Central Midwest Gardening: March 2012 in like a lamb!, 5 by shortleaf

shortleaf wrote:
I will have time to admire the landscaping when I'm finished. But, do you ever really finish?! lol I had a bit of a moment recently when I was out there yesterday, the bees were visiting the little Gil-Over-The-Ground flowers that I plan to cover up with mulch! I felt bad! How can I cover up flowers that give honeybees so much pleasure? I loathe that Ground-Ivy! Well, I think that I came to the conclusion that I really shouldn't cover up so much ground with mulch, I may only cover about half as much ground as I planned. It just means I'll have to be more diligent with the weedwhacker, yardwork and unfortunately, the other RU - RoundUp. There is still going to be alot of mulch go down believe you me!

I did some work over by the privacy fence that I've been putting off. I offered to scrub all that moss off of the fence with a wire brush and the hose and paint it but she says she likes the moss. I put down those blond bricks but eventually when I get enuff rocks I'd like to have rocks for all the borders. I haven't unloaded the 8 buckets of rocks out of my car yet. I didn't really want to let on to my friend that I got more rocks but she walked by my car and she informed me about my cargo. She says she doesn't like the rocks but she hasn't stopped me from using them, like she has stopped me from doing other stuff outside, I think deep down inside, she likes them, but she doesn't want to say! Anyway, I plan to have something between the mossy fence and the border, just not sure what.

That 'Blue Fortune' Hyssop sure is funny. It didn't sprout from it's branches, it seems to be sprouting from the base pretty vigorously. I've got plans to put it by the shed eventually.

Here's the dark red Rose on the $5.99 Harbor Freight trellis. It's got many leaves already! You can see my big old Sombrero shadow!

I saw today that Soapwort has little pale pink flowers, they are pretty too. That's it in the blue fish next to one plant of Creeping Phlox. The Creeping Phlox gets more solid in color than that eventually, it just started flowering the other day.

That big Rose-Of-Sharon cutting has started budding afterall, Crit! After it gets more leaves, I'll unpot it from there and put the roots in that stuff that the Missouri nursery sent me Dogwood and Hazelnut seedlings in, it's good for shipping and I'll soak it beforehand. This isn't prolly an ideal time to do that but I didn't think it lived until now. It's in the pic with the little tiny leaves but a pretty big stick looking thing.

Here is my big pot of DitchLilies that I got from Happ and 2 pots of Irises from bulbs that I got from Imames at the Fall RU 09'. I just love to have pots of stuff on-hand. To onlookers (and neighbors), bunches of pots sitting around can't look good. But, they are all in the master landscaping plan! Fairly soon, I should be able to reduce my pots by about half when I get to see what is just pots of dirt, which is alot. I think a lot of stuff didn't get enuff cold to come back, but I don't know for sure. I water and care for potted plants just like I do planted plants.

Thanks for the compliment on my birdbath billyp, that thing was a hassle but I'm very glad it's here. Concrete statuaries and hardscaping lend a nice addition to a landscaping IMHO. I think they give an appearance of an invested and well planned landscaping, (which this one isn't really). I was on the code enforcement, cops and interested neighbors landscaping plan, but it's starting to come together now, after about 10 years!

Yeah, I hope it doesn't get too cold either, I gotta say I am tempted myself to put my houseplants, tomato starts and other starts out right away. I'll prolly chicken out tho and wait a couple weeks. I'd like to see more forecasts, for example, Thursday they are saying a low of 42°, that can't be good for Tomatoes and stuff. - http://www.kshb.com/subindex/weather/forecast/7_day_forecast

Will