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Archive for 'Lawn'

Fall’s Fallen

I hate it when I travel in October, and somehow it seems to happen every year. I’ve been gone for nine days, and I missed my favorite season! Peak has come and gone while I’ve been out in California and Texas. And of course, the weather is so rainy and wet that we are constantly

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wang wong

A little work after work

It’s stress relief to get out in the garden, even if just for an hour, after work in the evenings. This year has been so wet, though, that mostly tonight we got out there because the lawn was long enough to cut as hay, and it was finally dry enough to mow. All of the fall flowers are in full bloom right now, and looking quite lovely. I need more of them, though. I’m mostly green, with a few splashes of pinks and yellows here and there. Oh, and some purples as well, with the asters and obedient plants. We haven’t had a freeze yet this year, so the window boxes are still in fine form as well. The leaves on the trees are getting more and more color. I think we’re still two weeks from peak color, though.

wang wong

More plants, and planting

We went to the grand opening of a Home Depot in Keene last night. Their nursery isn’t great, but we did get some good deals. We were a bit disappointed in how many zone six and seven plants we saw. Keene might be zone 5, but most of the hill towns around Keene are

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wang wong

The Stargazers Arrive

It has been a terribly rainy week. I managed to get the lawn mowed yesterday, then it rained all night. The stargazer lilies are open, and gorgeous. Unfortunately, some of them seem quite short, even though we composted them last August. I’m hoping that compost this spring and fall will get them back on the naturalizing track. The yellow glow flower is also in bloom. We got this from Cindy Dale, and the landscapers did their best to kill it, but did not quite succeed. This is the first time it has bloomed since then, and it’s 8 feet high. What is it with yellow flowers in August?

wang wong

Chores

I did some puttering outside the last two nights. Yesterday, I mowed the lawn and hauled in two cartloads of firewood. It’s rotten stuff from ‘96, but we need to do something with it. I also checked out the mushroom beds while I was down there: nothing showing. It’s way too soon, of course, but

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wang wong

Busy, beautiful Saturday

We got a lot done today. Frank’s big to-do item was to turn the compost. The far right bin of the old set (right near the house) is our finished stuff, and has collapsed down to less than half a bin. It’s too late to spread that stuff now, so he was hoping that the

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wang wong

Dripping

One of the Lamer Landscapers semi-successful projects was installing irrigation for us. They actually got it running in the spring of 2001. As usual, they demonstrated that they are landscapers not gardeners. Also cheap. They finally got the stuff running June of 2001 (only 9 months behind schedule). Two valves failed that summer. In 2002,

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wang wong

A tiny painted turtle

Lisa’s out of town, so I took advantage of a rare nice evening to do some chores. I planted the accumulated swap plants: Purple monkshood, sweet woodruff, blue hosta, pulmonaria, plumbago, and something in a sixpack. I’m not sure about the plumbago, because the plumbago I found on the internet is zone 8 or 9,

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wang wong

Pond Perils

There seemed to be enough open water to start the pond pump today, so I did. Unfortunately, the water smelled of decay, and as the ice melted I saw two dead frogs. This does not bode well for the fish. Unfortunately we really don’t know what we might have done wrong. Too many dead leaves?

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wang wong

The last mowing

Frank gave the lawn what will most likely be the last mowing of the year. We left the leaves and grass cuttings on the lawn, hopefully to compost away and help the soil. That lawn needs all the help it can get! We’ve had two hard freezes in a row this week, which kicked off the few remaining window box plants that were still hanging in there. This year, the fall colors feel very muted, probably because of the wind and the rain. The view across the swamp is still lovely, but it doesn’t feel as vibrant as it has in years past.

wang wong