It's the love, love, loveliest time of the year

Gardening is gearing up. Lilacs are out, vegetable garden is half-planted (more tender things go in this weekend). Grass is growing, mosquitoes and black flies breeding - summer on The Island!

I have one of the tree peonies planted, in the bed by the driveway. Fred suggested the perfect spots for the other two: on the lawn to the south of the house, above the rock wall which is the backdrop for the flower beds below. I think I'll have to dig right across, and place them in the middle of each bed. Then fill up the rest with the plants we have in abundance - phlox, shasta daisies, geraniums.

This will result in slightly less lawn to cut - yes, I did see his cunning plan to eliminate even more grass cutting from his agenda. However, they will be ideally placed there, with lots of south exposure. And it's been hard to mow by the rock wall without inadvertently dulling the mower's blades. It's hard digging, though, as this area has been lawn since 1977 or so. And before that it was the Connors' "patio" - a big pile of dirt with railway ties on top. It will need much amendment before the peonies go in. They seem perfectly happy on the deck in their pots, for now.

I've been working on the Meandering Vines shawl in Knit Picks Shimmer, in fennel colour. I got season 2 of Lost from the library and have been trying to see as much of it as I can before it goes back - tomorrow! It's fine to knit to, because there's not much to have to look at, in order to follow the story. And the knitting is pretty straight-forward too - I've been adding beads, but I think I'll stop now and save the rest of the beads for the other end. I don't know if I'll bother trying to see any of the other seasons of Lost. TV series viewing seems to be more of a winter activity; however, when I'm aching from digging it's good for breaks!

Another garden project almost completed is mulching the rose berm - as usual, it's hard to get enough newspapers for the project. I put layers of newspapers under the cedar mulch to keep the weeds down a bit. I bought 26 bags of mulch, and have - I think - 5 left. And about 1/8 th of the berm to go. Some of the roses are looking rough - William Baffin had a poor showing last year, and doesn't look great yet - very slow to come out. And the Grootendoorst is not showing much progress at all. I cut Sir Thomas Lipton down to the ground; there are a few new shoots coming from the roots now. The berm looks quite different without his looming presence! However, Blanc de Coubert was rehabilitated last year and did wonderfully well, so I have hopes of Sir T. The rose in the bed by the driveway (forget its name at the moment), which was gnawed by mice, is sprouting up from the root. I hope it's own root! The two reds climbers on the rose trellis are growing, the Henry Kelsey especially well.

I've been having fun with my little reel mower - it is just ideal for small areas like the south lawn, or the triangle below the spruce hedge - even Fred likes it. I ordered a sharpening kit for it from Lee Valley last night as the local repair guy didn't know how to sharpen it - and I understand that they probably need sharpening fairly regularly. I noticed that even when new, it couldn't cope with dandelion stems. But it loves cutting the grass!

I think I'm in love.

Yesterday I trolled all of the local greenhouses, looking for medium height hardy roses - the top of my rose mound is a bit sparse at the moment, as I have lost a few roses there and, I guess, never really had a clear plan for that area. Anyway, I was looking for something in the 3x3 size. I have been reading up and Frau Dagmar Hartroop looks nice, and of course for sweetness Dart's Dash. I have just one pavement and I think they are lovely too. I was keeping an eye out for Roseraie de l'Hay, which is NOT for the rose mound at all, as she is a huge seven footer, and bushy. I thought I'd seen some at Wally Mart, but if I did they're all gone. Anyway I did get a George Vancouver there, it's a medium pink and grows the exact size I wanted. And it was $6.97.

Tried VanKampens in the afternoon, and they did have Roseraie, but at $22.99 I thought twice. Even with a buy two get one free sale on, it's over $50! But on my way out I had a closer look at the tree peonies - the sale was the same, and the base price was $9.99! So I bought three: white, pink and maroon/deep red. I've been doing research on them online. These seem to have Japanese names, and I have a short list of those. They apparently need quite a deep hole and lots of compost and such. Also alkilinity, which doesn't come natural to PEI! And they'll need full sun. I had a bit of a dig around in the bed along the driveway last night, and I think I could excavate a big enough hole in the middle of it for one or two of them. Because they're so tall, it will add quite a bit of height to that bed. I would like to put the maroon/dark red one near the house, but I am not sure there's room or enough sun - because it faces East, when the sun goes over there's deep shade there in the afternoons. Ah well. It's a glorious problem to have.

The lovely man who digs up my vegetable garden was over on Monday, and bless him, dug out all the dandelions before cultivating. I put them into the compost cart and they'll be gone when I get home today. (I love Waste Watch too.) So no seeds from them, at least. I went to Vesey's on Tuesday and bought $60 worth of vegetable seeds. Apparently it will rain on the weekend, but I may plant some of it anyway. Can't wait for green onions and leaf lettuce, and so on!

The next big job is to buy a lot of composted manure and mulch, as the rose mound needs badly to be re-done this year. I've started to save newspapers to put underneath the mulch. It will be so great to not have to mow or weed up there any more.

It's been cool, but that's fine with me - it means the heavy work in the garden can get done without heat-stroke. Things are slow to come out, and slow to fade as well. It's an exciting time, garden-wise, as the lilacs, spirea and honeysuckles are about to pop. Today I could smell the poplars - even though most of them have died, there must be one or two left. The smell is the best part of them, of course!

Garden News

I planted tomatoes yesterday after dinner - in the rain. I hope that's optimal growing conditions and that they will flourish.

I hope someone sees my flower bed today and thinks I'm a brilliant gardener for matching the foxgloves with the sweet rocket, though if it's a gardener he or she will suspect that the sweet rocket is a volunteer from another bed and just blew in to the one with the foxgloves, The peonies are about to burst, so I hope the rain today doesn't knock them down.  The rain makes for great colours, however.