Didn’t do much today except the laundry. I wrangled the vines on the fence, deadheaded the cosmos and perennials,  and watered my microscopic grass. I was going to move some plants, but it was just too fucking hot. I did water my indoor plants, and took my revolting keyboard apart to wash the keys and top in the dishwasher, and vacuum the inside. How Miffy still has any hair left is beyond me.

Not that I had much to do with them, but god, these things are beautiful!  Midnight Marvel again; the others are coming along, but not ready yet.

Microscopic grass slightly less microscopic.

Fwruffy keyboard!

This Question Mark was stomping all over my new grass–it’s a wonder it wasn’t all crushed!

Fence line today. Pretty.

Zinnia and Mexican sunflower. No Tithonia yet, but lots of zinnia!

Bud on one of my baby hardy hibiscus. I think it’s Cranberry Crush, but couldn’t swear to it. Anyway I’ll know soon, I hope!

Finally! It was hot and humid, the brace bands were hard to bend and so was the wire, but four months of work and delays is finally over. I have the flowerbed I envisioned last October. It’s not perfect–they pushed the trellis down into the ground when they moved it, and that honeysuckle does not want to turn–but it looks fine for now and I can try twisting it next spring when the ground is soft.

I think this is one of the columbine that I’d planted under the honeysuckle last year. With all the grass gone now, it’s getting some light. Its bloom time is past, but I’ll leave it anyway.

Blooms coming in on one of my baby hardy hibiscus!

Microscopic grass! Only a little, but more than I had. I’ll take what I can get when daytime temperatures are in the 90s.

Finished mulching the Tornado Honeysuckle. Still have to tie it up. No picture because it looks the same as it did the last time I took a picture, except for the fact that I put the last two bags of pine bark mulch down (bought three, just in case). I got the wire and the brace bands (and painted the brace bands), and I’m borrowing “my” little boltcutters from work, so I’ll hopefully finish it this weekend.

Now, in exciting news…I found Monarch eggs! I planted mostly common milkweed, which is doing very well, and that’s what they’d always preferred before so of course…the butterfly laid two eggs on the single “Soulmate” swamp milkweed cultivar in the water garden flower bed, and one on a swamp milkweed in the main milkweed bed. Ungrateful little bastards; those cold-stratified common milkweed seeds were not cheap! Anyway, three eggs are better than none.

I also have a bunch of those little red spiders in the milkweed. Not sure, but I think it may be Florinda coccinea; Black-tailed Red Sheetweaver. Dear god, what a long name for such a small spider!

Tuesday or Wednesday…I forget which, so I’m catching up for both. 🙂
Blue-fronted Dancer.

Pulled grass around the Tornado Honeysuckle. As evidenced by the presence of the flash and the darkness around it, I stayed out way too late to do it, but the cool of the evening is exactly when I feel like gardening.

First Grey Stick bloom! If the other two don’t soon get some sun, they won’t bloom much (if at all). Oh, Treeeeee Dude…. *ahem*

Skanny’s latest gift. Ew. Poor Skanny must be thinking that we’re the stupidest kittens alive to not have learned how to hunt our own moles after all the times he’s left dead ones on our cars for us.

I was all virtuous after work; I went to Buchheit to get mulch and the last two blocks for the Honeysuckle Horseshoe, but it turned out I was two bags short on the pine bark. On top of that, my stupid flowers decided to take a break, which means they have buds that have not yet bloomed, which means that I don’t really know how the whole thing is going to look, even though I’m very close to finished. Sigh.

Finally…phlox!
Pink:

Blurry red:

Yaaay! I shouldn’t be too excited  because they’ve been in the ground only a few days, and I had almost nothing to do with these blooms, but here’s the first hardy hibiscus. It’s ‘Midnight Marvel’, which is the one with the deep bronze foliage. It’s beautiful–I wish I were a hummingbird!

I know zinnias are dirt-common, but they’ll always be in my garden because they aren’t fussy about dirt, they grow fast, they bloom fast, blooms last for ages and come in many colours, and everything likes them. Unfortunately, that does include Japanese beetles, but I’ll happily lose a bloom if I must in order to squash those little bastards, and I kill every one I see. Anyway, I love the vivid orange of this one.

