Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
5/19/00 - The weather is much more spring-like this week, which makes it easier to work in the garden and much better for the garden than the unseasonable heat. I created a bit of a problem for myself when I spread the dirt from the compost pile on beds where the soil had washed away. The compost pile is built from cuttings of weeds and flowers from the summer and autumn beds; consequently, it is loaded with both flower and weed seeds. And so, it was not long before the beds where I had spread the compost were jungles of mixed flower and weed seedlings. As a consequence, I spent a good bit to my gardening time this week weeding the beds that I thought I was helping by adding new soil to them. As you know, I depend on flower seedlings that come up on their own--coleus, cleome, balsm, etc.--to supplement the seedlings that I raise in the cellar during the winter. Now I am going to have to cull these from other beds, because the growth in the beds that I had to weed was so thick that I couldn't separate flower plants from weeds.
This is the time of the iris--the poor man's orchid. My irises are as beautiful as I have ever seen them, either because of weather conditions or a lucky combination of soil, temperature, and moisture this year.I bought some bulbs several years ago, but can't remember that they produced such lovely flowers as there are this year. I also had some bulbs sent to me by a fellow gardener in Ohio that are now blooming and are a lovely light blue. My prize irises are two beautiful peach-colored flowers now in bloom; I have taken photographs and will have at least one picture for you in the weeks ahead. Like all of the garden flowers, iris are emphmeral so that by the time my pictures are developed they will be gone--which is sad unless you think of all the flowers that will replace them.
This week's picture reaches back to an earlier spring garden, because, as always, the mechanics of photographing, having pictures developed, and getting them on the Weekly Diary mean that by the time that you see them they no longer exist in reality--a true comment on the transitory nature of all things. This picture shows Gertrude's garden in azalea and dogwood time--a truly beautiful garden time in South Jersey. As I write this, the azaleas and dogwood blossoms have withered and fallen, so that this week one of the tasks that I have begun is the annual trimming of all of the garden bushes. The time to do this trimming is right after the blooming period is over, so that you do not interfere with the setting of next year's buds. I try to trim to keep my shrubbery on my own property, to give bushes a nice shape, and to keep them from getting so high or wide that they shade too much of the bed in which they are planted.
5/26/00 - Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
5/12/00 - Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
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