Solving an eye sore

We have an old utility box in our backyard. It is very visible. It is very annoying. I tried, two years ago, to get somebody to take care of it. No luck.

The cover falls off regularly, the wires are in terrible shape, it is doubtful it is still hooked up to anything. 

Our woodworking neighbor made a cover for our utility box. 

It sat outside, drying, for several weeks. It is made of treated lumber, which can be very heavy/wet from the chemical treatment. 

My daughter stained it for me. 

My husband made a base with paver stones and paver gravel to keep the box up out of the mud. 

We bought a 20” paver stone (Lowe’s) to serve as the cap.

We utilized a half barrel we already had for the planter. 

I bought a variety of plants, half off at the end of the season, as an experiment to see which liked the location. 

Photos of the finished project are included in tomorrow’s post. 

Black eyed Susan’s

This note is a bit late. The Black Eyed Susans have been in bloom for several weeks. I went back and looked at photos. I think they started popping out mid July.

The photos, below, were taken August 2, 2024.

I have them blooming in two areas. 

The first/main area is in the little bed by the street. 

The second is by the side of the driveway. 

Resurrection lilies

I can’t remember if I mentioned this at the time.

In May, someone listed Resurrection Lilies bulbs on Facebook Marketplace, very early one morning. 

I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, grabbed a bin and was the first one there. 

I picked carefully through the pile of bulbs and filled my bin. They were free, but I left $5 as a thank you under her doormat. 

I planted at my house, in two spots, and shared with one of my neighbors. 

The green (bulb) leaves disappeared sometime in June. 

The lily blooms popped up in late July. Photos of mine, next to the driveway, are below. I have noticed them, blooming, all over town, the last couple of weeks. 

The taller day lilies in the bed by the street

I am saving the tags here, so I remember. These were from the clearance section at Lowe’s. 

We planted six each, of the day lilies below, in the flower bed by the street. 

Most Day Lilies are marked “full sun”. 

All 12 of these (white circle, below) were marked “full sun / part sun” so I am hoping they thrive in this area. I want them to fill the area so there is no room for weeds.

I planted a few Day Lilies on the edge of the driveway (red circle, below) here, two years ago, and they have done pretty well. So I am hopeful. 

Watering

I have a more organized approach to watering this year. 

In the extreme heat, which we had for one week in June, I watered the pots and window boxes and planters every day. 

The rest of this summer, I have watered all these containers, every other day. 

If something is newly planted in the ground, I water every day for a while. 

But the majority of my beds, I deep water with a sprinkler, once a week, on Saturday. The beds are watered from 20-30 minutes each. 

I go around the house, following a clockwise pattern, to be efficient with the hoses. 

Update on the rectangle garden

Note - I posted a whole week’s worth of posts on this garden in late June 2024.

When we redid the rectangle bed in the backyard, I did not purchase any plants. I simply rearranged the plants I already had. 

We purchased (5) additional pavers to match the 7 we already had. I utilized four solar lights I already had. The existing birdhouse stayed.

So this was a major redo with very little expense.

This photo (below) was taken in the dark with my iPhone. 

The photo is much lighter than what my eyes could see.

My eyes could not pick out individual plants in the dark. 

We think the rectangle garden photo (below) looks like a fairy garden in this photo.

I am extremely pleased with this project. The garden is now delightful. On a practical level is now easy to spot/eradicate weeds.  

Pink phlox and pink cone flowers

These are in the rectangle garden, next to each other, both protected by rabbit fence. I am hoping they fill in this area over time. 

These photos were taken July 20. 

White phlox and Tiger Lilies, both very tall this year.

 

Hibiscus, first bloom

 

Joe Pye Weed

Middle’s is in bloom -

Mine is in bloom -

Animal Spray

I have an animal prevention spray I use (specific brand, bottom of this post). It is not poison. The smell of the spray is designed to deter animals. 

I spray very low, at bunny level. 

The instruction say to spray once a month and/or after heavy rains. 

I spray, key areas/plants, every few days. 

Knock on wood, this protects beloved plants where a cage will not work. 

Mostly I spray this bed (below). There is no real way of protecting most of the plants in this bed. It is very thick/full. It would be hard to cage the tiger lilies or phlox for example. So I spray it, heavily, regularly.

https://messinas.com/collections/animal-stopper-animal-repellents/products/animal-stopper-liquid-animal-repellents

Grassing the east edge in the front

We attempted to put a hosta bed in the front yard, by the porch, last year (or maybe the year before). 

