Spider Appetites

The other day I saw a spider on the Septre'd Isle on the deck. Of course I left her alone because spiders will keep harmful bugs off my roses, right? By eating them, right?

This morning I checked up on the spider to make sure she was doing her job. She was merrily spinning a web around one of the buds.

Then I noticed a green speck on a leaf nearby. Lo and behold, it was the dreaded...




Aphids! Ugh. A whole fat family of them - Papa, Mama and Baby Aphid. They were greedily sucking the life out of my rose leaves.















The spider was nearby so I waited for some real action.

She moved around a bit, flinging web from leaf to leaf and finally got to the Aphids' feasting grounds.

I coached her... C'mon, you're almost there... just leap up and grab one!...






The tension grew as the spider crept up over the leaf. You're nearly in position... one swift jump and you'll have a juicy treat...

I held my breath as the spider got closer and closer when suddenly...







...that stupid spider turned away from the aphids and crouched in a menacing position toward me and my camera!

Duh, spider! Turn around, your meal is behind you! Aren't you hungry?

I waited so long that I got annoyed. So I took this shot and named it "Spider Annoying Me." Then I left because I couldn't stand it any more and let the spider eat in peace.

When I returned an hour later, the spider was nowhere to be seen and the Aphid Family was fatter than ever. I ended up mashing the aphids with my fingers.

Bah, humbug. Do spiders not eat aphids? Are spiders so dumb they can share a leaf with aphids and not even know it?

I still haven't bought any insecticides yet. But aphids are showing up more frequently now and it's hard enough just to keep them off the roses on the deck. The other 12 rose bushes in the yard are on their own.

Pat Austin's about to give birth!

wow.

There are ten more buds on the Pat Austin. This is the juiciest one.

This is almost as exciting as giving birth!



For a while this afternoon, I was afraid to leave the deck lest Pat Austin's bud burst open while I was gone. I guess roses don't bloom quite that fast, even though they look like it.

After counting more buds on the Pat Austin rose, I decided to make a chart to keep track of them all. I call it my Rose Maintenance chart. It has columns for the date, number of buds, number of blooms and "Troubles & Fixes." I'm clueless and a little scared about what might go in that last column. Probably stuff like aphid treatment, fertilizer and Beheading by Deer. ugh.

We counted all our buds. As of today, April 28, we have...

On the Deck: Fair Bianca #1 has 11 buds, Pat Austin has 11 buds and Sceptre'd Isle #1 has 11.

In the backyard: New Dawn at the bottom of the deck stairs has 0, newly planted Graham Thomas, Jude the Obscure and Eden each have 0. Marking the place where my Prince Charming is supposed to serenade me is Blush Noisette with an almost obscene ...drum roll.... 92 buds!!! 92!!! We counted twice to make sure that number was right and laughed at the sheer absurdity.

In the Side Yard: Zepherine Drouhin has 2.

In the Front Yard: Fair Bianca #2 has 19 buds, Fair Bianca #3 has 7 and the Sceptre'd Isle #2 by the mailbox has 2.

I had removed the tags from the three roses by the road and unfortunately did not glue the little rose pictures accurately on my paper layout. Therefore, we don't have a clue which rose is which. I didn't want to write the wrong numbers on my chart so I grabbed a nearby piece of bark and wrote the rose bud count on it. Mystery Rose #1 has 3 buds, Mystery Rose #2 has 0 and Mystery Rose #3 has 0. Mystery Rose #3 had a lot of eaten leaves. Grrr. I must get some insecticides before the problem spreads. We couldn't find any visible evidence of what ate the leaves. I won't know till they bloom which rose is James Galway, Queen of Denmark or the last Sceptre'd Isle.

That's a grand total of 158 rose buds! Mmm, mmm, mmm, I can almost smell them now. Splendid.

Rose Update

The volcano roses, Graham Thomas and Jude the Obscure, that we planted the other day aren't happy with their new life. Spending 67 days in the dungeon made them look positively anemic. Jude has numerous creepy white arms reaching up and Graham, with its one lone white cane and sickly detached limb, is bowing over. I wonder if dropping rose food pellets in the buckets of water would have made a difference. The plants desperately needed sun but at least they would have had something to eat.