Bee balm. I planted lots, and I’m glad because there’s a very good reason it’s called bee balm. I watched a bunglebee stuff himself in every single bloom, drinking nectar. His fat arse barely fit, but he was determined!

Took me 3.5h, sweating and miserable in the sun, but all three hardy hibiscus and the little Buddleia are in the ground!
Kopper King (back right in picture), Plum Crazy (back left) and Midnight Marvel (front). This will probably be a flowerbed at some point in time, but not this year. I’m sick of digging and sweating.

Little ‘Nanho’ Buddleia. Won’t amount to much this year, but gets around 4′ high and almost as wide. Behind pipevine flowerbed.

Charlotte’s food dish (she seems to think so).

Racun, running away after I got up and walked toward it. It had been calmly eating dropped sunflower seeds under the feeder while I was researching deer repellent. These little bastards aren’t shy!

This afternoon, the sky turned black, the wind picked up and it looked nasty (like tornado nasty), then it started pouring rain. I was worried about all my hard work literally washing away, but once the rain stopped I only had one really deep gully. Now knowing where the water runs down (we are soooo putting gutters on the back of the house!) I filled the gully with soil from the patio flowerbed and made a kinda white-trash temporary dam.

I put the entire seed mix bag on the ground; some will wash away, I’m sure, but anything that stays put is more than I had, and I’ll just keep fixing and seeding until something grows! Anyway, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and temperatures are supposed to be in the low-to-mid 80s. It’s not going to get any cooler before September, so it was now or never. At worst, I’m out the cost of the seed mix, which I bought months ago (and ignored because I didn’t want to haul dirt or fuck around with boring old grass). Had to do something; the elephant in the room was interfering with my ability to enjoy my hard (HARD!) work, and after nearly 4 months of that, it just wouldn’t do!

A little friend in the butterfly bushes.

I’ve waited years for this to bloom because I’d never seen Campsis radicans flava. Flava means yellow. Um…yeah.

Can’t tell whether these are blooms or just more leaves. I forget which is Fireball and which is Cranberry Crush.

OR…Sunday, sweating in the yard.

I finally decided it was time to deal with the elephant in the room, otherwise known as the big, grassless patches in front of the patio. Hrass doesn’t really qualify as gardening to me, so it had been low priority, but now that I can finish Honeysuckle Horseshoe, it’s affecting my enjoyment thereof. It wasn’t too bad when I started hauling dirt, but by the time I’d finished, it was pretty goddamned hot! I didn’t seed it because the ground is dry and it isn’t going to cool until Tuesday, but it’s ready for seed (unless the rain washes away all my hard work).

We went to Lowe’s in the afternoon,  planning to eat at Chili’s, but decided to get Chili’s takeout instead. Neither of us really wanted to stay away from Parview for long! Anyway, when I got to Lowe’s, I found the canna ‘Black’ right away and texted this to C. with,  “Lowe’s :)”

I needed cypress mulch and was going to get the same stuff, but Lowe’s had cypress mulch, and neither of us wanted to go over to Walmart, so I just got some there. It’s not a match, but close enough. E. can bite me. More importantly, hardy hibiscus was on sale, and they had Buddleia. Only purple and only quart pots, but I got one anyway. Can’t have too much Buddleia to suit the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds! I couldn’t decide which hibiscus I liked best of the three they had, so I got them all! Kopper King, Plum Crazy and Midnight Marvel!

I was going to leave the canna potted because it’d have to be dug up in fall, but decided P was right and it probably did want to be free. Yeah…I’d say so!

I put it down beside the yellow honeysuckle; once that grows (assuming it ever does), there won’t be room, but I’ll have to dig up the canna anyway, so meh.

I mulched the new flowerbed, too. I like this mulch better, but not enough to replace god knows how many bags of the rest.

I’m also a dumbass. I’ve pulled up a few of these, thinking they were weeds. Nope. Larkspur. Oops.

That bitch may have seriously overpriced her bee balm, but it did bloom!

Found this gigantic fucking hornworm on ‘Mortgage Lifter”. Saved it until P got up from his nap, then chopped it in half with a shovel. Charlotte may have nipped off the top, but this little bastard is responsible for a bunch of missing leaves!

Found a dead cicada, too. Uneaten, so I don’t know what killed it.

Now, I’m on my last holiday, and I have laundry to do, plus I’ve got to get the hibiscus and Buddleia in the ground!

