Catnip blooms in the parkway garden. There are four big bunches of catnip this year. After blooming and seeding out these plants will be done for the year. Raspberry bushes will fill in nicely. Hopefully next season the catnip will be able to grow amongst the raspberry bushes. It looks like a lot of seed will be spread from the current crop.
Category Archives: Ground Level
Wildflowers Catch Afternoon Sun
Wildflowers in front parkway catch afternoon sun light as it filters through trees.
Catnip Blooms
Catnip blooms in the front parkway; finally! There are three bunches of catnip that somehow survived all the turmoil that happened with that corner at the end of last season. With the added garden space there is more catnip this year than last. It will be interesting to see where it migrates next year as the raspberry bushes begin to dominate.
New Front Parkway
A new corner was installed last season and they turned the front into a front parkway. A container grew raspberries and catnip here in previous years and now the entire 20+ feet is an in ground garden. I was able to save the mature raspberries from last season and they are doing well. Catnip survived and I planted Cleome, and a lot of flowering seeds. There are some volunteer tomatoes and some plants I can’t identify.
The alley planters were disassembled and all that potting soil was used to somewhat raise the center of this bed. In the distance I built a raised bed structure to contain the potting soil. That box is completely wildflower.
I’m letting all tree seedlings grow. By the time the weather cleared to plant trees it was too late so I have to wait until August. If some seedlings look good I may defer to them to grow into full size trees in the next 20 years or so.
Sump pump and new front parkway
Luckily I had a new sump pump laying around to pump water off the veranda. The extremely cold winter froze the drain so water from melting ice is pooling and finding its way inside. So far the pump works although it must be operated manually. This wouldn’t have been necessary had I kept vigilant about keeping snow cleared on the veranda level.
It’s raining today and the pump has kept a lot of water from draining into the downstairs bedroom. I suspect there is a small breach on a corner seam that pretty much stays dry being under an eave so the leak never became a problem.
Pretty soon I’ll start feeding the birds and I have quite a few new garden related construction projects planned. I am eliminating all alley planters this year to maybe be rebuilt in 2015.
The wood from the alley planters will be reused into replacement planters for the main roof and front corner parkway. The front parkway will be a completely new planting this spring. More on this later. To the left is a pic taken right before the thaw. The pile of shoveled snow is the new in ground parkway that will be planted with two new trees and the mature raspberry bushes that grew in a container for the last 4 years. Hopefully the snow pile protected the raspberry roots so they’ll sprout in the next month or two.