Eden isn't nearly as blanched looking but is drooping dramatically more than Graham and Jude. I don't know anything about plant "shock" but Eden looks pretty shocked to me. Sad, sad, sad.













Zepherine Drouhin on the northwest side of the house is growing fast. Still no buds on it though. But my info says it does well on a north wall so we'll see if that's true. We may have planted it too far from the house though. I'll have to figure out a way to make some kind of stepped lattice for the rose to climb to reach the house.













There are buds on the two Fair Biancas in front of the house. One bush seems to be doing much better than its twin, even though they both started out looking the same and were planted the same. I'll have to watch and see if one is getting more sun than the other.














Blush Noisette is teasing me with a grand promise of blooms. Alas, this lovely display will be approximately 8 feet below the deck this year so I'll have to lean over the railing to see it. But I have visions of its loveliness, even if it is short.

If I had a Prince Charming that was so inclined, I'd send him a message, written on a scroll, that said... "Dear Prince Charming, Please stand by the flourishing pink rose bush under my deck if you are inclined to sing to me. Your song will rise with the scent of roses and bring a merry blush to my cheeks. Yours truly, the Moatless Princess." Yep, that's the message I'd send to a so-inclined prince.

BUGS!!!

I merrily took a photo of the most plump Pat Austin bud this afternoon, never suspecting I was actually taking a photo of teensy, insidious bugs. I uploaded the photo, zoomed in and WHAT is THAT! Gasp! Peril! Terror! Dread!

My gardening is one gasp after another. I don't have any insecticides yet and I have no clue what to buy. I'm going to march right back up to the deck and squish those nasties off my roses by hand. sigh.

The Lavender Lives and Rose Volcanos

Well, the second deadest lavender is making a concerted effort to live. Every day I check the three lavender plants. There used to be one teensy leaf-looking thing left on the most dead lavender but even that is gone now. All that's left is a little bump of dirt, just big enough to hold a tiny tombstone. "Here Lies Lavender Plant #3. It Smelled Nice, albeit Briefly." I'm hoping the plant is so desperately busy making roots underground that it has no energy left to stick out any leaves.

The expensive roses in the garage weren't doing so hot today. My beloved Graham Thomas actually had a slew of canes turned brown. How could I have let that happen to a $20 rose bush! Gasp. So late this afternoon, we planted them. Amazingly, those three rose bushes lasted 67 DAYS in buckets of water in the garage. Never again will I order roses without having a plan in place FIRST of WHERE I'm going to plant them. And we will "heel them in."

The last three roses are the highest climbers. We planned on putting them in the raised beds around the patio with something to climb. But the patio with raised bed is still in the Extremely Much Assembly Required stage. So we made three volcanos of dirt and planted the roses on top of the volcanos. Now all we have to do is put the patio in up to the level of the rose volcanos. I'm fairly certain we're supposed to create the raised bed first and then put in the plants. But today we put in the plants first and then we'll have to shovel the raised beds around them. The way I figure it -> if my dad can build a house first on the ground and then dig out a foundation under it second, surely we can plant some roses first and then put in a raised bed around them second.

After we planted the rose volcanos, the Chief Shoveler on the Rose Support Team accidentally hit one of the two remaining green canes of the Graham Thomas rose with a shovel and broke it. We were both silent for a minute. With solemn ceremony, I cut the precious stem off and then stuck it in the dirt nearby just in case it decides to grow. Besides, the Graham Thomas looked so forlorn with just one anemic branch sticking up that I figured it should be able to commiserate with it's freshly amputated limb.

On a happier note, I counted a total of perhaps 18 buds on the deck rose bushes! With more on the way. And there are now buds on the two Fair Biancas in the front yard too. Woot!

Gardening Updates

Miscellaneous gardening notes...

As of April 18, Blush Noisette, on the southwest corner of the house, has 35 tender buds! I don't know if this rose will climb all the way up to the deck this summer. It's supposed to reach 8' but I don't know how long that's supposed to take. A couple months? One year? Five years? Perhaps I should have planted a higher climber there so it would be sure to reach the deck. Today I'm going to read about insecticides. I'd hate for something to attack all those buds overnight.




