The Great Melt of '26

 Hot.  So hot.  Melting.  Stuck indoors.

Guess that's a good excuse for an update.

My focused tasks lost focus with the weather.  I'm a larger lady and I don't do well in these hot, humid days of summer.  I've also kind of lost my drive.  I'm dealing with a few not so great issues with my health and one of the mules, so it makes it hard to really throw myself into the yard chores.  I did get the squash plants in the ground, so that's good.  I'd call that a focused task since I had to pull all the grass that came up through the mulch on the bank, but after bumping into a milk snake that was close to three feet long, my focus went right out the window.  I made sure he stayed on his side of the bank while I worked on mine, so the squash are a little shifted to one side of the area.  

Most of the spring sown crops have or are failing.  I've lost half the onions and shallots, and the snap peas are pretty pathetic.  The potatoes are doing great above ground.  I can only hope for the same for below.  I lost one of the six tomatoes but replaced it with a pineapple tomato variety.  I can't wait to try that in salsa.  The peppers are doing well, but I never got around to planting my corn...again.  I haven't planted any cucumbers yet, either.  I'm really slacking this year.  The hillside garden is more weeds than anything else.

The cottage gardens look pretty good despite me drowning them in soil.   I did lose a lot of plants over the winter, but some of the bulbs, like the varieties of alliums I added, are filling in empty spaces.  

The meadow, though.  Wow, is that really starting to come to!  Most people would probably identify at least a third of the plants as weeds, but I love them all. The pale purple and Bush's coneflowers are thriving, the field daisies have run rampant throughout, and my white penstemon seeded a baby that actually bloomed this year.  And it's still going like gangbusters.

 

 

 

See, not all doom and gloom.  As a bonus, I was able to meet my great granddaughter.  Her parents used wildflowers as a theme for her baby shower and in her room, and as soon as I heard that, I decided this was Charlotte's meadow.   It was fantastic to have her see her namesake garden, even if the copious amount of bees meant she couldn't really wander through it.  She managed to at least sample a small part of it.

Also, there is evolution happening in my water feature!

 

I've never seen them reach this phase in past years, so I'm pretty stoked.  Live long and prosper, little tadpoles!

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... 

A Mid-Summer's Blog Post

 In the two months since my last post the only constant has been the rain.  Last year at this time, we were rationing water like crazy.  This year it's so wet I haven't watered my gardens at all.  Everything is lush and tropical and completely out of control, or drowned and dead.  I haven't been able to work on any outdoor projects yet, but I do have a few in mind.  Especially since I now have this mini beast!

(the tractor, obviously...I parked her next to Clementine the truck to give a sense of size)

I've used it a few times to try to get the hang of it, but it's been so wet and dismal that mostly it's just sat in the garage.  

Some of the vegetables I've planted are loving all the rain and humidity, others are not.  My peppers are all stunted and I'm not hopeful they'll recover.  The tomatoes went in late and aren't hitting their stride yet.  The lettuce, greens, and radish all bolted despite (or due to) the lack of sun and heat.  The peas, however, are loaded with fat pods.  The potatoes, onions, leeks, pumpkins, and garlic seem to be loving it, too.  I planted green beans and cukes late but both are growing happily. My plans to grow the tomatoes and peppers in the little poly tunnel sort of went awry, and they were all planted out into the vegetable garden instead.

The perennials are doing fantastic, too.  Some of them have reached heights that unfortunately get them knocked down in the deluges.

I managed to do a little transplanting, too.  I moved the foxgloves out of a holding bed and to the outside of the garden fence.

I moved the fall blooming asters from a holding bed to the edge of the lower patio area.

And I moved a variety of moisture loving plants to the bog garden near the water feature.

Since I haven't had a chance to move more plants down to the edges of the pond, I let the grass grow wild to ensure the frogs have a place to get up out of the water, but still be protected.  Of course, there was only one little frog in there and it seems to have disappeared.  BUT.  Remember the frog eggs this spring?  

There are now hundreds of little tadpoles thriving in my water feature!  And one very large tadpole...which is a little strange, but I'll take it.

My plan to clear the bank and plant corn and sunflowers didn't work out, but there's still a nice meadowy quality about that area.  

I've discovered that these grasses will not be stopped.  Not even by the dreaded weed block.  

So there's a project for me - redoing the path.  😒

I managed to unbox my canopy and get that up, too.  It's been a nice dry spot for grilling, if nothing else.  I haven't bothered filling the soaking tub since it's been rather damp and raw.

The grill cover stays up because hornets have been trying to build nests in any sheltered places they can find.  One of my cushions fell forward and an enterprising wasp used the sheltered area between the back and seat cushions to start making a nest!

 

My wildflower area isn't really springing to life.  The larger plants are from last year's sowing, cosmos I've grown from seed and transplanted, or rampant weeds.

My impatiens that did survive (I had such a hard time with seed starting this year, I don't know why) are doing very well, and loving their new home in window boxes attached to the header that was meant for my deck.

Hopefully we'll have some decent weather soon, and I'll be able to do some projects I want to get done before winter.  There are stairs to reset, manure to move, paths to be rebuilt, fencing to be put up, and plants to transplant.