I looked at my Cool Things for the Garden blog the other day and realized it has been almost a year since my last post. I had great intentions last spring to keep my postings current and share my experiences from the garden. But life does not always go as expected, and last April my world was turned upside-down. I barely set foot in the garden all season, so there wouldn't have been much to share.
So here we are almost a year later, the fires of my living hell are under control, and now I'm preparing to say goodbye to my garden of the last 25 years as I prepare to move to Tennessee. (Zone 7! Yippee!)
I looked through the few pictures from 2010 and found two highlights to share. One is the White Fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus) in bloom sometime in June. It was pure magic! I am sad that I won't be able to see them as mature specimens, but I'm sure they grow in zone 7.
Notice the completely unkempt lawn around it. Not that my lawn ever looks good, but at least it used to get mowed once in awhile. This amount of bloom was much more than in previous years. There are three of these in the yard and a few in the nursery that are four years in the ground now, and they all had the same amount of bloom.
I really didn't spend much time around the gardens this past season, so I don't know how the perennials did. I managed to make it through daffodil season. We dug a record number of bulbs this year for the Indiana Daffodil Society bulb sales. Many of them came from Helen Link's plantings. The leftovers ended up at a convent in Cincinnati that is establishing an American Daffodil Society display garden. I can't remember how many bulbs I took them, but it was enough to fill up the back of the Vibe.
This next picture is one that I took from the driver's seat of our tractor as Master Gardener volunteers planted 2000 daffodils at an interchange near Martinsville. The drought had made the ground impenetrable, and there was great concern about whether we could physically handle the planting. Thank goodness I came up with the idea of using our tractor with the fence pole auger. It made perfect holes for five bulbs, and a group of about ten of us got the job done in less than three hours. We are all looking forward to this spring's show. It should be spectacular.
Speaking of the drought, it was a doozey. I actually lost some plants earlier in the summer to the excessively wet soil, and then the drought took some recently planted shrubs that were sharing root zones with established trees. That's something that should not be attempted without irrigation, but that's why I do it. I play the part of the guinea pig and share my experiences with you. My kids should be excellent gardeners!
