Showing posts with label azaleas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label azaleas. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Home is Where Your Sticks Are...


Dear Rayna is back home with us. She had gone back to her daddy, but due to some technical difficulties, she couldn't stay. DD took her, but that wasn't working out either and so DH decided we'd rather have her back than see her go live with strangers.


 


She's settled back in quite nicely and is enjoying having a yard and sticks to chew up once again.

In other news, my azaleas have started blooming.



Happy Spring!


Monday, April 21, 2014

Finally!


There are few pleasures I enjoy more than the smell of my bedclothes after they've been washed and line-dried. Now that spring is here and I had a good weather day yesterday, I was able to hang my sheets, blanket, and bedspread outside to dry.



And last night when I snuggled into bed...smelled the fabric softener and fresh air...ah, heavenly!

At the March meeting of my writers group, I was presented a hanging planter for my work on the contest I coordinated (and am still coordinating). I joked that it was something else I could kill, but here we are a month later and the little guy is hanging in there--literally and figuratively--and finally looks as if I'm going to get some blooms.



The initial burst of azalea blooms are wilting and falling off, but the Sweet Williams are now starting to open up.



Hope you had a super weekend~



Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Running behind today, so this is a quick and easy post...


The evolution of my azalea bush. :)

 March 20th

 April 3rd

 April 10th

April 11th

According to a friend of mine, azaleas are hard to grow. My other one died and since the pair of them had been planted to flank my Chinese wisteria and I no longer had two...I moved this one to the pot and the corner of my patio. I seems to like it there, so I'm not messing with it.


Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Can you believe it...?


Remember last week, I posted about the horrible state of my backyard? And I lamented the condition of both the Chinese wisteria and the azalea??

Well, looky looky here! New growth on the wisteria and blooms on the azalea. I can't tell you how happy that made me.





The sweet William is spreading and I see a ton of buds on it as well.


Yeah, yeah, I need to clean out the leaves...this weekend, I think.


The leaves on the trees are shooting out as well and they'll providing shade in no time.




And just because...




Friday, March 21, 2014

Backyard Update


It's been quite some time since I've rambled on about my backyard.

Of course, it's been way too cold to even go out there, so it's really no surprise is it?

But since yesterday was the official first day of spring, I thought it might be, if not fun, then interesting to see the pitiful state of my yard at the end of winter...

Without further ado...

The grass itself is in need of a good mow as well as several weed treatments. I'm going to have to research green methods, and I have a writing group mate who is the queen of green around these parts. She organizes a whole three day green event every year!

 This is the Chinese wisteria-- It looks completely dead, I know, but I'm pretty sure the main stem is still alive. I hope it's still alive. I'll have to inspect the neighbor's bush and see if she has anything on hers yet. Though I'll probably have to prune some of the for-sure dead vines.

The one azalea seems to have survived the winter, which included two or three freezes. I'm amazed. I really am.

My random tree treatment is a bit weedy there on the left, but easily cleared out. I want to get some sort of edging to put around the mulch/rock placement to keep the mulch contained and hopefully the weeds out. The squirrels really loved the mulch pit. I caught them napping and digging and enjoying it on several occasions.

Stevie from last September!


The flowerbed is over run with dead leaves and obviously needs a good cleaning out. I can only see the Sweet William. I'm not sure the status of everything else.

Remember my large frozen bush?


This is all that remains...

The brush pile there on the right is a lot bigger now, though. And there's a dump run in my very near future.

And last but not least and the most exciting--my trees are leaving!

I can't remember the name of the above tree...

 Above and below is my oak...

And the one that dropped the pokey balls is dead. No more pokey balls.



So there you have it...and I have my work cut out for me. But I'm looking forward to spending time outside, enjoying the warmer weather and my backyard despite it's sorry condition.



Monday, September 9, 2013

Catching up of a different sort...


