making my bed

It's hot, I don't like to sweat, but I feel a burst of energy.  I suddenly want a new bed in my front yard.
I bought this adorable smoke bush, you see, and I need a spot to put it.  After my husband getting mad at me for wanting to put a shrub that grows really big on top of the weeping bed, I decided to plant it elsewhere, but I still wanted that new bed.

So  here is the least strenuous way to make a new bed:

First, decide where the bed should go:  notice how much light the location gets, and that will determine what type of plants you can use.  Don't put sun lovers in a shady spot, or they won't grow to their full potential.

Then, decide on the shape of the bed.  Use rope, hose, or a long electrical cord like I did to rough out the shape.

Then, cut out the sod around the outside of the new bed.  

Instead of the back breaking work of taking off all the sod, just plot out where you want the plants.  With a bed that can be seen from all sides, but the tall plants in the centre, and shorter ones on the outside.  Keep in mind the mature height of the plants, not what they look like right now.

Dig holes for each plant, augmenting some of the soil with well-rotted manure.  Water really well, especially if you are foolish enough to try this in the long hot days of summer.

I was going to buy new plants for this bed, but I had so much growing in my current beds that was getting very crowded.  The purple coneflower and the daylily were growing in the shade, the three hardy hybiscus were hidden by other plants, and the ornamental grasses were divided from current clumps.  The grasses have very small root balls, and were really easy to dig up.

When all the plants are in, cover the area with newspapers to prevent light from reaching the grass. Do this in small sections on a day with no wind, or you will be papering the neighbourhood.  Wet the paper to keep it from blowing away.

I went to the beach (I have a secret spot) with lots of eelgrass drying on the shore, which is a perfect mulch - it adds nutrients to the soil as it slowly breaks down, and it's FREE.

It takes a surprizingly huge amount of seaweed to mulch this bed, but after piling it on top of the newspapers, it looks great, and the bed is done. The mulch will flatten down in time.  The new plantings should be watered every few days to keep them thriving.

catterpiller poop

I bought a scraggly houselplant and gave it some love and attention - repotted it in good soil, fertilized and watered it carefully.  It was doing really well, and the leaves were much bigger and more lush.
Then I found a whole lot of black globs on the table and on the floor under the plant.  Many of the leaves were gone.  When I looked closer, I found this guy:

It was a surprise, but it's kind of neat to see this kind of wildlife in the house.  I really want to see what kind of butterfly it becomes, so I just cleaned up all the frass (aka insect poop), put down newspapers under the plant, and will just wait and see if it develops a cocoon.

That was last week.  Two days ago, I found it at the bottom of the basement stairs.  I put it back where it was, but today, it was in the bathroom.  Then I read more about it in a blog kindly sent to me by Christine Noronha, Entomologist at Agriculture Canada in Charlottetown.  She identified my catterpiller as  Spilosoma virginica, Virginia Tigermoth.  She also sent me a link to this blog:  

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.ca/2010/07/virginia-tiger-moth-spilosoma-virginica.html

The blog describes its habit of "pacing" or frantically looking for a good place to pupate.  I think that is what mine is doing.  I quickly gave up on my idea of waiting for the adult. Looks like it won't emerge until spring.  So I reluctantly took it outside to a shady spot with lots of leaf litter.  It lay curled up for a while, and then explored a tree trunk before vanishing under some dry leaves.  

I'm actually going to miss the little bugger!

day lily dead heading

The Internet is wonderful.  It answers questions you haven't even asked.  I was just gadding about on line when I came upon a post about making your day lilies bloom longer.  A lady spends an hour a day snapping off the spent flowers on her hundreds of daylily plants, and swears they bloom for a longer time when she does that.  Snapping off the spent blossom means it can't make seeds, and the plant will continue to produce flowers as it strives to reproduce itself.

Don't try this at home, unless you know the difference between a spent flower and a bud that hasn't opened yet.  The spent flower is long and wrinkled.  A new bud is hard, shiny, and pale green.  Snap it off just where the flower is attached to the stem, and it should make a satisfying pop sound.  Try not to take a new bud with it.

So I've been deadheading my daylilies every day for two weeks, and I am not seeing any improvement in bloom time.  But the plants definitely look neater!  I usually cut off the stem close to the ground once the flowers are all done, but this year I will leave them for a while and see if any more appear.

While I'm waiting for that to happen, here's a tour through my daylily collection:

here's my two least favourite ones:

I wish this guy had more colour.  It's a bit washed out.

I don't like double flowers.  The bees have a hard time getting nectar and pollen because of all the petals, and the plants are often hybrids that don't even produce nectar and pollen.