The bunnies feasted on it. They were relentless. They are most of the hosts so severely that they killed it.

Once they get fixated on an area, there seems to be three choices: 

- fence it

- spray it regularly (tomorrow’s post)

- move the plants

The third option, move the plants, is referred to as “witness protection” at my house. 

This spring, we moved all the hosta that had survived and prepped the area for grass seed. 

At the same time, we cut back and dug back ivy and lily of the valley along the same east edge of the front yard, closer to the street. 

I listed lily of the valley starts in Facebook Marketplace. Lots of people came and got roots.

Both areas had holes from all the digging. Both areas gained weeds over the spring as we worked. 

It was a very long process. 

We seeded the two areas, on the east edge of our front yard, on Sunday June 30th 2024. 

We set hoses/sprinklers, so all I had to do was turn them on and off. We were careful in where we placed the hoses. 

I utilized flags so the neighbor’s mowing service did not run over the seeded area or my hoses/sprinklers. 

I watered twice a day for 20 minutes each. 

By Monday July 8th 2024, we had grass. 

I am still watering once a day. 

I took these photos (below) on Wednesday July 10, 2024.

This first set is from the street. Our house is on the right, my back is to the street. The top photo has the newly grassed area circled.

Closer view, my back is still to the street. 

From the porch, looking toward the street. The straw is just visible through the new grass.

I have seeded a lot at our house over the years. 

I do well seeding. I have the technique somewhat perfected for our yard. We do a very good job prepping. 

Now, I get supplies and supervise, my husband does the work. 

He levels and churns up the dirt. He adds a thin layer of top soil to help hold and germinate the seed. He rakes the seed and starter fertilizer into the dirt. He uses a very light layer of the straw product. 

We used these specific products (below). I purchased everything at Lowe’s. 

People come help me clean out my beds

I list what plants need weeded out/removed from my flower beds on Facebook Marketplace. When you have large flower beds, good plant starts come up in the wrong places. 

People usually respond quickly and come to my house. 

I dig, they take. In other words, people come help me weed out my flower beds. 

It moves me along fairly quickly. It rehomes good plants to other gardens. It provides gardening socialization. It is a very efficient system.

Until it is not. 

A week ago, last Tuesday, four people were scheduled to pick up plants. 

Two people were coming for the last of the daisies. 

One person was coming for the last of the trumpet vine.

A landscaper was coming to dig/take lots of red bud starts.

All four were no-shows. 

Three of the four told me they were not coming, hours after I expected them. 

One just flat out ghosted me.

If they all had come, I would have been propelled forward in my gardening, leaps/bounds, that day. 

Since they did not come, it had the opposite impact.

I was very annoyed. FOUR! All on the same day! (This rarely happens with one person, let alone four.) 

I needed those plants to be gone, in order to move forward with my rearranging. 

On the next day/last Wednesday, someone else sent their mother to pick up the rest of the daisies. The lady was at work, she knew I needed them gone, so her mother came to get them. 

Middle helped me dig/bag the whole pile. 

When my husband got home from work he cleaned up the remnants and leveled the flower bed. 

The photo below shows the daisies in place. They are not the nice upright daisies for a flower bed. They bloomed, were beautiful for a short time, and then fell over in a heap. I would call these natural/meadow daisies. I made sure that the people taking starts were planting in a meadow not a neighborhood.

After the first person took starts, a bee keeper with a meadow, I still had a lot. 

After middle helped me dig the rest, for the second person who also has a meadow, my husband cleaned/leveled the bed. 

Astilbe

We are rearranging the flower beds in our backyard. This is a summer long process. The beds are being condensed and a section of the backyard will be seeded/grass.

As part of this process we removed a large swing set, the trumpet vine that was growing on it, and a large bush. That opened a huge space. 

We have been moving plants into more defined spaces. 

My beds look much better and are easier to maintain if like things are planted together. 

All the astilbe was recently consolidated to one bed. It was previously in two areas. (One of those areas will be grassed, the other was too hard to water.)

There used to be a tree stump in the spot where the astilbe was rehomed. The stump was removed with as much of the root system as possible. The hole was filled with good top soil (below), Lowe’s. This the only top soil I use. 

The astilbe thrived immediately. It was blooming within a week.