It was an unpleasant week at work, so I've spent the past three evenings doing two of my favorite things -- cooking and gardening.In my ideal world, I would spend one day per week cooking meals for the entire week but that rarely happens. I've had my menu planned for three weeks before actually getting everything at the grocery. In any case, now we have curried chicken salad, a reduced-calorie (yet still delicious) version of red beans & rice, oven-roasted chicken, meatloaf, and terriaki salmon. I made the meatloaf with bison meat. There's so little fat that I'll have to up the binding agents next time, but it's still really good. The next task will be freezing the portions that I can't eat right away. Groceries are way too expensive to let anything go to waste. I always have lots of fun when I cook even though it's a lot of work.
This evening I spent some time playing in the butterfly garden I started two years ago. During the Fall of 2006, I mapped out the area for the garden and covered it with black plastic sheeting, the contents of my compost bin, leaves, and straw from my parents. In the Spring of 2007, I pulled up the plastic and used the rototiller to mix it all into the soil. Apparently this is a technique referred to as lasagna gardening (because of the layering of materials) although I was just being lazy since I didn't have to remove the sod layer before tilling. The bonus I didn't expect was how much healthier that part of the yard is now. In the past when I would work in that area, I'd find a lot of grubs but now I can't pull a weed without disturbing an earthworm. It's a shame I don't like to fish because I have access to a whole lot of bait.
I got a bit overzealous when I ordered the plants and didn't get them all planted. That plus the fact that the birdseed I used was apparently not sterile like it was supposed to be made the butterfly garden a bit of a bust. Some plants did survive though: 2 Caryopteris 'Dark Knight', and 3 Sedum septabile 'Brilliant'. One shrub, a dwarf "cranberry" Viburnum, that I bought on clearance in 2006 has played dead until this spring. I saw one tiny green shoot near the bottom (when I was getting ready to dig it up and inter it in the composter). I decided to give it one more summer and cut out all the dead stems. It certainly isn't flourishing but is showing some nice growth, so that's kind of a pleasant surprise. Hopefully by next year, it will actually look like a shrub.
Four plants that I ordered last year actually survived overwintering in their shipping containers in my garage, so I stuck them in the ground tonight. If they're that tough, they just might survive my low-maintenance gardening style. They didn't have their labels anymore, so I don't know what they're going to look like if they survive. Three of them are the same type of plant (possibly Tradescantia ohioensis) and the other looks like some type of clover (possibly Dalea purpurea).
I've added a number of new plants this season:
- Coreopsis 'Rising Sun'
- Salvia 'May Night'
- Dianthus gratianopolitanus 'Spangled Star'
- Dianthus 'Firewitch'
- Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue'
- Campanula carpatica 'Blue Clips'
- Aguilegia 'Winky Mix'
2 comments:
That Dianthus stuff rocks. Mine keeps coming back and people will actually cross the street and ask me what it is. Where the heck you been??
I remembered you had some dianthus (red, was it?). I eventually want to put some in the front yard, too. I'm pretty excited to see if it will come back for me.
As to where I've been... busy, busy, busy. I actually have no time commitments for this coming weekend! I'll try to call you later this week. I've got meetings in Indy & Muncie for work and in the evenings here in town for Audubon & Master Gardeners at the beginning of the week, so it'll probably be Wednesday or later.
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