OR…Saturday in the miserable heat, making a flowerbed after I swore I was done!

Hey! I found some good Japanese beetles!

I was midway through my flowerbed,  sweating and miserable from pulling crap-grass, when C. texted this with the word, “Lowe’s”.

I finished the flowerbed, knowing full well where I’d be going the next day! 🙂

Bonus picture of a potential phlox bloom there aren’t many, but there are some!

We finally got the posts for the trellis and bird feeder into concrete! We didn’t get enough concrete, which we discovered after doing the bird feeder hole, but (almost unbelievably), Walmart was open as usual and had 30 lb bags. P. had read some mixing tips, and everything went smoothly. The trellis posts didn’t go in evenly by hand, but being professional contractors, we knew we could hammer one in a little deeper. We levelled them and braced them, and once they’ve cured for 48h, I’m going to weed and put in the bark chips. FINALLY! I’ve been waiting for this since I dug that flowerbed back in mid-March!

My reward for moving the few sprigs of portulaca I found in the patio flowerbed.

Halictid bees are glad I leave the sunflowers that the cardinals plant!

Now, I’m supposed to be removing grass for the newest flowerbed, but im going to nap and celebrate finally getting those posts into concrete!

I got the rest of my perennials yesterday, and aside from the blooms being broken on the asters and the joe-pye looking a bit rough, they’re fine. Guess I know what I’m doing this weekend!

Broke off the asters–one in shipping, one in unpacking–but they’re going to be pretty if they bloom again!

Whatever milkweed this is (swamp?) decided it was going to bloom this year after all.

Tropical milkweed looking well so far!

This is the ‘Blue Fortune’ agastache that I planted a few weeks ago. The third got planted a couple of weeks ago, but it’s all doing well, and the two oldest ones are starting to bloom. Doesn’t smell minty or licorice-y, though. The ‘Tango’ does smell very minty, but it seems like a weaker plant. Dunno if that and the three varieties that I just got will make it through the winter or not. Anise hyssop has sturdy leaves and stems, and so does the ‘Blue Fortune’, and I’d bet the ‘Black Adder’ does, too, because those are both pretty close to the purple colour of the wild stuff, but it would take more work to get the orange, red and pink colours. They have paler, smaller, more delicate-looking leaves, and I’d be willing to be they aren’t as hardy. Anyway, we’ll see; I’ll cut them back to a few inches in the fall and mulch the ever-loving hell out of them. Especially ‘Tango’; Christ knows I went through enough just to get that stuff in my yard, alive!

I knew one was going to bloom, but the echinacea I’d got (from that guy in WV who has the Virginia Snakeroot, I think) was pretty sparse-looking. Apparently healthy, though, since several of the plants are actually going to bloom this year!

Yay for gaillardia that I grew from seeds!

The lazy tomato (forget what it’s called…maybe Porterhouse?) finally has fruit! Just one, but considering that two blossoms had dropped before this, I was hoping I wasn’t going to end up with a plant that had actual blossom drop. Guess those two were just unhappy for some reason. Dunno…I hate tomatoes anyway.

I was trying to pull out a sprig of grass and accidentally pulled out a carrot, too. I had been considering pulling one just to see how they were doing, but this saved me the trouble of deciding. I ate it…tasted carrot-y. Still no signs of Black Swallowtail larvae on the carrot, dill or parsley, though. Is still kind of early.

.

I don’t think we’re going to get much out of them because they’re still not very tall (got some damned good roots, though!), but P’s phlox will have at least a few blooms.

I’ve seen stilt bugs in the garden before, certainly, but this is an outright stilt bug orgy! Two pairs, and they didn’t pay much attention to me at all.

I found a little friend on the bee balm! Tenodera (took another shot that showed the tan band on the back of his adorable little alien triangle-head).

I bought a couple of quart pots of lantana on Sunday at Wal-Mart. I really didn’t have a place for it, but it’s only an annual, so I thought I’d just find a place for it amongst the perennials. Hah. Tight squeeze; hope it doesnt grow too enthusiastically!

In with the pipevine.

Beside the water garden and mini-swamp.

Too pretty to not have it!

Dark butterfly bush is finally starting to bloom. About damned time!

Gotta get the MLB’s feeders back out before they come after me. Stupid sugar water, taking so long to cool.