Storm's Coming...

... or maybe not.  I just figured those clouds and colours were pretty cool.

William Bit Me

I have a couple of rose bushes in the back yard that are called "William Baffin" roses.  They're beautiful, but after last year's non-winter, they needed to be cut back pretty hard.  I did that at the end of May, and getting stuck by a rose thorn is pretty much expected for jobs like that.  The only problem is, one spot where I was pricked by the the rose became infected.

I've been keeping it clean and figured it'd get better on it's own, but had to go to the Dr yesterday for a renewal on allergy meds.    My thumb caught his attention, and I got into trouble.

I'm on antibiotics and have been instructed to keep it wrapped and relatively immobile for the next week.

Who knew that gardening was so dangerous?

The New Back Garden...

... Is ready for plants now.  I started digging it in because I had 3 or 4 spare plants with no place to put them.  And, I wanted to attract birds, so I wanted a place to add a couple more trees.  I got the idea, drew it in and then dug out the outline in an afternoon.

It took two weeks, digging every single day.  Work is still insane, so some days I only had the energy for an hour or so.  And the ground is rock hard.  It's like digging cement, so I didn't make much progress at first.

Then, last weekend after we got a good soaking rain that softened it up a bit, I went out and dug the whole thing into big chunks.

I shook for the next four hours.

This week, I broke up the clumps of soil with my hands, put the soil in a pile and scraped about two inches of clay out from under what will be the garden before putting the soil back.   I've thrown out 10 full sized garbage cans of clay and sod.  The city workers who haul away yard waste probably don't like me much right now.

Yesterday I finished adding the edging and amending the soil with organics, so it was finally time to start planting.

Something was niggling at the back of my mind, so I double checked my real property report this morning.  That's when I remembered that the back 7 feet of my yard is technically a utility right of way.  I'm not allowed to build anything perminant there, except for the fence, and I'm not allowed to plant any trees.  So, now my job will to be go out and find some tall shrubs... maybe a columnar juniper if I can find one.

In the meantime, the front yard has been quietly blooming.  The poppies and the peony tree are putting on a show, which I've been so busy that I almost missed it.  That would have been a shame.

Things I know to be true

Shrinking out of your clothes is a double edged sword when you're losing weight.  It's great to know that you now fit smaller sizes, but if you live on a tight budget and plan to lose a significant amount of weight, it can be difficult to  justify buying clothes that you hope won't fit you for long.    So, you wear baggy pants in the meantime.

Pants that used to be too tight are now a size or two too big.  I wear them anyway, and hide them under baggy shirts.   I don't want to spend money on clothes until I get closer to my goal weight and size.  Since I work from home, I can usually get away with this.

The one thing that I have learned the hard way, however, is that while a belt may hold up baggy pants, there isn't much you can do about the skivvies underneath that keep slipping down because they're two sizes too big.

Point. Shoot. Play.

For Pix

Pix says Irises are right up there as her favourite flowers.

I like them too, but have always had a heck of a time growing them.    I've planted more irises than I can count, but they always whither and die.

Then, a while back the gardener at the local golf course (my mom's favourite haunt) sent me an iris root that she'd split. Truth is, I was pretty sure I'd kill it too, but I took the chance and stuck it in the ground by the dog pen. This one lived.

I'm going to have to stop in to thank that gardener again - she's a good source for plants!

Peony Tree

Five years ago I heard about something I'd never seen before - Peony Trees.   I've always known about peony plants, but not the trees.  I looked into it, and what I read seemed pretty great.  Even better, they're supposedly hardy enough to handle the Alberta climate.  So, the next year, I tracked one down and planted it in a a premier location of the front garden.

It's in the dead centre in the front garden, with everything else centred around it.  I wanted to showcase what I hoped would be an unusual but striking plant.  So, it should be no surprise that the peony tree has has taken its time in coming into its own.  In fact, it's stayed so small that until this year it looked like a twig hidden under the annuals.

This year, it seemed to grow a little more than usual when spring arrived.  Then, yesterday I noticed something:  blooms are in the works.  Dark purple blooms, if I recall correctly.

I can barely wait.