Happy Holidays!

The sun is shining, and the house is warm. The cookies are ready for decorating. Our household is healthy. I feel lucky. What more can a person ask for during a pandemic, on a day with bitter wind chills, and after a blizzard? It also helps that there's colorful frosting just waiting for us. I wish you a Merry Christmas. And happy holidays. And happy new year. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! And so I begin my quest to keep my hibiscus alive during the winter. This is the last bloom for a while. Of course, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without the pie...the making-of photo is better than the pie photo (pumpkin and apple with crumb topping)...Not insta worthy but tasty.

Fall in Minnesota

One nice thing about fall? I'm gathering lots of mulch for my garden. The Minnesota craziness is snow. Our area broke a record with October snowfall of over 7 inches! Now it is completely melted, though for a while it looked like it was here to stay. We even hauled out the snow blower to clear the driveway. This week I'll be working outside in 60+ F temperatures, finishing leaf removal, clearing dead annuals, and mulching perennials. 

I adhered to health department guidelines for Halloween. This is a table set up with bags of candy. The pieces of wood are to hold the candy and the table down because it's so windy. I'm not a great decorator, but I enjoyed my spooky eyes peering out from a spider web. 

First Snowfall

Yes, the first snow of the season has arrived. It's melting...slowly. 

Here's the backyard, and you can see the garden beds (post on that process coming soon). And a bonus fall photo from the front yard below

Beautiful October

October has been beautiful so far, from frosty and foggy mornings to crisp, clean blue skies. It has been a bit dry, so I have been watering my new plantings regularly, estimating at least an inch of water a week. The above photo is my back yard. The two below are the park nearby. 

Early Frost

The delicate frost looks pretty on this wild lupine, but I know how destructive it can be. I covered my lettuces and greens, and I'm hoping some plants survived enough to look good for the next month.

August Garden Update

A few weeks ago a strong thunderstorm knocked over all my tomato plants, mostly cherry tomatoes with four Roma type and one Cherokee Purple. They've been doing well. I have way too many cherry tomatoes because I didn't have the heart to compost all the extra plants that I started indoors. I've been cooking them into to sauce to freeze. They take longer to cook down because of all the juices, but they make a tasty sauce. Below is a ripe sweet pepper that I harvested yesterday. This spot has a lot more sun than my old place, so I was super happy to get this fully ripened pepper. I'm rationing it over two days to make it last. Next year I will plant more peppers...and fewer cherry tomatoes.

The fall greens are doing well..endive, assorted lettuces, and Swiss chard. The long dried stems are dill that I harvested and laid down between the rows to keep the rabbits out. Ha! I saw a rabbit nibbling on one, so I added the netting, which has worked well. Cooler weather is in the forecast, so I'm looking forward to getting some "heavy lifting" done this weekend.

Heat and Humidity

Heavy fog during my morning walk in the park shows how humid it is today. I don't do well with this level of heat and humidity, but the hibiscus loves it. (below)  I bought this hibiscus on clearance last summer in July, and it's doing well in spite of me. 

Below is my cardboard contraption to protect my fall crop of greens from this heat. The netting is to keep the rabbits away. I'll have more photos of the completed vegetable garden once I have the last garden bed ready, hopefully in early September. 

Bee on a bee lawn

A rusty patched bumble bee enjoys the clover in my bee lawn. I admit I'm guessing on the identification, and it's hard to tell in this video. In any case, a pollinator is happy, and that makes me happy.  

Cutting back annuals

Should you cut back annuals? It depends on the plant. If it's getting "leggy" (a term that means the stems are long and floppy) or if it's stopped blossoming, then it can be good idea.

Above is the before photo. See how the center is green and the flowers are on the end of the stems? The stems were long, too. The plant is healthy now, but we're experiencing humid weather, so I thought I could give that plant some air circulation, too. The photo below is "after. I lost some flowers, but I cut back to where there was new growth, meaning I'll have more flowers soon. I also trimmed off some seed heads.

Below is what I removed. It's about 1/4 of the plants. I could have pruned more viciously, but I find I can't do it. Even a little bit helps. P. S. Happy Fourth of July!

Garden update

Bunnies don't eat marigolds. Thank goodness! These are Strawberry Blond marigolds from Burpee. However, bunnies will eat zinnia seedlings...every single zinnia seedling. The photo below is where there are supposed to be lovely, blooming zinnias. There may be one straggler in the upper left corner, but I'm guessing that'll get munched eventually. Even with cayenne pepper and an over-the-counter repellent, the rabbits have been ruthless, probably because there are so many of them and it's been so dry until recently. 

I rescued some lettuce by raising it up with a makeshift cage around it. 

The next three photos are basil, which bunnies seem to avoid. I'll have tomatoes and basil for eating, which makes me happy. Next year...fencing!

Trying to save a lilac

At the center is my bee and butterfly house, a gift from my mother. The lilac is blooming, and the back is almost completely dead. I've trimmed all the dead branches, removing some part completely and cutting back to live wood in others. This is a lot of dead wood (below). 

Below is the "after." I may trim a little more for shaping. It may not bloom next year, but I'm hopeful that it will recover.

Bunny damage

It's a bunny buffet! Bunnies are enjoying my garden. My neighbors tell me that this year there are more than usual. I saw four adults in the back the other day. We know what happens when adult bunnies get together. The techniques I used in the woods don't work here. I gave a family member a haircut, and sprinkled the hair around. No matter! They bit through string that the peas were growing on.  I'm going to have to invest in a fence. 

Native Shrubs

I took a while to decide which shrubs to plant. I decided on Viburnum trilobum, American Highbush Cranberry, because they have a pretty spring flower for pollinators (and humans), fruit for wildlife, and fall color. The before photo below shows where I put a stake, helping me see that the shrubs would receive enough sunlight in the back yard. I will mulch around these shrubs soon, using the same shredded mulch that I've used in the front yard.

Below--Update July 

New native rose

This is a one gallon Rosa Blanda, planted to strategically hide the electric box. There was nothing there before but bad lawn. Nothing really grows in this area because the soil is a bit gravelly and compacted. The rose will be in full sun, so I'm hopeful!

Converting a rock feature

Here's a case where the "before" (below) looks better than the "after." The large rock in the front lawn was surrounded by "bricks," which enclosed a garden of flowers. And it's a pretty nice looking rock! I've planted some low-growing and mow-able clover around the rock, moving the plants that are worth saving. 

Native Pollinator Garden

For a native pollinator garden, I divided my front yard into sections around a bee lawn. The photo above is a DURING photo, showing the mulch covering the bare dirt until I plant my plugs. Below are the BEFORE photos.

The native rose will be planted near (but not too near) the electric box.

Clover will surround the sharing library, now an official Little Free Library.

In front of the lilac shrub, I'll have some plants.

These two corners will be filled with a variety of plants. I dug the dip out, filling it with rocks and covering with mulch so that we capture some of the water taht would normally head down the storm drain.

Here's a DURING photo. My darling dear of a husband helped me dig. 

These AFTER photos are unimpressive now. The plant plugs are about the size of the four packs of annuals from a greenhouse. In this bed, I have blanket flower and butterfly weed (orange color palette), along with alyssum and transplanted lilies from the rock.

This is the biggest garden by far with a purple palette: purple coneflower, prairie smoke, wild lupine, prairie phlox, silky aster, annual salvia, and alyssum. I've also planted some sunflower seeds (Velvet Queen). I'm hoping they bloom the same as the orange plants to tie all this together. The aster was munched the first night by rabbits, so I've sprinkled cayenne pepper around the plants now. 

This is a small corner with plants from the rock and one prairie smoke plug. I'll update when the plants start filling out and (hopefully this year) blooming.