Pocket Gives a Tour of Our Gardens

It is nearly the end of the most stressful June Tiananmen Square and I decided it would be the proper time to write a garden report.  It has been a tough year for delicate flowers.  Spring arrived late, and the perennials are a few weeks behind.   Almost all the flowers Mommy planted after her first foray to the greenhouse didn’t take.  Trying to make the world beautiful has proved a greater task than ever before

One thing that had grown this year without hindrance is various families of weeds that are threatening to take over the garden and bring both my parents to their knees, mostly to pray, but while they are down there, to attempt ripping up the hideous vegetation including an especially stubborn growth that may be bind wood, a determined weed that roots deep in the ground then spreads like gonorrhea at Mama June’s family reunion barbeque.  

    We have lived in our current home for eleven years.  My parents liked the gardens when they moved in.  Over the years they have expanded all of them tripling their size.  When they are battling the weeds they curse the expansion the way the United States does whenever anyone acts up west of the Mississippi.  But, people need to spread and create.  We never want to make more.  Except for holes.  

    We will start our tour by the light post where the clematis has bloomed beautifully this year.

 It usually climbs to the top of the pole, but the sign with our family name and street number on it rotted off the front of the house, so we have to keep the plant from climbing over the number, which is how I like it, because I am close to the ground and can smell it.  

    In front of the house is what we cleverly call the “front garden.”  We added a new little white wagon this year.  My parents wanted to take a picture of me in it, but thankfully it was filled with flowers, before I was subject to that humiliation.  We have some pretty flowers in the center of the garden too.  I took a side view picture too.

 
    Across from that, and running the entire length of the driveway, is the side garden.  Every season kept getting bigger until last year, when the entire area became a garden.  Their neighbor on that side grows nothing but crabgrass, which spread to their yard and drove my parents crazy. That is why they made it all garden, and have been weeding fools ever since.  In that garden are two different types of littles and daisies.


    The front garden has been a struggle this year.  All the flowers that were originally purchased did not take.  We had to plant new flowers in the bicycle planter and near the front of the garden. We think we finally have found the flowers to make our window boxes beautiful.


 

Here is a picture of our front wall window box which has done nicely.  The bird on the right of the box is purely decorative.  Above that is the hanging plant that has done spectacularly, and behind that is the balloon that Foley made and I floated away in eleven years ago.  Some of you who have been with us for the long haul may remember that story.  

    This is Foley’s Garden.  Nothing has bloomed yet.  It is a little late, but Foley is not a morning dog so we can’t expect her garden to be an early bloomer.  We put Saint Anthony in Foley’s garden because there is less wind there and Anthony is tipsy, and falls over, which always makes him cross.
 

    My Dad’s grandfather’s rose bush has been teasing that it will bloom for two weeks.  It looks promising, but we have learned not to count our roses before they bloom.

    To the left of the rosebush, across a strip of lawn, on the other side of the shed, is the second chance garden, where the plants that didn’t make it in the main gardens try to prove their worth.  This year’s crop looks pretty good.  I know they yearn to be back on display in the front of the house.

    Finally, I present to you the bird feeding station.  We provide them with the best food and they watch over our gardens for us.   You have to treat the birds right.

    Thank you for taking part in our tour. Our gardens always change so I am sure I will take you on another tour before the end of the year.