More Garden

Now to continue the garden tour. 

There are about three different vines on the side of the shed and we are hoping one will be a grape.  Then we have either gooseberry or current; they might be just too old to retain.  Our one rose this year, which now doesn't have any petals left after Richard knocked them all off throwing the lilac branches over the fence.  I have been discovering all these different plants as I cut back the over grown catoni- aster (sorry about the spelling) hedge.  I will be cutting the hedge back more because there are parts that are dead and need to be removed to allow the healthy parts to grow up.

The pyramid planter we appear to have inherited the previous owners wanted it back but have not come to get it so if we still have it next year then we will fill it with plants.  You can see a part of the hedge that is cut right back.  To the left of this picture is another large maple.

Yes that is a wet dry vacuum, I used it to clean out the rest of the crud from the second water feature.  This one is a lot larger and has waterfall and a fountain but I need to cut the hedge back and clean all the old decomposed leaves from amongst the rocks and also pull out all the young trees.  I missed taking a picture of the 2nd maple but the last picture is a beautiful honeysuckle, but it has been allowed to become leggy I'm not sure how much pruning it will handle but I am going to try and cut it back.

This lilac has become so wild and was obscuring the water feature so I was slowly cutting out branches, it is going to be completely removed as it is not a pretty shrub.

A saskatoon bush that is a bit overgrown and has a lot of old wood that will need to come out this fall.  We should have lots of berries as the blossoms were absolutely lovely.

Two piles of brush which is mainly lilac bush and a bit of the hedging that I have been busy cutting down.

Now I am back in the front of the house.  We hate to cut the lawn because we have these blooming in it and it is such a shame to cut them off especially when we don't have very much in the garden yet.

This mess is in front, maybe next year it will have a whole new look.  Daisy's that have gone wild, yarrow that grows like a weed, there are some delphiniums in the back and some red flowers.  Earlier in the spring there were some primula, pansies and flowering chives.  Central of this mess is a rotten tree trunk that.  Richard will hack out with his axe.

So the half dead low growing cedars will be removed.  There are three spruce or is it four, one will be coming down to give some of the other spruces a chance to grow back in and allow the elm and maples on the boulevard to grow back.  What can I say about that final picture.  In there are the two maples that I showed the tops of earlier two young, but very high, ceder trees and a dead mountain ash.  Most if not all these will be coming down soon.  We have a dog run back there too, this is the other side of the back deck.  If we keep the dog run Ian will not have to worry about bringing his dog with him when he visits us.

So there you have it, all the uncared for trees, shrubs, flower beds and water features.  Lots of work so any volunteers?  Help especially trips to the dump with all the wood that is being cut down would be very much appreciated.  What has Richard been doing while I've been working on the yard?  Tomorrow I will show you just some of what he has worked on.











The Garden as of Today July 8th

As I chatted with Lynda last weekend I was talking about what I was doing in the garden.  She said it would be better if I had posted pictures of what our garden looked like.  You have an idea about the inside of the house but not really anything about the outside.  That being said when I was too tired to do anymore in the garden I took these pictures, you will see we have a lot to do.

These three pictures of delphiniums are in the front of the house to the left of the front door, I spent part of the day pulling thistles and some weeds from this flower bed.  Actually there are as many weeds as there re delphiniums.  In the second picture is a spirea.

That was full when I had had enough of pulling weeds in the heat.  Having a white house means the sun reflects off and feels even hotter.

The day lilies are just beginning to bloom.  These really need thinning out, under neath we have found iris and other varieties of lilies.  As we walk up the side of the house you notice the peonies are almost finished.  These I will not be digging up as they take a few years to come back to blooming profusely.  The third picture in this series we are looking back and the 2 x 4's are lifting up the eaves troughing angled so the water would flow down to the downspout and not over flow and then seep into the basement.  So Evette sorry I chuckled over your temporary fix of your eaves trough we have one of our own.

This series shows part of our back yard.  The first picture is actually a small water feature that I am cleaning and resetting out to add my fountain.  By the side of the pond is a small tree that grows with the branches bending over and growing toward the ground, it needs to be pruned.  Also we are over run with goats beard, which is a ground cover that has infringed between the deck boards.  Because the east side of our double lot drops off steeply the deck extends to the property line so the slope is usable.  The last picture are my few annuals that I purchased on sale to add a bit of colour to the deck.



The first tree by the back porch is an elm, which we are not allowed to prune until early fall.  Also at the bottom of this elm is some sort of fruit tree.  Behind these is a very tall but contained lilac that will be cut at least half way down to encourage more blossoms next year.  The second picture over the top of the back porch are the maples that have to come down as they are against the house and the roots are infringing into the basement walls.

This is our second yard.  Against the garage wall are raspberry canes that hopefully will have fruit.  Then we have an apple tree not sure what type or whether the fruit will be edible.  What isn't shown are the trees behind the garage.  Another apple that probably will never bear fruit so will probably come down.  A small saskatoon bush and a bigger one hopefully these will bear fruit.

This would be classified as the bottom of the garden.  The first picture shows our first pile of hedging that we cut late spring.  The tree is one of the two large maples, and behind this tree are the two compost areas.  Then the shed where Richard has been piling stuff we don't know what to do with yet.

I've run into a technical problem more pictures still to come.