As of April 18, Pat Austin has 5 plump buds. Yes! I'm really looking forward to seeing copper roses. Since Pat Austin is on the deck, I don't have to worry about deer getting it.

The Fair Bianca on the deck and the two out front have one or two teeny buds. None of the roses planted in the front yard by the road have any buds. The Zepherine Drouhin on the northwest side of the house is growing vigorously and will have to be staked soon. So far no buds on it.




The New Dawn at the base of the deck stairs is also growing vigorously and will need staking soon to train it to reach toward the deck rail.











FACT: If you don't work at a stone wall, it will just be a pile of rocks. Thinking a pile of rocks can pass for a stone wall won't work. The Chief Stone Hefter worked a lot on my pile of rocks this weekend so it's looking more like a real stone wall.

ADVICE: Think plans through or they won't work. If we had followed through with my disjointed plans for the patio, visitors' drinks would slide off the tilted patio table, their chairs would tip backwards and the stone wall would have been completely buried under a dirt & tile patio floor on one side and the raised flower bed on the other side. Good thing we didn't follow through with my disjointed plans. We've decided to make the patio level afterall so that means digging out a bit of yard and moving dirt around. We also decided to make the raised beds inside the stone wall instead of burying the stone wall on the outside with more dirt to make a raised bed. Duh!


No longer are plants disposable. NO plant will ever die again under my hands if I can help it. I'm babying the lavender and hoping against the odds that it will survive.

Dying plants, especially lavender, are heartbreaking to behold. There's nothing I can do now but wait.





Planting two Cascadia Petunias and a geranium in one planter might be crowding. So we now have seven crowded planters lining our deck rail. They look pretty and have the potential to be gorgeous. It took me and our 12 yo son about 1.5 hours to fill the planters. He did a meticulous job watering each plant and then carefully spreading mulch around the tops. I took four cuttings from the geraniums because a storm was brewing and I didn't want all the flowers to be wasted. Fortunately, the rain wasn't a downpour and there was no hail so the flowers I left on the plants fared well.

Coughs, Rocks, Mold, Geraniums

1. We're all sick with colds and coughs so gardening was limited the past week.
2. The Chief Rock Finder brought home some rocks the other day.
3. Despite the coughs and colds we moved rocks, piling them in the vicinity of the patio wall.
4. I discovered mold on the languishing lavender in the garage.
5. I panicked at seeing the mold so we planted the twelve ground phlox in the front yard, the nine miniature roses in three pots and the three lavender plants in two pots. The lavender will have to be moved to the raised bed around the patio eventually. But I thought it best to plant it immediately.
6. We trimmed all the dead growth off the lavender. It looks extremely sad. I don't know if it will make it.
7. Being ill, I forgot to tend the newly planted miniature roses the next day so parts of them died from lack of water and the heat.
8. I cut off the shriveled parts of the miniature roses.

I'm noticing a change in my attitude. Plants used to be disposable. Plants used to have little value. But never have I felt so rotten as when I saw my dying lavender. I had connected to it. I wanted it to live. I did not want it to die. Expense or no expense, the lavender represented something good and green, fragrant and hopeful and I wanted it to flourish. I feel ashamed and sad.

I was too sick to go out today but the Chief Wallet of the Rose Support Team and our daughter went to a real, true nursery today, the Homewood Nursery & Garden Center. I felt bad that I wasn't up to going with them. Last week, a friend took me there and it was exquisite walking around looking at so many fantastic plants. I impulsively almost spent hundreds but my gardening friend was more sensible. So I ended up spending nothing but got tons of ideas. Today at the nursery, our daughter picked out 7 geraniums in pink, salmon and coral for my planters on the back deck. She also bought some heather for her heather garden and a maidenhair fern which she promptly named Cyril.

I'm very excited about the geraniums and will plant them tomorrow, along with the still-ok, not-moldy Cascadia Petunias.

Roof Tiles, Stones and Snake Hotels

[Note: This entry was written on Saturday, April 08, 2006.]

"I don't know, man," yelled the Reuse Center forklift operator as he slowly lowered the heavy pallet of dirty terra cotta roof tiles onto the back of our old pickup. "I don't want to break your struts, ya know what I mean?"

