Dog Days

         I've been busy with visitors for a lot of the summer, and now that I have some gardening time, it's so hot and humid that I don't want to go out there. But there is deadheading to do, and tomatoes to gather, so I must go.

        The lilies are doing well - the hemerocallis are almost over, and of course the bi-colour orange ones have been absolutely spectacular (alas for my pink-and-white colour scheme). The regular lilium have a bit longer bloom season, and so they are still carrying on. But I am at a loss to think what I can replace all those orange ones with - I don't know of anything but phlox paniculata that's as vigorous and blooming now, and they don't have the different foliage and so on that's the real treat with the hemerocallis. And of course I have too many phlox already. I should say that I have quite a number of different burgundy hemerocallis (but they are just not as vigorous) and they have done quite well.
         Yesterday the humidex was 34, so I spent most of the day in the basement, sewing - and I still managed to work up a sweat, mostly running upstairs to cut out or press things. It's warm in the basement anyway, with the dehumidifier running. It's not the chilly dank place it used to be. I also went through all my bins of fabric, and threw out about 2.5 binsworth. That felt like an accomplishment. Also now all the silk is organized into one bin, etc. I only managed to finish one thing, but I have several other things cut out and have tidied up the work area, sorted out a dress I cut out some time ago and decided to throw out another - it was lined and had a printed chiffon overskirt and was just too fussy - and also the chiffon and the lining weren't working at all together. I found a cotton blend I made a lot of things out of a few summers ago - all gone now, or stored, I suppose - and I cut out a dress that should fit, with some of it. And I finally cut out that too-bright-for-the-eyes green bathing suit, and started to sew it. I may have already screwed up a bit because I was supposed to make a shelf bra for it, but I didn't install it at the right time and now it may be too late. Ah well. Sewing is a process, not a product (or not so much a product). I do like to wear stuff I make, though. I need some sewing things - cotton elastic for the bathing suit, bright red thread for a top - but I work tomorrow so I can pick them up then.

Making Progress in the Garden

    Tuesday night we fulfilled a long-term commitment to gather red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea - or C. stolonifera at the MacPhail Woods). We borrowed the Family Truck and drove to the Victoria Road after supper, and dug up 10 pieces from the ditch. We discovered that they are shallow-rooted, and the stems root readily and send up new shoots. We did get involved with some deeper-rooted bits but they were really hard to get out with just a shovel - an axe would have been handy. Since they were in the ditch, they have been bush-hogged countless times, so we weren't destroying or even damaging the stock - we even took from four different clumps.
       Back home, we put them in several places, mostly on the outside of the spruce and pine hedges so they will get lots of sun, which they like. I watered them the next morning, because by the time we finished planting it was dark! I discovered that we actually have nine plants, so perhaps we put two in one spot. I put two in the "front" garden, one in the shrub border and one beside the rose bed, and one in the line of shrubs under the maple in the "back" garden - the row of shrubs now consists of: 1. P.G. Hydrangea; 2. Cotinus coggyria (purple smoke-bush), 3. Potentilla (white),  4. Cornus sericea,  5. Chaenomeles japonica, and 6. some sort of Spirea, scrumped from the garden opposite Sears.

The Six Flowering Shrubs - not yet flowering, of course!

     Quite a list. It's a bit dark under there, and I have to keep the spruce hedge trimmed or it would overtake the shrubs, but it should make a good display - sometime.  If necessary, the maple can go - it's a Norway, anyway, and I consider it a weed tree. The number of saplings I pulled up in the flower beds this spring! Some of them two or three years old!!
     The Ring-around-the-Rosey bed is looking good - the Rugosa roses are putting out buds and the one in the middle is just fountaining out, over all. I am not sure if the last-year branches will flower, so I shall keep an eye on them and if they don't, I'll prune them out. They remind me a bit of raspberries at the moment, so I won't be surprised if they don't flower on last-year's canes.

