Evicted

Firstly, here is my latest acquisition - 'Cracker Red' miniature rose. I loved the deep red color and the intricate petals. I didn't really need any new plants, but sometimes they just catch you off guard.

I have had a hard time both keeping up with the garden and with blogging. The scree garden, while good in theory has been a pain in the arse in execution. There are various issues:

• To make the garden we layed down landscape fabric, added in a mix of sand and soil, and then added some gravel on top. Plantings of creepy, crawly plants were added on the edges.


• The first problem came from the grass around the edges. It started creeping over the border and making its way through the gravel. Compared to the packed clay in the rest of the lawn, once it got into loose, friable soil it went crazy.


• Birds have been frequenting the garden and leaving poke stalk seeds in their droppings. There are poke stalks popping up everywhere. I used to eat poke a lot when I was growing up, but I'm not so into it now.


• There is some other low growing weed that is spreading like wildfire in the garden and I can't seem to get rid of it.


• Planting horsetails by my pond was about the stupidest thing I have done. They got down through a hole in the landscape fabric and now I'm pulling them up five feet away, where they have popped up through other holes in the landscape fabric.


• The callirhoe that I got last year didn't do much. So I moved it and it went nuts. It started getting long and lanky and killing the thyme that was under it. I was in a bad mood when I went out back and saw the mess that my garden was and it got uprooted and tossed. I liked the flowers on it, but not the growth habit. Maybe if I had more time I could see about keeping it trimmed, but anything that requires a lot of maintenance right now isn't happening.

I like the idea of the scree garden, but I'm going to have to do some modification this fall. I think I'm going to remove all of the gravel, soil and landscape fabric. I'm going to try to get the horsetails up. I'm going to have to see about doing the edges better to keep the grass out. This time I think I'm going to put down a couple of layers of landscape fabric this time. I am going to put only gravel on the pathways and just cut through a couple of places to plant the plants in. So far the plants that have worked out best are ice plant, creeping phlox elfin thyme and creeping thyme. The rest of the plants can't seem to stand up to the heat put off of the gravel when it's baking in the hot Alabama sun. I have quite a few phlox so I'm going to see if I can find some different ice plants to add in.

My roses are another issue that I'm worrying around. It's just hard to fit in taking care of really maintenance intensive plants. I've actually been thinking of digging up my roses and getting rid of them, except for a very few special ones. I have some of the more maintenance free plants that are ready to divide - daylilies, dahlias, coneflower and black-eyed susans. I am thinking about redoing the bed in front of our bedroom at least, with plants that have flowers longer in nthe season.