Sunshine, Blue Sky, and Green Leaves

As I sit here in my usual spot at the kitchen counter, the bright morning sunshine is beautiful.  Notice in the photo below how the trees are leafing out and everything is turning green.  My winter, bare-trees view of our barn in the distance will soon be gone.

Dorothy is beside me, hiding on the cluttered counter in my pile of stuff that needs to be put away.  Looks like a still life, doesn't it?  Tape dispenser, cordless phone, pile of notebooks and pads of paper, an antique clock, my scarf from yesterday ... and my sweet, odd-ball cat.

 My iPad was under the scarf ... until I picked it up to use it to take these photos.

 

I am planning to spend a few hours working in the garden  today... my scratch pad holds a list of ten roses that I hope to get planted.  For those of you who are curious about these things, the roses are:  'Garisenda', 'Thelma', 'Golden Glow', 'Coralie', 'Climbing American Beauty', 'Etain', 'Weetwood', 'Flora', 'Alchymist', and 'Queen of the Prairies'.  These are all once-blooming ramblers/climbers with large flowers, and I am planting them on the fence in my new rose border behind the greenhouse.  (I will dig out photos of them for a future post ... not taking the time to do it this morning.)

If you need me, I'll be in the garden.

Starting on My Newest Garden

According to my database, I have just over 300 roses that are still living in their temporary quarters in pots.  Some of these will be planted in existing gardens to replace roses that have died or that I will be removing.  Most of them, however, need to be planted in new gardens.  While I was on my trip to Sacramento, I had a brainstorm and I know exactly how I plan to deal with most of the remaining roses.

Behind my greenhouse and our garage is a relatively narrow space with good sunshine and an existing four-board fence.  I'm beginning to visualize this area as a long border, 10 feet wide and 200 feet long, with large-flowered once-blooming climbers on the fence itself, medium-sized roses in the center, and a row of miniatures at the front edge.  

In order to make this spot into a garden, I have to get rid of the existing grass and weeds.  Normally I do this with herbicide, but it's too late in the season for herbicide to be effective.  Plan B is to lay down black plastic and let the sun do the job for me without chemicals.

Here is the first sheet of plastic, 10 feet wide and 25 feet long.  (If you look carefully, you can see Daniel in the background hiding and eating grass.  I hollered at him to stop.)

Ruby sticks close by ... taking her her job as quality control inspector very seriously.

Here it is with two sheets of plastic, all weighted down at the corners and edges with concrete blocks, scrap boards, and the tops of a few nursery benches.  I don't want the wind to blow it away.

This was the easy part.  Now I have some crap to clear out of the way (piles of landscape edging, timbers, bricks, pots, etc.), and I will continue my march down the fence laying plastic and preparing the bed.  Unlike my idea for the Labyrinth garden, which I abandoned because it's truly too far from the house, I fully intend to get this one finished ... I have to, the roses in pots are depending on me.