(as I try not to kill my "planned community" mandated, water-wasting, nosy-neighbor-necessitated non-native lawn - promoted by Zappatero)
 Good morning, and you never know what you might find in the garden. Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Here in Denver, if it's not one thing, it's another. We did leave behind the abnormal cloud-covered, cool temperatures of early June... and moved straight into an early arrival of our typical summer monsoon pattern. We've had thunderstorms every afternoon, with some major rain dumps: on Tuesday the official measurement was 1.64". But what makes this a "typical" pattern, unlike earlier in the month, is that now we are getting sun before and after the rain.
And even though we are getting sun, it's still cooler than usual. We've yet to get top 90° this June (we had one 90° day in mid-May). And our precipitation is very high: we'll likely break the record for June; just .1" to go, with more storms predicted.
Pictured is partridge feather, tanacetum densum amanii.
In Orange |
 Our whacked-out weather year has caused unusual bloom times for a lot of plants. The jackmanii clematis - having had its initial ultra-early spring growth frozen off - has just finally come into full flower. And I've been searching for shoots from the passion flower vines, wondering if, perhaps, they didn't make it through the winter. Yesterday I saw what I think might be the first signs of growth - but I'm afraid that portends for very late flowering. Last year it was early September before I had passion flower blossoms. This year... well, who knows. Perhaps they won't bloom at all. This fall I want to try cutting the stems back to a foot or so in length, then putting them inside filled wall-o-waters. Perhaps that will keep them warm enough to jump-start spring growth and, perhaps, maybe that will enable me to get passion flowers by August, instead of in September.
Of course the bindweed hasn't been deterred by the cool temperatures and rain. I've dug yards of deep roots out in the last couple of weeks - to the great amusement, and bemusement, of the neighborhood. It's rather like an archeological dig: I see the first, tiny sprouts of root-generated growth, and start digging next too it, looking for signs of other, adjacent roots, eventually resorting to a hand-trowel to enable me to dig deep, narrow holes down as far as I can reach. There have been a few places where there have been whole complexes of roots, while only a couple of sprouts have shown at the top. On Wednesday I thought I had it all... but when I checked yesterday afternoon, I saw yet another spot where there's likely a large batch of roots waaayyyy down deep.
 And on Monday morning, as I headed out to work in the wee small hours, I found of a hell of a big surprise in the larger of the new planter boxes: a body. No, it wasn't dead, just dead to the world. An extremely inebriated gentleman apparently passed out during the night right on top of some of my new plants. The Mister and I determined he was still alive - we could see him breathing, even if he didn't respond at all to our calling out to him (as reformed drunkards we knew that strange drunks are like strange dogs: they can be dangerous when touched). But, as he didn't even flinch when I started my car a few yards from his head, we deemed it prudent to get him some professional assistance, and called for the Denver Cares wagon.
He was not happy about being picked up. Which is fair - I was not happy that he had smashed an agastache all to hell and back.
The agastache is recovering; I hope the same is true of our unexpected, uninvited, inebriated guest.
Beyond bindweed excavation, the big accomplishment of the week was cleaning out the shed. It had gotten so bad I could barely wedge our tiny lawnmower in and out, let alone find room to put anything else in there. So I sorted, disposed of, stacked, and organized the shed. Now Elder Son can even get his bike in and out without knocking over anything!
This weekend there will be more weeding, and maybe I'll actually get the rest of the glads and dahlias in the ground (yes, I know... I've been trying to plant them for several weeks, but other things (cough bindweed cough) have distracted me.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?
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