Think when the mimosa goes I’m gonna replace it with a wisteria standard, which’ll still have the thick cascading color effect (especially starting from a base behind a retaining wall feet above the sidewalk) but not climb enough to compete with the other canopies around

(A “standard” is something not naturally a “tree” grown shaped into a tree form. The “smoke tree” already out front is really a smoke bush standard. Wisterias are vines, training them to standard has them growing a “trunk” up a support pole and spreading from there.)

Annual bulbs that were set too late last year coming in nicely this one, too.

Appreciating all I’ve got done with yard work this year but then realizing all the stuff I didn’t get to (like establishing lavender underneath the window I sit next to), but then realizing I’m probably going to live here for the rest of my life and I’ll have other seasons

(but I should prioritize getting the trees in – I’m going with a Japanese flowering theme, ume, sakura, and kaki – they’ll need years to grow and bear fruit)

hexafelid:

rustingbridges:

vriskakinnieaynrand:

i’m still surprised blueberries grow so far from maine tbh. like i get it, blueberries grow in oregon and georgia, but blueberries are such a maine thing, even more so than the way pawpaws are a DC thing

(pawpaws are overrated, the real DC fruit is the american persimmon. pawpaws are another entry in the long list of presumed neurotoxic Annonaceae that all taste the same, but the american persimmon naturally tastes like pumpkin pie. as long as you pick out the weird flecks of pure tannins)

huh I’ve never heard of maine in connection to blueberries, altho, honestly, no one ever talks about maine for any reason ime, which is presumably how maine likes it

I always associated them with michigan, but I suppose this is a regional thing - the biggest blueberry growing states are apparently washington and georgia

wild blueberries grow, afaict, literally everywhere in north america that isn’t a desert. anyway blueberries kick ass. they’re basic but that’s because they are both easy and good

apropos of nothing but I’m finding it hilarious to call blueberries basic, because their soil pH requirements are pretty acidic! they are specifically difficult to grow in much of my state because of our basic pH limestone soils ~

Yeah, they’re natively understory plants in pine forests (pines both prefer acidic soils and – by drawing from deeper, concentrating acidity in needles, and dropping them to the surface – create acidic regions, managing their own pH and inhibiting competitors with more neutral requirements from establishing). It’s not coincidence blueberries were domesticated in 1911 in New Jersey, home of the Pine Barrens. My stand is gonna be at the base of a lone Coast Redwood.

Took a rest day on like Monday?, feel weird taking another, but c'mon, start of the rainy season is a yard work holiday

kushblazer666:

the joe biden seeds and stems copypasta is just what you hear from a “weed today is too strong MFer” when you show them high times’ top strains of 1977 🙄

Yard Task Update

Task: Days Spent/Days Budgeted

tasks done this update in bold

(Completed tasks in parentheses)

Okay, got a good day of work in on the top-level bamboo. That represents 1.5 since I predicted it would be 3 and yeah, seems like maybe 3 half-days left, gotta let the dirt dry and unclump between washes.

Some daylight left so I got into the lower bamboo, the shoots and rhizomes aren’t as thick so instead of swinging the cultivator fork in and prying apart I just chip at the edge of the root mass with the mattock blade and crunch through.

Tonight was the rainshower that signals the end of the summer dry season, so ahead of that I finished getting things safe & dry. Still need to assemble the firewood rack so that’s just a pile under a tarp for now; the long branches survived last winter under the big pine and this year they’ll have cinderblocks keeping them off the ground.

Excellent time to appreciate how much I’ve gotten done with the yard this season. Just have 2 or 3 days more when the replacement polesaw arrives, then a day sawing up and sorting that, then like 3 days assembling and filling the wood rack, maybe 3 days adding on to the Blueberry Hill retaining wall, some unknown number sledgehammering the rest of the hill up, let’s say 2 days disassembling and clearing out the sandbox, 3 clearing out the uphill and 4 the downhill bamboo, one more day of polesawing once the leaves fall, and let’s say 3 of trimming new growth on the other trees and bushes, some number blowing leaves onto Strawberry Hill, and now that it’s raining again some cycles of pulling weeds and pounding the side yard dirt into a hardpack path up to the fence door…

and that’s IT

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

I feel that “lawn care” as promoted in the USA can be considered some kind of pseudoscience.

It doesn’t have the conspiracy-theory-adjacent qualities of virtually every other “pseudoscience,” which makes me hesitant to call it that, but the theory and method of it is still full of totally unsupported junk.

Where do I start?

• I’m a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.
• Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.
• The practice of “nuking” your lawn (killing everything in it and “starting over”)…If you have a so-called “weed problem” this is probably the worst thing you can do.
• Listen to me very carefully: “Weed” seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It’s called the “soil seed bank” and you can look it up.) They are capable of “waiting” for years, even decades. Furthermore, most “weed” species spread by wind, meaning you can’t physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you…surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.
• Heavy management will make your “weed” problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.
• Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. “Weeds” with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.
• The plant “taking over” your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it’s being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.
• Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. “Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!” Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.
• “Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won’t grass grow well here?” Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.
• Let me make this very clear: It is fully impossible to “solve” the problem of plants popping up in your yard that aren’t your one favored variety of grass. You will be buying herbicides for the rest of your life, and it will get worse, not better, because willy-nilly use of herbicides is leading to plants developing herbicide resistance faster than we can come up with new herbicides.

Huh I just thought to realize that; one thing about having at least 8 different grasses and 3 clovers in my yard is if any particular species has a dieback one year I’ll still be good

It fucking kills me that the garden tools are actually called “loppers”

Oh, I explicitly link it to Japanese and French feudal traditions by which it was an opportunity for landholders to legitimize themselves by displaying their delicate sensibilities

Not a huge amount of yard work left in between waiting for my arms to regenerate between sledgehammer days and we’re in the dry part of the year where weeds barely grow, so these days I knock off at 6 and still have enough sunlight to spend a while checking out what the not-closest parts of the neighborhood are up to

Wild to look out the windows, think about how nice everything looks, and then realize that for the overwhelming share of the visual field, I made it look that way by hand

Realizing several patches of clover in the side yard are in fact closely mixed white clover/yellow clover

Okay so for the first time since I moved in six winters ago, the backyard is fully trimmed (minus maybe three 1-2" diameter branches and two stumps) and all the branches processed into compost, firewood, or crafting inputs

Spring rains seem over so I dragged out all the sizeable, well-shaped branches I’d been keeping dry under the big pine out back and sorted them; got a woodworking pinball friend who might turn some into balcony railings/stair banisters for the backyard, I like the idea of building it out with its own bounty. Also this frees up the space to start setting up the woodrack for the chopped-to-size fire logs and start bringing up the big stuff from the basement to split

Portland gardening groups kept talking about this weed “Stinky Bob”, I didn’t have a clue what that was a common name for, turns out the formal name is Robert

When I moved in the rosebushes had all been cut back to one thick shaft so when the roots pumped up energy in the spring it turned into a few long-ass canes; I’ve been encouraging chandelier branching beneath the overwinter trim line so the energy is spread out among a wider set of buds

This being the only stuff left in the backyard to deal with is, in the context of everything I’ve been doing since I moved in, unreal