to work laying waste to that wall of green.

pre-mowing

post trimming

post mowing

Yaaaaaaaassssssss!  Doesn't that look so much better?  What really floored me was how much the flowers in the pathetic wildflower meadow area really popped once that mess was gone.

I had purchased some Blue Hubbard and acorn squash plants and wanted to at least get those planted before the heat set in, so I dotted them along the bank.

Now I need to keep this momentum up, because over the next few days I should lay cardboard barriers around my squash plants and cover them with mulch to keep the grass from growing back and overwhelming them.  If I can get just the immediate areas around the plants done, covering and mulching the rest won't seem like such a chore.  It's too late to plant corn this year, but I'll be in a much better place next year to plant.

Over on the other side of the property, my cottage gardens are looking amazing.

I can't believe how much it's filled out in a year!  I'm sure I have the extreme wet spring to thank for that.  The foxglove are just amazing this year, too, and lend a real English garden feel to the beds.  I was so happy to find my pastel yarrows that I grew from seed returned, as well as the blue fescue grasses and one or two of the baptisia.  

In the vegetable beds it's absolute chaos.  I haven't been doing well keeping the weeds at bay and the sides of the garden are completely overgrown with grasses.

 The veg proper side looks a tiny bit more controlled.

In the polytunnel, the tomatoes and peppers are doing great.  I actually have a tomato on already!

 The little water feature is doing better this year with less algae growth.  I've used pond shade dye to darken the water, and have added some oxygenating plants.  I've had to cull duckweed twice, but that's the tadpole's food source, so I leave what I can.  I finally brought my little otter statue out of storage and put it where it belongs, too.

The hot gardens by the mule barn are doing well, but I lost a lot of plants this winter.  The kniphofia I planted didn't make it, and the crocosmia are sad at best.  The little peach trees are thriving, though!  And the perennial red mums came back, which is great.  The Lion King Dutch Iris I planted are blooming, and do not disappoint.  My mother will look at them and say yuck - muddy colors, but I think they're beautiful.  I need to add more plants that will give it color earlier in the year, but there aren't many May/June plants that have the red, orange, or yellow colors that I'm looking for.  I may have to move on to annuals next year for the inbetween times.  The tulipa acuminta were stunning this spring, so I'll definitely add more this autumn for next year.

 

 

 

There I go again, making more work for myself... 

May showers bring June flowers

 And still, it rains. The most astonishing part about this incredibly wet spring has been how dry the ground remains.  The wet weather has certainly pushed certain plants to show off in the most spectacular way, especially the iris.

 

I'm so happy to discover I can photograph some of my garden during the Golden Hour; my previous house was positioned perfectly to capture the beauty of my gardens as the sun waned, and I had thought I lost that magic light here.

Other perennials in bloom at the moment:

bleeding heart

columbine

catmint

ragged robin

clematis

I forget...

 

 

I'm astonished by how quickly the peony I planted by my little fence in front of the house established itself.  I really didn't expect it to bloom this year, or be quite this full!  I'm debating whether to plant another cream colored one on the other side of the gate, or a pale pink.

pale pink in the hillside garden

 Vegetables are doing well, too.  The lettuce is small, but it's growing.  The cabbage seeds have begun to push through the dirt.  Peas are growing well, and the potatoes have begun to send leaves through the soil.  My leeks are doing very well and the carrots are coming along.  I'm still moving perennials out of the hillside beds and to locations here and there.  

Finally, Nugget Watch 2025 has begun.  The old hen and an auntie hen have been hanging around the pasture for about a month now, and the other day I spotted the old hen with two nuggets!

 No sign of auntie hen, so I'm not sure if she was able to hatch any chicks yet.  Fingers crossed these two little ones are able to make it through the summer.

And once again, I'm holding my breath and allowing the boys to go on pasture.  Flea's insulin was within normal range, the lower end of normal, in fact.  I was so happy I cried.  I cried again watching him and Fargo race around the grass track yesterday.  It finally feels like I have my boys back. I can't wait to get the rest of the track done now!

hackin' back

 I'm fairly certain there is nothing quite as satisfying as clearing overgrowth. Another rainy start to our weekend, with clearing and cool, breezy weather on Sunday, which afforded me time to get back to the business of reclaiming pasture and track space. I finally managed to free the fence sections that were caught under the tangle of the fallen tree top, bittersweet, and brambles. 

 Three sections of fence are salvageable, one section is definitely headed to the scrap heap, and one I haven't quite decided if I can use it or not.

 The next steps are to measure the area to calculate how much stone dust and geotextile fabric I'll need, secure the loose fence posts, and fix the crushed fence.  If all goes well enough, I may just have a secondary dry lot in place before the end of June.  Dare I dream?

a welcomed break from the rain

 That's right.  A few months ago I was worried that we were headed into the 2025 growing season with a drought looming over us, but thanks to weeks and weeks of rain, the entire state of New Hampshire is now out of the danger zone.  It rained to the point that everything grew exponentially well.  Lawns, perennials, and most annoyingly, weeds.  I was losing any faith that I might get started on some projects, when a ray of hope finally lifted me - the young men I'd talked to about clearing the trees that had fallen on my fence last April finally showed up.  I wept, joyfully.  

I had hoped they would get here earlier in the year, before the tangle of bittersweet leafed out and made things more complicated.  On April 6th, I had sent them these photos:

 

 

 

But then it snowed, and then it rained, and it rained some more, and some more, and then it rained again, but eventually we had a dry day and they appeared like images of saints on burnt toast.  They took care of the bigger chunks of the downed pine and left me the top part to deal with, which was the most entangled in bittersweet, and they cleared all of the three smaller trees at the bottom of the pasture that had fallen.

So I was faced with this mess to clean up on my own.

 

This weekend, I hauled out my trusty wheeled trimmer and the riding mower, and started hacking back the bittersweet and overgrown mess. 

I was able to get enough cleared to open up the area I plan to develop as a second dry lot, and start on the tree top mess on the outside of the fence.

I still have a lot to go, but I'm feeling really good about what I accomplished so far.  Plus...18,000+ steps.  😉