Tag: flowers

A Look Back on 2019’s Big Garden Plans

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Now that I am wiping away the failures of 2019 and looking towards the opportunities of 2020, I’m ready to start planning.

Do you remember my big plans for the garden last year? I wrote about them in 2019 Garden Plans. Here’s the list of plans and notes about what was accomplished:

  • Create a “holding bed” with good soil and good drainage while better permanent beds are made (this actually turned into my herb garden while my iris just hung out in buckets for while. oops)
    I had to sort, thin, and cutback
    I was able to share most of my extras with friends and family!
    I painted this sign the first year we moved in!
    This happened in several stages
    A ton of herbs and flowers

     

  • Paint my existing shed, add better shelves inside (HURRAY! I DID THIS! And I organized it!)
    Before!
    After!
    I painted an old chain-link gate and hung it as a trellis.
    This is organized!
  • Move plants from the “Big Bed” to holding bed, and dismantle “Big Bed” (We kept the Big Bed. I like it. It’s there. It would be a lot to move it. We did amend the soil though and I replanted my iris collection there)
    Newly planted and packed in!
    I still have more plans for this bed
  • Replace the Big Bed with space/pad for new shed (coming in 2020?) and two new 8×8 square beds flanking each side (Hahahaha. None of this happened, but I do have hopes for a new shed…some day)
  • Replace existing raised beds with better quality materials, refreshed soil, and good drainage (I did take out the beds, and removed a lot of the rubble at the bottom, but we never got around to rebuilding them)
  • Add two large 8×15 spaces with landscape timbers and mulch as pads for my grow bags (Nope. didn’t happen. I marked them out. Put landscape fabric down in one area. This is still on the list)
  • Add large row for cut flowers in front of the garden (HEY! I did this too. It definitely still needs some work…and to be widened a bit.)
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    Left to right: the new flower row, grow bags on weed barrier, dismantled raised beds, and the Big Bed before it’s makeover!

    Looking down the new row
    I planted some random squash in the row…which will not be in the plan for next season
  • The most expensive but the most important addition will be the privacy fence. It will probably the big project of the year (We got an estimate which was so far out of our budget that we had to rethink the whole thing. I’m thinking hedges.)
  • Pour cement for new patio slab (this is all Todd) (The ground is sort of prepped, aka we have a huge section of cut out yard making walking out the back really interesting)
  • Extend and clean up the rock area along the backside of the house (I don’t even remember this plan. But we do still need to work on cleaning up this area)

What Now? I’m making a new list. For sure.

Here are few extra pictures from the 2019 season including our house’s new paint!:

This photo is from the real estate listing in 2016
We painted the house in early spring, but here is this fall!
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Falling off the Map

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Hello? So much for my posting goals of 2019. What happened? Well, I never did hear back from the current owners of the Hall Homestead (or if they emailed me it was lost in the infinite, junk mail folder). We had a huge storm in July that dropped branches over most of our yard, including my iris bed. The bed was mostly cleared out except for some special iris I didn’t want out of the ground for long. The tree, of course, fell right over that section. Thankfully, everything made it and by the end of the summer I had over 20 wheel barrows full of sandy soil added to the notoriously winter-flood prone bed. All the iris were replanted by the end of August. Hopefully, they’ll make it. This turned out to be the BIG project of the year. 

I still have more plans for this bed

My grow-bags were, once again, a success. This year in general wasn’t the greatest garden year. Lots of rain and cool weather kept most of my veggies from producing at the top of their game. It also kept my motivation at bay. It seemed every day I had off was raining. My flowers did pretty well though, as well as the new space created this spring.

Looking down the new row

The summer and fall turned out much different than I expected. I ended up putting in many more hours at work than originally planned (I work in soul-sucking retail). In January, I hope things slow down, so I have a chance to reevaluate what was accomplished in 2019, what was successful, and what I want to attempt next.

I already have big plans for 2020, of course. 2019 was overall, more successful than 2018. Moving forward, no matter how slow, is all that matters. Did I accomplish everything I planned? Not even 10%. My goal for 2020? I hope to accomplish 15% of my plans. Small steps.

I do have many ideas and plans. I hope some of them come to fruition. I also hope I can keep motivation to share the journey!

Good Bye, 2019. Hello, 2020.