He was right. The back of the pickup was sinking so low that either the shocks were about to blow or the front end of the pickup would shoot up off the ground. "Sorry, but you're gonna have to load them by hand," the man said as he moved the pallet back to the ground.

We didn't mind. Well, I should say the Rose Support Team did not express any displeasure at having to load 409 terra cotta roof tiles on the back of two vehicles in the rain. I was hoping the rain would stop by afternoon but it didn't. With or without rain, I was so pleased at getting the stack of tile within my budget of 50 bucks that I think the guys caught my excitement. The Rose Support Team formed an assembly line and in no time at all loaded almost half the tiles into the back of my van. The rest were lifted via forklift to the pickup truck.

"You know those are roof tiles. They're not strong enough to use for a patio because they're just roof tiles," the man cautioned.

Bah. Where seldom is hearrrrd, a discouraging worrrrd... Discouraging words won't stop me from putting in a patio! I blew the entire budget getting the plants so from now on, we're landscaping on a shoestring. I figure it this way - if the tiles break, they break. So right from the start, I'll plan my patio design to look good with broken tiles.

Woohoo! We're going to have a patio! Sweet. I never thought it would happen this year. According to my calculations, each tile covers 108.75 square inches. With four hundred nine 14.5" x 7.5" tiles and a pile of broken ones, set 1/2" apart, we can cover at least 340.84 square feet for the patio.

This morning was the first time we actually sat down together and seriously discussed ideas for the backyard. Before this morning, it was all rather vague and a patio wasn't even in the picture. After all, we're on a shoestring budget. But the Garage Garden is growing Jumanji-style; the roses are climbing, the phlox wants to creep and the petunias want to cascade. The nine miniature roses, three lavender plants, and baggies of dry echinops and poppies seem to be giving up and only utter a forlorn sigh when I enter the garage so we have to move quickly.

I decided I only want to plant each plant once. According to the gardening books, moving plants is hard work. I'm not sure I can motivate the Rose Support Team to do frequent transplants. Also, the gardening books give the impression that frequently moving plants might cause them "stress". That's a new one to me. How does a plant get stressed? This means my remaining three climbing roses just can't be plopped down anywhere lest I give them undue "stress" and they decide to not bloom for me just for spite so this morning we had no choice but to sit down and come up with a real plan. No more dreaming. No more stalling. We made a real, bona-fide, little-circles-and-squiggles-drawn-on-paper plan. We even used colored pencils.

The design we came up with for the backyard is especially attractive because it's made to grow. It's open-ended so we can add to it year to year. Sections of hedge have room to stretch. Beds are placed so they can be made smaller or bigger. Grass areas are smaller, meaning more economical to keep nice but can easily be turned into a hedge maze if we want. There's space to put a porch swing in a secluded spot at the back of the property, an above-ground pool for the kids and a spot for a pergola. The final design is one of continuity, not a haphazard look. Well, it's my personal, optimistic opinion that we are achieving continuity. Best of all, I have another year to come up with boxwood money for the Hedge Maze. Yes!

As we planned the landscaping, the most inspiring amongst our resource materials spread out over the dining room table was the Stonescaping Idea Book by Taunton Home. A Hedge Maze is very important to my comfort but seeing rocks in the backyard is more so. Rocks are permanent. They lend a feeling of security, strength and tranquility. I enjoy their color, their texture, their shadow and even their earthy smell. They remind me of home and my dad's stone walls.

My mom doesn't think as fondly of the stone walls on their property. "All those lovely stone walls you see out there are really homes of snakes," she tells me. "Many snakes. Snake hotels! Do you want snakes everywhere?"

Now I'm not sure there are actually that many snakes living in those walls. I've never seen one in all the years I've visited. But I must say I had not thought of our patio wall becoming a snake hotel. We did see one slithering, hissing brown snake in the backyard flower bed last fall. We never did see where it went as it disappeared under all the sticks and dead leaves in the garden area. The Chief of the Rose Support Team suspects it was a poisonous one. Hopefully our cats, owls and deer will keep the snakes from seeking accommodations in our snake hotel. "Sorry pal, we're all full this week. Move along to the shed next door or stay and be dinner."