No, I still haven't gotten downright sick, though yesterday I woke up with a headache. And then cleaning products hindered my ability to completely get rid of it. So I had to stop cleaning!

I realized as I was downloading pictures from this week's football game is that I've taken all kinds of pictures to share here on the blog, but that I haven't actually done so. So today and maybe Wednesday and maybe even Friday, depending on how many pictures there are, I'm gonna do just that.

So let's get started, shall we...


Three weeks or so ago, we had a storm system move in and it poured down rain. Even at seventeen and a half, Sonshine still likes to play in the rain. Note the level of the water in the gutter--up to Sonshine's ankles. Close to four inches... And though it's harder to tell, the water almost completely covered the street from one side to the other.


One of my azaleas finally bit the big one. So I dug them both up and replanted the surviving one into a large pot and left it on my patio. I think it likes it better--more shade during the course of the day. It's still alive as of this morning, at any rate. :)



And one more random picture...




Handsome, the huge tree lizard, hung out on the patio one day.

So what's going on with you??


Friday, August 9, 2013

Friday Farm Report


Okay, so I don't have a farm. But it's been a while since I mentioned my yard. I've been doing a lot of weeding lately. Unfortunately, there are sooooo many weeds, it's hard to tell that I am pulling anything, until I started in on this patch. This is after day one:



And this is after day two:



I have many many more patches to go...but at ten to thirty minutes a day I'm actually doing pretty well. I might have them all pulled by next spring. Then I can start on the dandelions.

The Chinese wisteria is growing like a weed. It likes the heat apparently. The azaleas, on the other hand, aren't doing very well at all. I've added watering cycles so the timer, but I don't know if they're gonna make it.

Wisteria...


Azalea...


My mini-roses are blooming again too...that's a three-tiered planter. The yellow are on the bottom, the pink on the top. The middle one is taking a break I guess.



Last but not least, my corner flower bed. The plants themselves are green and growing, but no blooms for a while. One of the Sweet Williams just blossomed, but that's the only one.


Are you a green thumb?

PS--Sorry for the various picture qualities. Some were taken in the morning, others in the evening, so the light variations differ....


Wednesday, April 17, 2013

My back yard...


For the last month, I've been going like gangbusters on the weekends to get my back yard looking nice. Nice being a relative term, of course. I should probably say NICER. And I'm getting there. I've decapitated hundreds of dandelions, picked up petrified dog poop, and trimmed trees. I've even created flower beds after eleven years of living here.

Last weekend I planted shrubs! It was back breaking work--the soil is either full of clay, which isn't too bad to till, or just plain hard and dry and filled with rocks. The section next to the house where I planted my new shrubberies also had huge dried up dollops of cement from when they built the house! Ugh. Needless to say, those bad boys had to be dug out by hand. The dirt had to be sifted and mixed with garden soil and, well, you get the drift.

But with the help of DD and Sonshine, I finally got my Chinese wisteria and pair of azaleas planted.

BEFORE:

Dry, hard-packed dirt filled with rocks and cement droppings from the foundation.

DURING:

DH watches while DD mixes the native soil (dirt!) with store bought garden soil.
The wisteria is in the ground, but the azaleas wait in their plastic containers to the right.

Sonshine adding the native soil (dirt!) to yet another batch of the native/store-bought soil mixture. You can see everything's in the ground. We're just trying to get enough soil on top of the plants to bring it level with the bricks on the house. We didn't quite make it, even with the cedar mulch, but close enough. I'll add more when I add more plants.

AFTER:

They don't look like much yet, but hopefully in a year or two they'll have filled out quite nicely.

And I'm pooped, but still have a few things to do in the yard and along the stretch of wall on either side of the azaleas, but these things (tilling, hauling the dirt, mixing the dirt, planting the plants) take a surprising amount of time and effort, so I'm pacing myself.

Next up on the TO DO list for the back yard: my bird feeder bed and killing the weeds in the part of the yard that actually has grass still growing!

Any plans for your yard??