Thornless! Mystery Rose

      I had decided that it might be Rosa Pleine de Grace last year, but in reading about it just now (got to love Google!) they talk about how thorny Pleine de Grace is, and mine has no thorns, none at all. Back to the drawing board, then.
      If anyone has any ideas I'd be happy to hear them. Blooms early, once, in clusters of single small blossoms, no scent that I've noticed, no thorns, vigorous, roots readily, blooms white with a hint of pink, turns more pink as it ages. Blossoms long-lasting. I once thought it might be Rosa Banksiae but their blossoms, though small, are doubles.
    The greenhouse has had a re-vamp, I de-skinned it and worked on the strapping, replacing four broken ones with new, and then re-taped the plastic and pulled it over again. There was one bad hole where a broken strap had poked through over the winter so I just taped it up. The plastic is quite opaque, so I don't expect it will last another year, but I am hoping it will do for this one. I hoiked out the strawberry plants I'd sunk into the vegetable garden bed late last fall and they are loving the warmth of the greenhouse at the moment. They all seem to have survived, and the ones which were on the West side of the bed were much warmer and so have started into growth - much more vigorously than the ones which had been on the East. I am sure they will all catch up eventually. The outdoor strawberries (the ones in the ground) are looking well. I have uncovered one bed and am leaving the other covered, to see if it makes a difference. There were three degrees of frost last night, so the uncovered ones are shivering this morning.

Frosted Lady's Mantle, April 19, 2012

    I am uncovering flower beds gradually, and discovered that the Alchimilla mollis was coming along grandly under quite a covering of brown leaves. It was quite big, so I dug it up (with quite an effort, it had made a considerable root-ball) and used the two-forks method to divide it into five pieces. I put one in the north-door bed, two in the South, and two beside the rock steps on the side lawn bed, pulling out two huge phlox to do so. I'm trying to keep smaller plants beside the steps. I should re-plant those phlox, because they are probably the nicer-coloured ones (not the dull light mauvey-pink ones I have in such abundance) - either white or the darker pink. I must check last year's photos to be sure. 
    I located some flower seeds at WalMart (though the garden centre isn't open yet) and bought some - another package of Nemophila Total Eclipse, some Morning Glories, and Cerinthe, which I saw on Beechgrove last year and loved. I started the seeds yesterday, and some are indoors in the wee greenhouse, while the rest are in the outdoor one. Fingers crossed - it's rather late to be starting them, they say, but I think 6-8 weeks until the last frost could be now.

Chilly as a Witch's...

Not much growing happening here as the temperatures are still in the single digits. I haven't been able to finish my greenhouse because the plastic sheeting is too wet to tape. We've had upwards of 20 mm of rain every day for days. No chance of a drought this spring. Farmers are starting to worry about getting on the land, and the winds have been worrying for lobster fishers, especially those who have to try to get out of silted-up harbours on the North Shore. Oh well, I'm sure this, too, shall pass.
Talking to Anne about plants - she has been totally converted to the lasagne bed concept, so I'm going to try it too (as soon as I can get outdoors again!!). I must collect newspapers, and various kinds of compostables (I have a whole front-yard-full of leaves and pine needles! I just have to drag them BACK from the compost heap!)
I've been studying plants for the west side of the house (I'm thinking lasagne beds along the foundation, with plants which don't get too tall) and it turns out I have quite a few already. It'll be a place for the glut of things like phlox and feverfew too.
I still want to plant shrubs - I saw hydrangeas at Jewells today, marked down from 12.99 to 6.99. Tempting!
So, I have not been successful in "Rounding Up" the dock weeds and ribbon grass - it didn't make the slightest difference - I'd just done a small sample to see how things went - and things didn't go. This being a cold-blooded killer is tougher that you'd think.

Sure is close these days!