The Stonescaping book doesn't mention snakes. But it does specify rocks under foot should be 2 to 3" thick. Maybe that's so a snake will be less likely to live under it. The terra cotta roof tiles we got are only 5/8" thick. So we're taking a risk in using them for a patio. I'm going to search the internet for info about using terra cotta roof tiles for a patio. Surely, someone, somewhere, has tried it.

I'm rather fond of the ideas in the Stonescaping book that suggest placing the stones 3 or 4" apart and planting thyme or blue star creeper in between. I think a mixture of spongy moss and thyme between terra cotta tiles would make a lovely surface for the patio. The extra inches between the tiles will give us even more coverage too. Hopefully, the roots of plants won't lift the thin tiles. I'll just have to make sure the kids jump on each tile every day to keep the tiles down and the snakes out. Or maybe we'll take advantage of the two nail holes in each tile and nail them to the ground. That oughta work.

Curving around the back side of the patio is where we're putting the stone wall. It won't be very high, just high enough to hold the raised bed behind it. Our property offers nary a rock so we'll have to get them somewhere else. The Reuse Center sells rocks exactly like the thousands on my parent's property for $2.00 a piece! Imagine that! That means a stone maze will cost a zillion more than a boxwood hedge maze. Rats. But that also means my mom's snake hotels are worth thousands of dollars! I'll have to tell her. Maybe that will cheer her.

To save money, we'll start the wall by rearranging some of the rocks already on our property, such as taking some from the rock borders around the front flower beds. Adding to the rock wall is going to be a lifetime hunt. "Hi dear. How was your day at work? Did you bring home any rocks today?"

Now that we have a plan, I can focus. I'm focusing on the patio area so we can put the stone wall around the edge of the patio and put in the raised bed behind the stone wall around the patio so we can plant the climbing roses and languishing lavender in the raised bed behind the stone wall 'round the patio. Then we'll be set to have a picnic, jump on the tiles and make sure the snakes don't move in.

Like a bunch of dominoes, gardening is. You can't do one thing till you do a dozen others. No, make that 409 others. Stacked. Without any snakes in between.

I Completely Forgot about the Pool!

[Note: our internet was down for a bit. But we're back online again faster than ever. I've got quite a few gardening entries to catch up on. This entry is from Wednesday, April 5th, 2006.]

Optimism run amok. That's what happens when a new gardener believes she can install two arbors, build a pergola, plant numerous flowers with varying heights and sun needs and keep deer away from expensive roses. That's what happens when a new gardener's optimism is convinced ground will grow anything and moats are feasible landscaping options.

Unfortunately, my newbie optimism completely forgot about the pool.

The kids want one. Not a big pool, just big enough to swim a couple strokes before you crash into the other side. Maybe 23' long, 12' wide and four feet deep, with a slightly sunken deep end if we can find a suitable spot in the backyard without running into the septic field.

This is a huge complication. Where will the arbors go? The pergola? The patio? The hedge maze and rose obelisks and the moat? What about the precious patch of full sun that is getting whittled smaller and smaller? What about the precious gardening budget that has already been whittled down, down, down, .... nearing the size of single pencil stake in a birdbath-size veggie patch? Looks like it'll be a One-Tomato Garden this year.

Hail!

Hail! Literally. It hit the front door like a blast of gravel. I peeked out the front door to check it out. That was scary! The weather was freaky, going from warm and bright, to black skies, high winds and hail in a very short time. So quickly that I had no time to check on any rose bushes.

We had removed the mulch from a couple roses in the front yard but not the ones on the deck. The deck plants had the most leaves and seem very robust. They're growing up right through the mulch, despite the couple below-freezing days we had a week or so ago.

I took a photo of the penny-size hail on the deck in the middle of the storm. The white streaks in the photo are actually falling hail. The hail piled up around the rims of the planters and accumulated on the deck.

Amazingly, we had sunny skies less than two hours after the storm passed and the roses on the deck didn't look damaged at all.

I didn't check the roses in the front yard because I figured if the leafy ones on the deck were fine, the canes in the front yard are probably fine too.