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How does your garden grow?
Over the past few months, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere has developed a desire for a Pretty Front Yard (as well as a Pretty House), and this has manifested in a bunch of mail-orders to garden supply houses, and various other gardening projects.
A few weeks ago we had professionals in to cut down the quince trees. They'd been there eleven years and produced maybe two decent crops, the rest being eaten by either moth larvae or squirrels, and they're not particularly attractive trees except for the one week a year that they're in bloom. And we had planted them too close to the house. And while we were having those out, we took the opportunity to take out the yew trees between our house and one next door neighbor's. A few minutes after the tree-cutting crew left, another guy from the same company showed up to grind out the stumps, and the grinding machine seems to have badly cracked the concrete of our front walk. The boss at the company came and looked at the situation, and was adamant that his machine couldn't possibly have cracked the concrete (they run it over sidewalks and driveways all the time), unless perhaps if the process of grinding out the stumps had moved roots that ran under the sidewalk, which was probably very old and poor-quality concrete that was about to crack anyway. I pointed out that the worst cracks are at the point farthest from where they were grinding, but right next to some tire tracks that are obviously where the machine rolled onto the walk. I also pointed out that the walk wasn't cracked when the first crew finished, and it was cracked half an hour later when the second guy finished (as I pointed out to him at the time); there's really no possible argument that it wasn't cracked by the root-grinding machine during that half hour. He still doesn't want to admit responsibility, but says as a favor to me he'll have his concrete people re-pour the whole front walk (the cracked square and three others) at cost. What that actually means, I'm not sure.
Anyway, where the yew trees had been, there's a bed about 3'x12' of bare dirt (with the occasional chunk of yew root). We put in two lilacs, andshalmestere started a campaign of digging up unwanted-looking violets around the neighborhood (where they're often treated as weeds) and transplanting them into the bed around the lilacs. And she mail-ordered some yellow violets, which arrived over the weekend; we put them in Tuesday evening.
Where the quince trees had been, we put three rose bushes: two "midnight blue" (actually a sort of dark cochineal red) and a "peachy creeper" (peach-colored flowers, with an allegedly creeping, ground-cover-y habit). She's looking at some other varieties of roses, probably some kind of near-wild-type climbing rose.
Two years ago we put a semi-dwarf Montmorency cherry tree on the sublawn: last summer it produced leaves, and this summer it produced a bunch of flowers and 22 (or was it 29?) cherries. This evening we dug up some turf in a circle around it, lined the edge of the circle with rocks (which had come up in the other excavations), and planted a circle of irises just inside the circle of rocks. Not sure what will cover the rest of the now-bare circle; perhaps wild strawberries? There's a batch of toad-lilies on order that are supposed to go in there somewhere, once they arrive (probably in the spring).
There are also crocuses and dwarf day-lilies on order, probably going along the sides of the walks.
shalmestere has developed a desire for a Pretty Front Yard (as well as a Pretty House), and this has manifested in a bunch of mail-orders to garden supply houses, and various other gardening projects.A few weeks ago we had professionals in to cut down the quince trees. They'd been there eleven years and produced maybe two decent crops, the rest being eaten by either moth larvae or squirrels, and they're not particularly attractive trees except for the one week a year that they're in bloom. And we had planted them too close to the house. And while we were having those out, we took the opportunity to take out the yew trees between our house and one next door neighbor's. A few minutes after the tree-cutting crew left, another guy from the same company showed up to grind out the stumps, and the grinding machine seems to have badly cracked the concrete of our front walk. The boss at the company came and looked at the situation, and was adamant that his machine couldn't possibly have cracked the concrete (they run it over sidewalks and driveways all the time), unless perhaps if the process of grinding out the stumps had moved roots that ran under the sidewalk, which was probably very old and poor-quality concrete that was about to crack anyway. I pointed out that the worst cracks are at the point farthest from where they were grinding, but right next to some tire tracks that are obviously where the machine rolled onto the walk. I also pointed out that the walk wasn't cracked when the first crew finished, and it was cracked half an hour later when the second guy finished (as I pointed out to him at the time); there's really no possible argument that it wasn't cracked by the root-grinding machine during that half hour. He still doesn't want to admit responsibility, but says as a favor to me he'll have his concrete people re-pour the whole front walk (the cracked square and three others) at cost. What that actually means, I'm not sure.
Anyway, where the yew trees had been, there's a bed about 3'x12' of bare dirt (with the occasional chunk of yew root). We put in two lilacs, and
shalmestere started a campaign of digging up unwanted-looking violets around the neighborhood (where they're often treated as weeds) and transplanting them into the bed around the lilacs. And she mail-ordered some yellow violets, which arrived over the weekend; we put them in Tuesday evening.Where the quince trees had been, we put three rose bushes: two "midnight blue" (actually a sort of dark cochineal red) and a "peachy creeper" (peach-colored flowers, with an allegedly creeping, ground-cover-y habit). She's looking at some other varieties of roses, probably some kind of near-wild-type climbing rose.
Two years ago we put a semi-dwarf Montmorency cherry tree on the sublawn: last summer it produced leaves, and this summer it produced a bunch of flowers and 22 (or was it 29?) cherries. This evening we dug up some turf in a circle around it, lined the edge of the circle with rocks (which had come up in the other excavations), and planted a circle of irises just inside the circle of rocks. Not sure what will cover the rest of the now-bare circle; perhaps wild strawberries? There's a batch of toad-lilies on order that are supposed to go in there somewhere, once they arrive (probably in the spring).
There are also crocuses and dwarf day-lilies on order, probably going along the sides of the walks.