We went to the Victoria Playhouse Monday night to see Papillio, a trio of people we know - Jennifer Publicover, flautist, Colin Jeffrey, violinist, and Phil Schappert, guitar-and-vocalist who is also a PhD in insects (I don't know what that would be!) . He named the group, which is butterfly in Latin. It was a great show.
Anyway, it's barely a couple of weeks since we saw Rose Cousins in the same venue (although she had a bigger crowd) and she mentioned it's being CLOSE - as in the weather: close means humid, or muggy, in PEI-speak.
I'm glad she said it, because I hadn't heard the word used in that way for years. I'm trying to use it myself now, and the weather is cooperating by being "close" almost all of the time. It was quite 9 o'clock last night before it cooled off in the house, although it was nice outdoors by that time. The humidity has been high, and last evening the wind died, so the nice breeze that makes this kind of weather bearable was missing! However, we have a fan in the east-facing window of the room across the hall from our bedroom, and if you set it to "suck" there's a lovely westerly breeze in our room all night. Heaven!
I haven't had to consider using the A/C unit yet. Of course, if anyone was sleeping upstairs that would be different...it's much hotter up there as there's so much roof. When the girls come to visit in August I'll have to get it out and hook it up, if the weather continues as it is.
It's all great news for growing things, however! We have phlox paniculata out all over, as well as monarda (above), hemerocallis and lilies, the later roses (The Fairy and Alba Meidiland mainly), and the grass! It's growing like weeds, mainly because that's mainly what it is!

The compensation of tomatoes

Summer is on the wane - the tradition of its being over after Old Home Week has held true for this year again. The fact that we had a bit of Hurricane Bill on the weekend helped it on its way as well. No damage to my garden (but for a few phlox with heavy heads) or anything major anywhere on the Island - but spectacular surf on the North shore on Sunday. We remained obedient to the posted signage and stayed on shore, but Anne got some great photos. I, unfortunately, had left my camera at home.

Our old electric mower has bitten the dust, so we are relying on the reel mower exclusively now. Luckily it's almost the end of the season - and perhaps we'll find an end-of-season bargain mower somewhere. I'm just hoping the grass doesn't take on a new lease of life with the many millimetres of rain it received from Bill.

The vegetable garden is doing its very best for us at the moment - every time I go near it I come back laden with sweet million tomatoes (as well as lemon boy and early girl). Nothing is ripe yet from the many, many Roma plants - I hope they manage to pull through to ripen, as my winter salsa supply depends on them! Also beans have been very prolific, and lettuce and spinach enough to meet all needs. There are beets, and there will be carrots soon. The big surprise is the zucchini - there are a few each time I go out, but none of the overabundance one usually finds at this time of year. We have just four plants, and they are amazingly healthy, just not producing much.

Flower news: I bought a "Bonica", at last, at Cool Breeze farms in Summerside. I planted it next to the "Celestial" on the mound. Anne bought me a "Samuel Holland" which is a climber, I haven't placed him yet because of his special needs. The unknown white rambler on the poplar stump is making amazing progress; I expect there will be bloom next year. The three rugosas have all survived, two much better than one but they aren't as amazingly prolific as the abovementioned white rambler. I hope I don't live to regret putting it in, it seems to be mightily encouraged by having some decent soil and light.

Otherwise the daylilies are done and the more interesting colours of phlox are out everywhere, the white and the deep pink/magenta. Roses are still holding well, the "Alba Meidiland" and the two "Fairy" are just finishing up their first flush of bloom, but are growing new branches with buds for later. The rugosas are almost finished, and are producing hips in abundance. I may try some rose-hip jelly this year.

It's been hot for knitting, but I have finished the mohair scarf and an organic merino hat for K. - she was here on the weekend and tried it on - it fits! This was yarn from Mahone Bay as well. I'm making a pair of green heather socks and trying to finish up the lace shawl in Knit Picks Shimmer I started in the spring. I'm working on the second half - it's done in two halves and grafted, so I have that to look forward to.