Winded Again

Wednesday was beautiful but oh, the wind!  Once again Carl and I revisited the fact that we need a windbreak of some sort to the west of our garden.  We hauled all the potted plants out of the wind because everything was getting flattened and broken off.  That's the challenge in gardening---you're either fighting bugs, moisture levels, high or low temps or  extreme wind, but, of course, all of the above pale in comparison to the Holy Terror of all weather phenomena..........Hail.  We have been very lucky in recent years and have avoided hail completely, but one year I remember a hailstorm that knocked the buds off all the lilies, flattened all the annuals and decimated the hosta leaves, and sounded like gunshots hitting the house and windows;  and it was only pea-sized.  Whenever I hear the words 'baseball-sized hail' I cannot even begin to imagine the damage to everything in it's path, such a waste. 

 'Blue Butterflies' delphinium

Carl had scheduled vacation in anticipation of the canceled bus trip from Appleton that never materialized but decided to take the day off anyway in an effort to help put the garden to rights.  I appreciated the help but even Carl had a case of the GADS today and found himself wandering here and there doing this and that.  At the end of the day he said he was exhausted, but couldn't really say why, as he didn't feel any one thing was finished.  It did my heart good to know maybe it's not me, maybe it's the gardens that affect anyone who tries to approach them in a methodical manner?

 'Skylands' Oriental Spruce

  The yellow spruce, 'Skylands' grew out very nicely this spring, in fact, this is the best it's looked in years.  It is a bit thin though, maybe I could prune it a little, but I'm sort of happy with the fact it's not so dejected-looking right now.

Gaillardia and 'May Night' salvia

We had an impromptu garden visitor today who was very pleasant and didn't pass out from the sight of many unruly weeds.  Bless her.

'Artemis' Salvia

Mom came down around 2PM to help weed the formal garden and I planted a flat of additional annuals in the middle beds.  It is obvious we are going to need to take everything out of the outer perennial bed and start over, since plants are overgrown and weedy.  Our plan is to remove all of the granite stones which form the 'wall' of the outside of the formal garden and replace them with limestone to match the inner walls. Another aspect of this is the ability to then make the garden smaller in diameter by quite a few feet.  We talked about making this our first spring project this year, but since the first garden walk was so early, we decided against it in favor of trying to close up a few other beds and finish the Pachyberm.   The formal garden remodeling chore will be our Spring 2011 chaos.

Around 6PM, Joel joined us and we left for Green Bay and the first chit chat of the hosta club season.  Beautiful garden, as always.  Some people just have that special touch it takes for perfection. ( I don't.  I have to  remember my mantra, 'progress not perfection'.)  We caught a bite to eat at a restaurant and came home and watched another episode of a show we've been following.

 Back to the chaos tomorrow,
  Karen