hosta – Barefoot Lily Lady

Five Minute Friday — Have

Sharing this post with the Five Minute Friday writing community – today’s word prompt is HAVE.

Coffee in hand, I have been sitting in my favorite chair taking a break from today’s gardening endeavors. The knees of my blue jeans are wet and a bit muddied because I should have made an extra trip to the garage to retrieve my knee cushion (but didn’t). My cushion is an old seat cushion from my brother’s wheelchair and has served me well for several years now. It’s nice and cushy for my aging knees, and big enough to provide a dry place for me to sit when the grass is wet with morning dew. [I am making a mental note to grab it when I go back outside in a few minutes.]

I chose the east side of my house as my focus for today’s weeding and cleanup endeavors. In years past, it has been the side of the house which few people see. However, this year we took down two unhealthy spruce trees in our front yard, giving passersby an unobstructed view of a flowerbed which had previously been fairly well hidden. I have decided to put a little extra effort into this garden space and see if I can make something special out of it–something which my neighbors can enjoy.

But now, at this moment, it’s overgrown with lamium (a noxious weed disguised as a plant), and many weeds and over-wintered, water-soaked hosta leaves. As I pull my hand rake through the tangled bed of yuck, the green shoots of this year’s floral promise are slowly uncovered.

There, under last season’s detritus, are the green tips of an emerging hosta, alongside the peony my dad dug for me from his garden a few decades ago.

As I cleared away last year’s fallen leaves, I found this lovely patch of pulmonaria bedazzled with pink and blue little bells. Even when the flowering finishes, I just love the fuzzy, bespeckled leaves. [Take a gander here if you’d like more photos and info about the pros and cons of this lovely plant.]

April weather is absolutely crazy in Wisconsin. Spring? Summer? Winter? It can’t make up its mind! One day I’m working barefoot in my garden–the next day snow squalls are springing up here and there, or hail is pelting the house. Our crazy weather reminds me that life is unpredictably subject to change without advance notice. In this earthly body, I have this moment and this breath–and have no guarantee of the next. This thought encourages me to make every moment and every breath that I can a beautiful one and to make sure my heart is ready for that first breath of heaven.

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. ~ 2 Cor. 5:1 (ESV)

Six on Saturday: It’s a Dirty Job

It’s midnight. Given all the time I’ve spent the past few days in my garden, you’d think I’d be sleeping. This week has found me out in my garden tidying up flowerbeds. The casual passerby probably won’t notice what I accomplished, but I see it in the little things. Buckets and bins full of weeds and garden debris. Dead branches trimmed out of trees and bushes (courtesy of my wonderful husband). Spent peony blossoms removed. Bits of this and that moved here and there. Korean lilac bushes trimmed back by a third. Flowerbeds weeded and mulched. There’s much more to do, but it feels so good to see progress. Without further ado, here are my six:

This week I’m seeing Japanese iris blooming. They always seem to wait until their German bearded iris and Siberian iris cousins are finished blooming before they unfurl their lovely petals. This one is my favorite and it looks adorable next to my painted mailbox (I keep a spare set of garden hand tools in there). The purple is not as vibrant as it was last year, but they are still gorgeous.

2) There’s a cute not-so-little backyard garden center on the edge of a nearby town. The lady pots up divisions of her perennials and sells them for $5 each. I try to visit her each Spring and bring home a new treasure (or two or three). Last year I added this lovely bit on the front edge of a very sunny front yard flowerbed. It has doubled in size, has very interesting and attractive crinkled foliage, and is loaded with flower spikes in the prettiest shade of purple. I think I’d like to add a few more of these to my garden next year (might even be able to divide this one).

3) I volunteered some time earlier in the week to tidying up the gardens at BeeHive, the assisted living memory care facility where my mom lived for the last year of her life. I was trimming up a dwarf crabapple tree and found this sweet little robin’s nest with three napping babies.

Snuck a quick photo while Momma Robin was out shopping for breakfast.

4). My clematis vines on my arbor entrance to the backyard are definitely climbing and just might meet up in the middle by summer’s end. The pink clematis on the left is ‘Princess Diana’, a lovely bell-shaped rebloomer. I should have trained it to the trellis earlier, as doing so now might damage some of the blossoms. I’m still not sure what the purple one on the right is called, but it’s a transplant from my mom’s garden in Milwaukee and I’m just happy it’s thriving and blooming at relatively the same time as ‘Princess Diana’.

I’m considering painting the arbor next year. It’s about 15 years old, but still in good shape; however, it seems to be made of 2 different metals, which are aging differently too. As you might have noticed in previous SOS posts, I’ve painted a lot of things purple as garden accents, but am unsure what I’d do with this. Should I leave it more neutral, or give the arbor a punch of color? (Please leave a comment below if you’d like to weigh in and help me decide.)

5) The surprise Asiatic lily bulb (a surprise only because I forgot that I planted it last fall and had NO IDEA what color it was) is now open. Definitely a pretty shade or orange.

6) And what would a garden be without lush greenery? I’m loving how much this hosta bed next to the deck on the north side of my house is filling out this year.

That completes my better late than never “Six on Saturday” post for this week. Here’s my invitation to join with me and gardeners from all around the world who post photos (words optional) of six things in the garden on a Saturday. Let me tip my hat to The Propagator, the creator of Six on Saturday, who provides the forum for gardeners to virtually traipse through one another’s gardens every week. It’s a lovely way to show off our gardens (both the pretty and the yummy), share knowledge, and even glean some advice for how to deal with our garden failures. Have a great week, friends.

Six on Saturday: Summer Days are Here (finally!)

We can’t seem to catch a break from rain around these parts in Wisconsin, but I’m up for a little walk through the garden. If you come along with me on tonight’s barefoot garden tour, it’ll be a bit sloshy underfoot. If you want to stay dry and not have to swat at mosquitoes, you can visit other gardens all around the world with just a click. Just pop on over to our Six on Saturday meme host’s site at https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/

On our little tour you’ll see that my daylilies and Asiatic lilies are beginning to bloom, with lots of promising blossoms yet to open on their scapes and peduncles (pictures to come, I’m sure). Clematis has been detained by our wonky wet weather, but the blossoms on all my plants are going strong now. I’m not sure what’s eating them, but bugs are threatening to munch their lovely floweriferousness…but I’m determined to keep after the pesky bugs! Oh, and you’re going to love my Japanese iris…simply gorgeous!

Knowing I wanted to paint some old chairs to serve as garden art, my daughter picked up two chairs discarded by the side of the road and brought them to me. My granddaughters Mia and Noelle, and honorary grandgirl, Natalie, stayed with me a few days last summer, so put them to work painting one of them. I think they did a fantastic job. I placed it in the garden where it can serve as a support for a little bit of my garden phlox.