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Happy Birthday To Me!  Today is my 39th birthday, and while it has been a mostly peaceful day, I have found myself avoiding a lot of memories and feelings that are just under the surface.  I just wasn’t in a place to deal.

I spent the first half of the day listening to episodes of the podcast Frangela: The Final Word.  TOO FUNNY!  I love these two, and have for a long time on The Stephanie Miller Show.  I don’t know why it took me so long to get into their podcast.  I’m glad I did though.  After a bit of that, I took a nice nap on the front porch, where I discovered one of the kittens had returned.  I don’t have faith in the survival of the others, but his return offered at least a glimmer of hope.  My nap was followed by going up to spend time with my dad, brother, nephew, and roommate.  Justin made vegan chicken burgers and fries and the rest of us gave Conner a hard time.  I know he was getting frustrated, but it was kinda fun anyway.

The gathering was fairly brief, a little chaotic, but okay.  I do find myself needing to manage my expectations of others in these situations.  I have a tendency to want people to put their own issues away for a few hours, and at least give the appearance that they care to spend time with me.  But they don’t.  I should know better.  I don’t mean to sound accusatory at all; they are just living their lives as normal.  It’s me who is expecting too much.

I’ve had a wonderfully productive week.  I got the shelving assembled and put in that goes along the east wall of my bedroom.  I’m putting things together slowly with it in; I don’t want it to just feel like a pile of stuff, so I’m going through things and purging a little as I go… very little.  I did identify some books on ikebana that I intend to find a new home for… if I don’t change my mind.  Those books are so thin that it will hardly make a difference in the end!  I finally put some books on the shelves in the living room as well; I’ve had three shelves empty for the past year or so, which is silly really since I had books in boxes waiting to be put out.

Justin helped me put in a row of junipers that will hopefully mature into a nice hedge to break up the front yard, and we also put in another chaste tree up at the house.  Things seem to be coming together slowly in the yards.  I need to spend some time cleaning up the flowerbeds at the house;  they are covered in weeds, need mulch, and the plants could be pruned.

Plants showed up!  I’m not sure why they were sent so early, but part of the order that was supposed to arrive in November showed up in the mail.  It isn’t a good time for planting.  I might look at how to hold them until fall; they are bare root plants.  If I can’t easily wait, I’ll need to get those in the ground or at least in planters in the next couple of days.  I’m not sure how well things will do if they are planted in August, but it does look like we will have a rather mild week and that will help.

The orange rose, which had put on very pink blooms before, has changed and the newer blooms are much more orange.  Maybe it needs to mature before the roses will be their true color, and maybe they will be pale.  Either way, I’m really liking the look of these and I’m glad I put them near the porch.  In time they will be tall enough to tie to the side of the porch and they can be enjoyed like the ‘Fourth of July’ or ‘Golden Showers’ roses are.

So this next week’s plans are all about figuring out those plants that arrived early.  I do need to mow and get started on the flowerbeds as well, but I will also spend some time uploading more blog posts.  It’s nice to be ahead of the game.  I usually stay three or four weeks ahead, but I’m only a few days ahead at the moment and need to manage things better to make sure the blog is always active.  On that note, I’m looking for feedback on what is working and what isn’t.  Leave me comments on this post or on any post you want so I know what people are thinking.

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I have never been very much into gardening.  I love having things growing around me, but the process of actually putting those things in the ground and taking care of them… no.  But I’ve found myself with a lot of need for distraction lately.  So, I have turned to gardening.  In the heat.  It;s keeping my brain occupied, but I also keep remembering something my brother talks about all the time: managing one’s expectations.

For years, I’ve watched my parents return from nurseries and garden centers with car loads of beautiful plants for the flowerbeds, but with no idea where they will go or who will plant them.  Inevitably, most of the plants would end up underwatered, unplanted, neglected, or planted in the wrong spots.  The whole ordeal that had started off as fun would end up a disappointment, and a source of frustration.  The expectations did not meet the reality.  The way they managed that was to try to change the reality around them, but that never worked.  Brent’s point was always that it was the expectations that were the problem.

I lived for many years in Alaska.  I love the climate that promotes lots of beautiful growth, but with lots of shade and very little heat.  I would love to have a garden full of cypress trees draped above head, ferns popping out along the bases of the trees, and fuchsias in hanging pots lining the porch.  Moss would grown on the roof of the shed and everyday a light rain would keep the soils moist and the plants would grow up around me and there would be flowers in bloom all summer.  I want a beautiful deck to enjoy the cool evenings and have people over.  Unfortunately, that is not the situation I find myself in.  If I was constantly trying to make that happen, I would spend a lot of my time disappointed and convinced that gardening doesn’t work.  What I have to do is work within the framework available to me.

I want tall shade plants:  Junipers and crapemyrtles are excellent plants that grown to 10-14 feet and provide a great amount of shade.  They have the added benefit of attracting birds and butterflies.  So, I am planning a landscape that depends on these two plants primarily as shade plants.

I want lots of flowers:  Roses.  Roses in Oklahoma, well in my part of Oklahoma, require little care and bloom almost all year.  Climbing roses tied against the house give a nice shade to the inside and allow for the appreciation of blooms.  I also cannot think of a flower that comes in a greater variety of shapes and sizes.  I’ve had a lot of luck with roses, so I’ve popped them in strategically around the house.

I want plants growing on the ground that aren’t grasses:  Grasses are a pretty common xeriscape option, especially as I live on the border of two grass prairies.  I don’t care for them though.  What I do love is vinca, or periwinkle.  Vinca keeps my flowerbeds full of green leaves without having them be full of weeds and grasses.  It also helps keep my soils moist, which the other plants appreciate.

Moss growing on the roof??? Okay, I admit this one is harder to substitute.  So, I’ve decided to try Virginia Creeper.  It does grow wild here, but usually deep in the wooded areas.  If I can provide the right amount of moisture, I’m hoping I can get this creeping vine to grow up the side of the metal shed or vinyl siding on the house.  This one is going to require more effort, and I plan to start it next Spring.

Daily rain?  Now I’ve gone too far!  Brent and I have talked a lot about irrigation systems.  I’m going to invest in the right things so that next year I can have both irrigation and misting available around the house.

I want a new deck:  My back porch is rotting.  It’s time for it to go, and with Brent’s help I’d like to add on a ground level deck with steps down from the house.  It’d be a nice place to spend evenings, as the back yard gets all the evening shade.  That project is happening this fall.

When I look at my plans, they seems overly ambitious.  I worry I’ve gone too far with what I want to do.  Maybe I have.  I’m trying to keep it simple, space out my work, and achieve something more than I have now.  And I have probably set my expectations too high.

So, I’m not going to be creating a replica of the gardens of Versailles, and I won’t be building a living sculpture.  There won’t be any sidewalks with flowers arched above to take a stroll through or fountains with flamingos.  That’s okay.  It doesn’t need to be outlandish to be beautiful.  My plan will probably get pared down over time, or I will wait another year to complete parts of it.  It will be mine, and that is what I’m excited about.  I never really cared about gardening until I started getting my hands dirty.  It’s fun to transform a landscape and to see the plants take shape over time.

 

Here are the plants I’m interested in ADDING to my landscape:

Here are some of the plants I already have that I wouldn’t mind having more of: