This picture is a few weeks old now. I’ve been meaning to get some garden chat on the blog, but keep having so many other tasks. I love these metal planters. The configuration above measures about a two-foot circle. I’ve been wondering for a while why you can’t buy pots open at the bottom, so you can plant shrubs and dwarf trees that need to root into the ground, but need the protection of a planter. Raised beds also serve a certain aesthetic; plus they have a habitat function, a topic I’ll have more on later. Anyway, the aluminized steel planters are open, easy to put together, fun to choose colors, etc. I thought one would give definition to this bed, as well as suppressing my non-blooming daffodils. (I actually had 6 blooms, but tons more foliage that I just snipped away today, since I don’t really want these daffs.) I’ve told the story before of how they’re so deeply buried a shovel blade’s depth can’t reach the bulbs. I can’t dig them without destroying my other plantings. But…

As you can see, they grew all the way through a foot of dirt. Now they’re even deeper! (I’ll just have to kill them slowly.)

 

 

Here’s an area where every heavy rain washes the ground bare. You can see plain mud at the top of the image. When I gather sticks, I break them up and strew them over leaves and garden cuttings. It makes a good free path cover, and stops the washing. But I’ve got a ways to go to stabilize this shallow ditch between my property and the neighbor’s.

 

 

When I was shopping for bulbs last summer, I felt kind of unenthused about crocuses. I bought a few species ones, that I wrote about planting under store bought soil. But the usual purple, white, and yellow just wasn’t inspiring… Until this spring, when I saw how great these clusters of purple were looking. The daffodils (the ones I have where I want them) have been fantastic this year, too. My next orders will be mostly daffodils and crocus.

Though, next spring, I may get inspired by my alliums and “uncommon” bulbs, and decide I need a lot more of those.