Blooming Heirlooms: The Long Wait

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It was June, 2017 when Todd and I went to Omaha to collect my grandmother’s flowers. This will be the first year any of them bloom. Collecting family heirlooms of the blooming variety can be frustrating. Of the many plants we collected, I would say maybe 1/3 survived to this point. Granted, I am still novice at this but we lost the lilacs, roses, and most of the peonies. The iris survived despite two winters of sitting under water and ice for several weeks at a time. There is also one chunk of peony that has refused to give up, batch of daylilies, and, one or two bits of hosta survive too!

 

Last year, healthy but no blooms
The side Grandma and Granpa’s house where I collected the peonies and iris
post collection. It was already in the 90s! Stressed plants, for sure!

This year, the iris have budded up! I have been watching as the neighbor kids hit balls into our yard. One definitely hit a bloom-stalk, but fortunately it didn’t break. Heavy storms were called for last night, so I clipped one boom stalk and brought it in. This morning, as I sit here typing this, I am looking at a big, white bloom on my Grandma Pete’s iris. It’s the first time since I was too little to care that I’ve seen them bloom.

That can be the daunting reality of collecting heritage plants. Sometimes, there is only once chance to collect and from that moment on, you are the keeper of that family heirloom. Unlike stashing photos away in climate-controlled closet, plants have a lot more environmental stress. The transplant can be stressful alone, aside from whatever weather mother nature wants to throw at you. Waiting for years for blooms can be tiring too. It is not an endeavor for anyone with little patience, that’s for sure!

As I sit here, overjoyed to see this one bloom, I think about how happy I will be to finally share some of my blooming heirlooms with family. All the time waiting and stressing about the plant, I’ve thought about how I want to share a pieces of it with all my family! I have some pretty cute ideas…but we will see how it turns out. That’s a plan for later this summer.

Thanks for the iris, Grandma!

Grandma Pete in 3322 Garden

Great Grandma’s Lilies of the Valley

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If I remember correctly, the first time I thought or learned about heirloom flowers in my family, was when my mom told me her lilies-of-the-valley were originally from her grandmother’s house.  I have yet to figure out if they came from my Great Grandma Hanson or Great Grandma Petersen, but they grew at my Grandma Pete’s for years and I think several family members have splits from them. These will forever hold a special place with me as the first “blooming heirloom” passed along to me.

Many see these tiny white bells as an invasive, little weed. It creeps through fence lines and continues to pop up each spring despite all efforts to eradicate it.  Personally, I love them (they smell so good and are so pretty). Our house is no exception to the invaders. When we moved in, the entire back fence line had them growing, and there is a large patch along the back of the house too. I just mow them down after blooming.

When my mom gave me a clump of my great-grandmother’s Lilies-of-the-Valley from her yard, I had to figure out how I would keep them separate from the current patches. At the time, I worked for a garden center and had the chance to take home a large ceramic pot that had broken into a few pieces. I glued it back together and buried it about half way into one of my existing flower beds. So far, the pot has never heaved from the ground and the lilies haven’t spread from it. I will probably need to split them out more often to keep them healthy.

Each Spring they are sweet reminder of the generations of gardeners before me. I’m also a huge fan of partially buried pot! It gives a little bit of extra interest!

 

The Potato Ditch Iris

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A couple of years ago, Todd and I had the chance to dig up potatoes at the farm next door to where I board my horse. The farm decided not to dig the potatoes on that parcel because there was too much debris in the field.  As it turns out, that particular part of the field used to have a house on it.

It was a blast. Not only did we dig up several buckets of red potatoes, we found all sorts of bits of the life that had been lived there before.  There was a lot of glass, pieces of dishes, door knobs, and I even found a little glass bottle intact.

I also found a big clump of iris growing in the ditch next to the field right next to where we parked our car. They had been mowed down and driven over during the growing and harvest season, but I dug up a bunch anyway. I labeled them “Potato Ditch Iris.”

It was already well into October, but I stuck them in the ground anyway. I guess the house had been torn down many years ago. I wondered how long it had been there. I started searching for any available plat maps online, and sure enough, I did find proof that there had been a house their for many years. I have overlaid a 1949 county plat with today’s satellite image. The red circle indicates the structure that used to stand there. It matches the area where we dug our potatoes!

1949 Overlay Potato Field

I’m not sure whether these iris ever grew around that house or if they were just wanderers that ended up next to that particular field. But they gave me a spark of interest to see what the field had been before it was a potato field (not that it takes much for me to start investigating for old maps).

I did get a bloom or two last year, they are nothing special in the department of exciting iris, but they are definitely historic. What I love most is the experience of discovering the flowers, and collecting the stories that go along with the place.

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