Tending Roses: How I spent my Sunday

Since I had a seemingly unlimited supply of free woodchips I thought I'd be crazy not to mulch the Hedge Roses, too. They were a weedy mess!

Ever tried pulling up weeds through straw? It sucks! So, I raked off the straw. Action Hoe to the rescue!!
After removing as many weeds as I could, I loaded the rose beds up with the woodchips. I think it looks much better.

Another post mulch picture

I gotta say, I'm sooooooooooooooooo glad I am done with those damn woodchips!! I made a total of 9 trips!! That's 27 raggedy metal trash cans, 18 recycle bins and 18 storage containers full of this stuff. I wonder how many yards that was?

Below: Foundation bed

Below: Garage bed

I didn't post a picture of the south fence bed as I'm scared that Carol and Carolyn will yell at me when they find out that I cut the Spirea down to the ground.

The Cicada wants to be my boyfriend

In case you haven't heard, Chicago is presently infested with the "17 year Cicadas." In my area, they have been manageable but today I had a fatal altercation.

After battling with my weed wacker for weeks I finally threw it in the car and drug it to Ace Hardware. Thank you bald Ace Hardware guy in Forest Park for fixing me up! I'm officially boycotting Home Depot! Anyway, I took it home, cranked it and started working and then I noticed a few Cicadas in my yard. The next thing I know, the things are dive bombing me! I think they thought my weed wacker was another Cicada tryin to get it on! So one of them comes flying at me and my reflex reaction was to use the weed wacker as a sword or some other weapon, and, you guessed it, the Cicada was chopped to smithereens! I feel bad about it! Sorta. I kept trying to tell myself that the news people said they will not hurt me but it didn't help. Every time one came at me I tried to fight it off with the weed wacker. At one point I hit my grill and a everything on it went flying. I was screaming like a 5 year old. I don't care what they say, these things ARE dangerous! I thought about asking Mr. Wonderful to fight them off me while I finished trimming the backyard but they freak him out as much as they do me. At some point I just gave up. These things are only suppose to live for 3 weeks. The weeds will just continue to look like crap for a bit longer...

Here's a few pictures from today. I think my favorite thing in my garden these days is the watermelon. I think the leaves are so pretty! I had to redirect it because it was headed for the patio. I didn't realize that these things actually grab onto whatever is in it's path. Am I suppose to have a trellis or something?

Rose Garden after straw. It actually doesn't look so bad and the roses are all doing pretty well, even the sickly one that I thought wasn't going to make it.

Garage garden with straw. I think I've killed the grass around these beds by letting the crap that I dug up lay on it for too long.

Foundation bed

I finally decided to try my hand at composting! Since I have no container whatsoever but lots of stuff to compost, I decided to throw it over beside the garage and see what happens. I don't plan to leave it there because I'm worried that it will damage the fence or the garage. I also won't be putting any food there because I'm way more afraid of rodents than I am of Cicadas.

One final note on Cicadas. I googled them and I think it's actually the male that makes the noise so I guess those were girl Cicadas attacking me.

I've taken this to a whole new level

I purchased my first Hoe! This is getting serious! I was watching that gardening show the Manic Organic the other day and the guy said this is his favorite kind of hoe for weeding. It's an "action hoe" and I'm sure you all already have one and know how magical they are but just let me enjoy this, okay?

THIS THING IS MAGIC! It slices right through the weeds in record time! This morning I finally had time to weed the rose garden since I'm pretty much done digging up grass. It only took me like 15 minutes for 72 feet! Listen up gardeners - if you don't have an Action Hoe - get one! Today! I'm sure you also noticed the big ass bale of straw in the picture. I finally resigned myself to using straw as mulch for this first year for the following reason.

1. I'm broke and it's very cheap. Only 5.99 at the garden center
2. My soil needs amending and after reading lots of organic gardening stuff, they say this will break down over time and be good for the soil.
3. I don't want to spend my summer pulling weeds from these new beds.

I took this picture this morning and I've actually already distributed this straw to all the beds except the kitchen garden. I spent 3.5 hours this morning weeding, getting rid of big piles of sod and spreading this straw all over. My yard smells like a farm. Not a bad thing but boy does this stuff make me sneeze. I'll be honest though, after using my magic hoe, I'm thinking that weeding wouldn't have been such a big deal and this straw is not the most beautiful thing in the world. Stay tuned for pictures of the freshly strawed beds...

Here's the garage bed all cleared out. The only difference from the last picture of this bed that I posted is that I finally got the corner cleared out. There were some weeds over there that were borderline trees they were so big.

You can't see them but my itty bitty Clematis vines are planted on either side of the window. They don't seem to be growing but they don't seem to be dying either so I'm hopeful! This is the foundation bed that I finished clearing. The next time you see this, it will be covered with straw. Can somebody please come over and haul off these big piles of crap that I dug up? I'M EXHAUSTED!

Morning Coffee

Here's what I did this morning. This is where the red clematis will go, along with whatever else I can come up with. This took me about 2 hours to clear. Now I'm trying to figure out what (if anything) I need to do to amend the soil before I start planting. I don't have a compost bin so anything I put down will need to be something I can buy commercially. The day lilies that I removed from this space never bloomed in the 3 years I've lived here. Does that mean the soil sucks? I'm thinking of throwing down a bag of organic compost and a bag of peat moss but I have no clue if that's the right thing to do. Suggestions?

It seems like the harder I work, the worse my backyard actually looks. See how messy it is? I think this is a case of not "cleaning as I go." You know how dishes pile up so badly while you are trying to prepare a great meal? And if you don't wash as you go, your kitchen is a disaster when the meal is finished? This is what happened here. I just keep throwing the weeds and sod over in the yard thinking I'll clean it up later. Now it looks horrible and it'll take me God knows how long to get rid of this crap. Plus, I'm getting pretty sick of taking pictures of dumpy looking stuff. Oh, how I long to be able to post pictures of my garden full of beautiful flowers like the other garden bloggers....