The Saga of Bing #1 & Bing #2

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the cherry trees we planted.

Devon has always had a fondness for cherries... so he had his heart set on putting in some cherry trees when we bought our house. Since Devon likes to "eat" cherries... we searched high and low through a ton of nurseries to find Bing Cherry trees. And, since we don't have a heck of a lot of room, we decided to get dwarf trees.

Okay, so we bring these trees home (which are huge... considering they are dwarfs) and spend about a week trying to figure out where to put them. Devon was determined to rip out this poor little Maple tree to make room for them, but I put my foot down and saved the tree. I hate to see any tree go to waste (well, except for those icky ones that used to be in front of our garage window... more on them later). At the end of the day, the Maple Tree was given a reprieve from it's eminent execution, and the Bings became it's neighbour.

Since Devon can't do much garden work (still recovering from the back surgery) and Josh was away at Scout camp, David and I became the tree diggers. Oy vey. What a job!!! We don't have soil here in Utah, we just have rocks pretending to be soil.

It took David and I two days to dig these holes (13 inches deep) and I'm telling you, we felt like convicts. I kept having flashes of the film "Cool Hand Luke" and imagined Devon saying to us, "What we have here --- is a failure to communicate!". Of course, if you've never seen this Paul Newman classic, you will have no idea what on earth I'm talking about. Let's just say that digging those holes was such hard work... that I became delirious.

Happy to report, that after two weeks of being in the ground, our Bings look very happy. Of course, we are hoping that there is a polinator living nearby, or else we'll never have any cherries. So, we're crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. If we don't see any fruit in a year or so... we'll break down and buy a cross-pollinator that will get the job done. But, if we do that, then that poor neighbouring Maple tree will be toast.

Front Garden Update

Well, we've finally got the garden up and going again. The front yard looks pretty nice, except for the dead lawn(but we're working on that with our new sprinkler). It' sure it a challenge to water such a big lawn with just a hose! Kind of miss that undergrown sprinkler system we installed in the house back in Tempe.

Okay, so the tulips & daffodils all died. So, I had to put in some more plants to add some color. It was looking pretty drab. Not knowing what on earth to grow, I just picked plants that were purple and didn't cost too much money. I would list them out but the tags all blew away. The only ones I remember for sure were: Pansies, Verbena, Salvia, and Delfinium (or was it Digitalis??? It's the blue one by the rosebush).

So far, everything seems to be surviving.

I also found a bunch of Iris growing in the backyard, hidden underneath a maple tree that Devon wanted to kill (but I wouldn't let him). Since I knew nobody would ever see them back there, I transplanted them out front. Some survived... some didn't. One of the Iris' in particular was so pretty when it bloomed (purple and yellow). Quite spectacular.

Now that my mystery rose is blooming, my garden is looking quite lovely. In case you are wondering what's in the weathered grow box (sitting on the porch), well those are Impatiens. I don't know if they were the best choice... since they are taking forever to grow. But then again, maybe they are are lesson for me to not be too "imapatient" with them.

Mystery Plant

Okay... what on earth could this be?

This plant has all of a sudden hit a "growth spurt" and looks like its ready to start hatching alien pods!

Any thoughts???

Mystery Rose

Well we finally have a bloom from our mystery rosebush (that came with the house). It is very pretty. It's "dark pink" in color and has yellow tendrils (is that a word?) inside.

I'm hoping that Sandy can figure it out!

Back Garden Update

First off... we have to say kudos Richard & Sandy to coming out here to help us with our garden.

They came to visit us last week from Oregon and spent their whole vacation working on our yard. While they were here we: shopped for new veggies & flowers, moved plants around, transplanted trees around (the ugly ones from in front of the garage), and planted a gazillion Dahlias. Wow, who knew that planting Dahlias would be so complex. I'm sure glad I waited to have Sandy show me how.

Sitting at the kitchen table each day, Sandy spent alot of time with us, trying to pass along some of her gardening know-how. There was so much to learn, I had to take copious notes.

When Rich wasn't busy digging up plants, he was busy installing a new doggie door for Coco. (She just loves it!) He also, met with the local building inspector to help us plan out our new deck. Don't know how much of the deck is going to get done this year, but at the very least, we now know what we can and can't do, so we can go ahead with our design.

I just wish my inlaws lived around the corner, instead two states away!!! Of course, they did sneak in some house hunting... so maybe they will be living around the corner in the not too distant future. Yippee.

Okay... here's the update on the back garden.

VEGGIES

Well, we got a little delayed with our gardening plans this year, due to Devon's back surgery. (While I was down in Phoenix in April, poor Devon herniated a disk and by time I got home he needed to have back surgey.)

So while all this was going on... our plans to rent a rotortiller became impossible. The kids and I did our best to "till" the soil, using rakes and shovels. We thought we were going to die! Once we completed that job, we needed to even out the two gardens, by transferring a ton of dirt from the flower garden to the veggie garden. This was an incredible challenge as we no longer had a wheelbarrow (we either gave it away, or had no room for it in the moving truck) and had to throw piles of dirt on cardbox boxes and haul it across the yard. Man oh man, that was tough.

Anyway, I have sketched out our planting layout for the veggie garden. So far, I think that everything we planted for the veggies has come up.

Sandy taught us about "companion gardening", and learned that tomatoes and green peppers should NOT be planted together. So, we had to transplant all the peppers, which are now in pots behind the back of the house.


Richard and Sandy began to have concerns about the amount of sunlight hitting the garden. It looks like maybe the flowers and veggies should actually be reversed. Of special concern is the lack of sun that our tomatoes are getting. So, as an experiment, we went out and bought a few more tomato plants and planted them behind the house (where our future deck with go). We are going to see if the sun is any better there.




















FLOWERS

Here is the layout of the flower garden. I don't think that it is doing as well as the veggie portion. Right now, I can't tell the weeds from the flowers! I'm so pathetic. This puts me in an ackward position, because I don't know what should be pulled out and what should stay.



Devon is thinking that if we wait another week or two, it will be obvious. I hope he's right.





Additional note: I decided to tackle the weeding on Monday. I came up with a plan of looking up each and every plant in my Western Garden book and getting an idea of what the plant should look like. So with this in mind, David and I set out to getting out all the weeds. After two hours of work, we discovered that we had more weeds than flowers.

FLOWER GARDEN --- BEFORE WEEDING




















FLOWER GARDEN --- AFTER WEEDING
(I think we're going to have to go out and buy some flowers!!!)

Trouble with Roses

Help! Help! My roses are not doing well at all. Purple in Providence is perplexed on what to do about it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. If you click on the photos.... they will be shown "full screen" (better for close up viewing).

Rosebush number #1 seems to be dying and I'm not sure what I've done. This is the small rosebush I bought and planted in the late spring. It is a Double Delight Rose. The bush has four stalks. One is green and healthy (far left in the photo) with little leaves budding. However, the other three stalks have recently turned dark brown/black and the leaves have all curled up & dryed out (or even worse... dropped off).






UPDATE: I couldn't find any information on this in my books.


Rosebush number #2 seems to be having some "visitor" munching on it. The bite marks are all the same (weird little circular shapes). I am not seeing any bugs on the rose anywhere. So I am puzzled about what could be doing this. There are also still no buds, but there is lots and lots of new stalks/leaves.









UPDATE: I did look this up in my new Rose book (thanks Sandy) and I'm thinking this might be due to "Leafcutter Bees"? If that's the case, looks like there won't be much I can do.