Small Victories on the Cottage Garden Front

It's good to have some success plans for the garden.  Sometimes, plants don't come out the victor in these skirmishes with invasive grasses, hot winds and little rain.

My idea for moving some of the husky types to the front Cottage Garden is coming along.  First of all, I dug up the Shasta Daisy that was hogging the space next to the Diana, Princess of Wales Rose.  The book said to gently pull the roots apart.  The book always says that, because people who write gardening advice are sadists.  All of the root masses I've come across, with the exception of irises,  make a Gordian Knot seem easy.  So I did what I usually do, and cut the plant with a shovel.  I planted the four pieces at various spots in the thick mat of grass and they have thrived and bloomed.  Amazing.  Next year, they will triumph over even more grass.

To the right and back is the recently sheared sage plant of some enormous proportions. Beyond that is the gone-to-seed coreopsis.

Out back, the rose thanked me by putting on quite a display and even now is into a second flush of bloom.

Back to the Cottage Garden.  The Coreopsis plants were their rambunctious selves, sprawling over everything around them.  Talk about elbows on the table.  I let them go to seed.  They are such rowdies that even tossing the pulled-up stalks starts a new patch, as was evidenced by some near the porch where I threw some last year.  I really love these guys.  They are so cheery.

The sage plant was an idea the former owners had.  I hack it back after it blooms but I think there's no getting rid of it, since it's too close to the house for explosives.  I don't really use that much sage.  We did try it as a steeped tea and it wasn't too bad, with lemon and sugar.  The bees and even tiny butterflies were all over it, having a feast.

After starting some datura seeds much too early and babying them along, I found dozens of volunteers where I had them last year.  I transplanted a few and they have made better growth than my pitiful specimens.  They have had a bit of a struggle but I've carried bowls of water to them.  The bowls have dirt in the water from rinsing veggies.  I don't want the dirt down the drains and so carry it to the daturas.

Due to the semi-drought, I haven't had to mow these last few weeks, which gave the chicory the opportunity to bloom.  They aren't really a candidate for the cottage garden because they  bloom beautifully in the mornings and look like stickery weeds in the afternoons.  Here, they are growing in the driveway, where they pester people getting out of their cars.  They are seen all along the roads here in summer, coming back even stronger after being mowed.  Unlike me, they like the dry rocky conditions.

Next, I will move some of the daylilies, seen above.  They are another plant that can hold its own against grasses.  Last fall, I dug up one beautiful yellow one and got 14 plants along the garden fence, using my hatchet technique with the shovel.  The fencing I added to the barbed wire to keep cows from munching on my side; they love daylilies.

Now, I'm turning my attention to the vegetable garden, where I'm discovering that a watched tomato doesn't turn red.

Dewdrop Gizmos

It's good to have lots of hobbies, in case one dries up, as in the case of my recent gardening efforts.  That left me earnestly hoping for much-needed rain.  At the same time, I wished for clear skies for stargazing.  Apparently, my ambivalence resulted in clouds but no rain.

While I waited for either rain or clear skies, I knocked together this astronomy work table on the front porch.  I nailed the top of an old corner coffee table to the porch railings.  The idea here is to save the stargazing atlases from heavy dew.  I was getting tired of running back into the house to check on what I was seeing.  This elegant invention features two 2x2 boards supporting an old storm window.  The Foulers left dozens of the windows in various outbuildings.  The boards and glass are just laid on the table top and can be moved to the wrought iron table on the back deck when I want to see what's up in the north.

At Walmart, I found lots of  non-traditional astronomy equipment recently.  There was a baby bed mattress cover to keep the dew from soaking  my adjustable office chair.  The package said it would hold several cups of  liquid, which made me wonder if they hadn't heard of diapers.  While I was at it, I got an eye patch and an eyeglasses chain.  Also on my list was a piece of lightweight black fleece to cover my head to block out stray light.  I can hear cars approaching some distance away, which gives me time to toss the cloth over the telescope and duck into the house.  There, I shut my eyes tight until it passes.  All that is to preserve my night vision.  For that purpose, I have a red-beam LED astro flashlight, from Orion Telescopes and Binoculars.

So, I frequently am wandering around the house in the dark,  wearing an eye patch and black cloak, using the red-beam light to not step on the dog or cats.  I wonder what they think of all that.  They sometimes look a little worried about me.  I assume they take it in their stride, but that's only because they don't know how to roll their eyes.

My Junk Motif

My carpentry skills are such that a trellis-like affair I once made for cucumbers was downright rickety. This year, I put up this sturdy creation from fence posts and the trellis netting. I may be feeble at carpentry, but I'm good at pounding in posts.  Winds won't topple this one.

For some time, I've wanted to grow pole beans.  The bean towers shown in the gardening catalogs were terribly expensive.  Then I came upon a junky old TV antenna down at the pile of clutter that the Foulers left behind.  Perfect, I thought.  Cutting off a few feet with a hacksaw made it the right height.

I dug a hole in the last of the compost heap, soon hitting the clay layer.  It was a bear to dig but tamping the clay down around the pole had the same effect as setting the pole in cement.

Ground staples hold the twine for the Kentucky Wonder pole beans to grow up, as soon as they get brave and dare to climb up the rigging of the Adventureland I've made for them. Ahoy!  Cows off the starboard. Prepare to run aground, Fair Matey!

Meanwhile, the National Pickle cukes and the Cocozelle zucchini are coming on in the spot that had some soil amendments but is still mostly clay.

The water company guy, a local farmer, told me that the Foulers scraped all the topsoil off the garden area to use around the house.  That explains why I've had such a struggle to grow things; I'm working with subsoil.  Swell.

Up at the falling-down fishing shack, I found this handy wash tub.  Pushing open the door to get the tub out, I failed to notice, on account of wearing a visor hat, that one of the ceiling 2x4's was resting on the top of the door.  Had the beam not been suffering from dry rot, I'm sure it would have hurt a lot more when it bonked me on the head.

This is my simple water catchment system. Rainwater from the roof over the fruit cellar steps collects in the washtub and the other bucket.  I fill kitty litter jugs from the drain in the bottom of the tub.  In a normal year, the water isn't needed and in a dry year, it's barely a drop in the bucket, literally.  This is turning out to be a dry year.  I can think of all sorts of better schemes but they are more expensive than just running up the water bill watering the plants.  Sort of a Catchment-22.