Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Early Bird Gets the Worm, But Might Get Killed in a Late Season Frost...

The planting catalogues are here! Yea!!! Time to think about gardening again!!! I say that as another blizzard approaches...


I never thought I would be one of those people who 1) looks forward with great anticipation to the upcoming spring plantings in October; and 2) peruses seed and bulb catalogues with deep and meaningful purpose. Oh yeah, and I want a goat. Nobody saw that one coming.




Honestly, who could resist that cute face? I will have my pygmy goat one day, oh yes I will. But for now, I have The Bug.

So yes, I am very excited about Spring and have been thinking about upcoming projects. First off, the rock wall garden is complete. The only thing left to do is let it do it's thing. Oh sure, I am going to take the iris, ornamental grass* and some of the sedum out**, maybe move some stuff and add some goodies in the corner near the tree, but other than that (!), really all that needs to be done is to let the ground cover by the road cover the ground.

*OK, so here's the story with that. The iris was planted willy-nilly at the end of '08 because I received it as a late season gift and needed to get it in the ground. Now I have a better place for it, so it gets moved this year. And the ornamental grass, well I put it in the place it now resides simply to prevent erosion. Now that the ground cover has kicked in, the grass can move elsewhere as it looks a bit out of place.

**And the sedum. Sigh. My poor sedum. Oh it's OK, but it really could use some more sun. Some are doing well, like the angelique and blue spruce. But the others, the stonecrops, are just too leggy for my liking. Even though I love sedum, leggy sedum is just plain ugly. So leggy sedum in the front yard are heading to the back where they can bask in the sunlight, at least somewhere in the NE corner.

That leaves a little patch of ground by the front door in need of tendin' to! Wahoo! Another garden spot! Not sure what yet, probably has to be something that doesn't need much light. Maybe rocks. And another tiny tiny gnome.

In the backyard (yes I know we agreed that's Hubby Nugget's domain, but I ran out of places to plant, and I wore him down), I will continue the plantings around the Juniper, another azalea bush to be sure. And vinca. It seemed pretty happy there last year. Of course the beloved Garden of Sedummy Goodness. This will include rocks, and definitely lavender (mmmm). Oh yes, I'm excited. Again, not sure where it's going to go, but I need to be able to see it from inside the house.

On the west side, I'm going to plant the orphan Norton grape from the vineyard. This is mostly so I can practice pruning it. Probably would be a good idea to learn how to prune if one is going to be a grower of grapes and maker of fine wines.

And finally, as if there aren't enough projects already, I will embellish the newly finished rock wall that surrounds the fire pit/patio area with plants from Larry's House of Cheap Sedum (a local nursery that I was told about and am salivating at the thought of visiting this spring...big surprise there).

Come on spring!

All for now,

Nugget

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