grow, marvel, eat, laugh, persevere

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Getting ready for roses

I've spent the last 2 days clearing out the fence line where my 26 pink Simplicity hedge roses will go. I've only done 26 feet and I've got 46 more feet to go before I can even start digging the 26 holes. I'm so nervous about not being able to finish this on time.

Surprisingly I've gotten up every morning and worked in the garden. I've found that this works best for me for the moment since I'm in no mood to do this when i get home from work. I wake up, watch whatever corny gardening show I can find on TV for a few minutes, then get to work. I've only been spending about 30 minutes working in the mornings but it's better than nothing, right?

Tonight I went to buy a new garden hose (ours has a hole), a wheelbarrow (I'm sick of dragging heavy bags of weeds to the alley), a sprinkler and the stuff to water seal the privacy fence. The wheelbarrows that were available were so damn big I couldn't buy it because I have no place to store it when I'm not using it. The garden hose that was on sale was sold out. Got the stuff for the fence, though! I'm really nervous about sealing the fence because my neighbors have bushes all over their side and I have a feeling this sealer will kill them if we are not careful. Ah -the joys of home ownership.

I've been looking around for plants and sketching out where the gardens should go and as usual I am really just wanting to pay somebody to get the beds ready for me to plant because I'm very impatient. I keep telling myself "it's about the journey" but I'm sick of pulling weeds already and my hands are a mess! I'm not use to this! I'll probably end up renting a tiller for a few hours to prepare 3 of the 4 gardens since there is mostly grass there and I haven't the slightest how to get that up without hosing it down with chemicals.

Still looking for the perfect tree for the southwest corner of the backyard. I'm really leaning towards a dwarf peach tree or some sort of small magnolia because I suddenly feel like I should inject some of my southern heritage into my garden, but I'm afraid the peach either won't grow and I'll be sad, or they will grow and the birds will eat them, and I'll be sad. Do birds like peaches?

Food garden update: the red bell pepper is doing the best and the strawberries look pretty good too. The rest seems like it hasnt grown a bit. I think I need mulch and I'm sure I could load it up with fertilizer to boost the growth but I'm still in organic mode.

1 comment:

  1. Gina,

    My vote goes for a dwarf Magnolia. As a Southern gal you need a little touch of your heritage as you said.

    I have one called "Betty " in my garden and she is about 6 feet tall. She is spectacular, though nothing compared with the Southern Magnolia 'grandiflora. '

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