Staying Organized and Hitting My Marks

As we bid good-bye to April, I am keenly aware that the month of May will be a blur.

On Friday, I head to the airport in the wee hours of the morning to leave on a four-day trip to Rosedango, a weekend full of rose activities near Dallas, Texas.  I have been looking forward to this for months!  This is when I finally get to meet Anne Belovich in person ... she is one of my rose idols, and I am so excited.  (When you have a few minutes, you can see Anne's beautiful, inspiring garden through the photos of Carolyn Parker, HERE.)  

On Saturday, May 10, at 10am, I will be at Strange's on West Broad Street in Richmond to give a program about how to choose and care for roses.  It is free and open to the public.  Perhaps some of you local folks would like to come hear what I have to say?

The next weekend, May 17 & 18, is the Lucketts Spring Market.  I am working on preparations for this in between other things.  For example, this morning I made two more pillows out of the fabric that I dyed with chalk paint.

The hutch that the pillows are sitting on is another item that's destined for Lucketts.

Having a booth at Lucketts is a huge undertaking, and the effort needed to prepare will completely take over my life for at least the entire week beforehand ... considering there will certainly be finishing touches to things, and a LOT of pricing and loading to be done.  I am fairly well organized, and I'm good about writing things onto my To Do list (which is a mile long at this point), so I feel confident that things won't get too crazy.

I am leaving the next week and Memorial Day weekend open.  That is generally the beginning of full-bloom season for the roses.  Bloom season will probably be late this year, I think, by at least a week, maybe two.  It will be nice to have an unplanned week (if it stays that way) to work in the garden and get ready for Open Garden visitors.  (watch this space and the Hartwood Roses FB page for dates, posted as soon as I have a better idea of when the garden will be blooming.)

The next weekend is one that I have looked forward to since fall.  May 31 is the day of the Wine and Roses Open House at Monticello's Tufton Farm in Charlottesville.  This year, I am the rose speaker ... presenting a program on easy-care roses for Virginia gardens.  The event is free, with no registration required.  Plan to come see Tufton's beautiful gardens and, perhaps, learn a thing or two about how to grow roses in your own garden.  There will also be roses available for sale.

In order to keep all of this straight, and keep my sanity, I am having to be a total slave to my calendar.  By staying organized and working on things a little at a time when I have the opportunity, I hope that nothing during the month becomes a hair-raising emergency.  Wish me luck!

Turning My Attention to the Next Garden

My spring reclamation work in the rose gardens continues with a vengeance.  The current object of my attention is the mixed miniature rose border along the fence behind my greenhouse.  (This garden doesn't have a real name yet.  It seems like too much of an oxymoron to call it the Miniature Garden, when it's 11 feet wide and 150+ feet long.)

Now that I think about it, I may not have ever shown this garden to you.  It's relatively new, laid out and planted last summer.  I designed it to hold a little over a hundred roses that had been living in pots for longer than they should have.  There are Ramblers on the fence, Climbing Miniatures on tripods, classic Floribundas, and Hybrid Teas down the center, and Miniatures in the front.

June 2013.  Landscape fabric laid, potted roses arranged and ready to be planted.

One week later ... timber edging installed, roses planted, irrigation in place, mulch along the fence.

I got off to a great start with this garden, with the landscape fabric and timber edging in place and the roses all planted.  I lost steam, though, after I had it about half mulched.  A garden this large requires a LOT of mulch!  To be honest, I don't remember exactly why I stopped working on it.  

Fast forward to the present ... Just like I did in the English Garden, the first thing to do was deal with the weeds.  Fortunately, the weeds are not as widespread in this garden because most of it is already covered with landscape fabric.  I have a few miniature roses, though, that looked like this:

Let me show you my new favorite tool.  It was an impulse purchase a few weeks ago, catching my eye as I stood in the check-out line in Lowes garden department.  It cost about $10, if I remember correctly.  Worth its weight in gold, I assure you!

To use it, I pull the weeds back with my hand, chopping the soil line with the notched end of the tool, and the weeds come right out.

It only took a few minutes to turn that weedy mess into this:

Next step was to sprinkle some Preen on the bare soil and cover it with newspaper.

Then comes the mulch.  This is Truckload #4 ... brought to me this morning by my dear husband, while I was weeding.

I scooped and toted and spread mulch until mid-afternoon ... laying a thick layer on the bare places on the landscape fabric, and a thin layer to refresh the areas that already had mulch from last year.  Stepping back as I finished for the day, I was very pleased with my progress.

That's about 60 feet of garden finished, 90 feet or so left to go.

I'm gonna need more mulch.

This is What I Mean When I Say "Winter Damage"

Throughout the past few weeks, as I post here about the work that I am doing to reclaim my rose gardens from neglect and weeds, I have been referring to the damage that was done to the roses by the unusually cold winter weather that we had here in Virginia (and in a large part of the rest of the country, too, for that matter).  Here is a good example to illustrate "Winter Damage".

Our subject rose is 'Morning Mist', a lovely single shrub rose introduced by David Austin in 1996.  'Morning Mist' is planted in my English Garden and had grown into a lovely rounded shrub, approximately four feet high and three feet wide.

photo of 'Morning Mist' taken in my garden in 2011.

This is what the bush looked like last week, before I did anything to it.  Looks dead, doesn't it?

Almost everything you see in that photo IS dead.  Careful examination, though, revealed that there were new sprouts emerging from the base of the plant.  (This rose is own-root, not grafted, so whatever sprouts from it is the named variety, not an invading rootstock.)

Pruning was a simple matter of removing whatever was dead and leaving the live parts, and being especially careful not to break off the delicate new sprouts.  When I finished, there wasn't a whole lot of the last year's plant left.  (The 'tall' cane is about one foot high.  The others are a few inches long at most.)

The new shoots are strong and are growing well, so I have no doubt that 'Morning Mist' will soon regain its former size.  It should not have to struggle to do this, because it won't have to duke it out with weeds anymore.

Finishing What I Start

My English Garden is finished!  It took days longer than I anticipated, which makes the feeling of satisfaction at its completion so much sweeter.  I started this garden in the fall of 2010, laying it out and planting 36 David Austin roses.  Until now, the garden has never been totally finished ... now it has edging, and no weeds and a good layer of mulch ... finished!

I got out early yesterday morning, to take advantage of what was promising to be a beautiful, sunny, warm day.  The weatherguy's prediction was right on target ... it was gorgeous weather for working outside!

Look at that sky!  (part of my personal preparation for the work day was a thorough application of sunblock ... I sunburn really easily.)

In this photo, you can see that my truck is full of mulch, two cubic yards.  If you're counting, this is load #3 for the property so far this year.)

My process went the same as it did on previous days ... pull weeds, prune roses, lay landscape fabric, spread mulch.  Here are a couple of photos to remind you of where I left off last week:

Weeds, weeds, weeds!

Getting there.

After an long day's work yesterday, here is the After!

The new mulch will blend in with the rest after it's been rained on a time or two.

Most of the roses are so small, because this is all that was left alive on them after our unusually cold winter.

See that bench?  I moved it to this spot from another place on the property.  (Got it years ago, cheap, on Craig's List.)  I designed this garden to have a bench there, so I have a place to sit and enjoy the roses, and this one fits there perfectly.

Two yards of mulch fills the back of my truck.  After finishing the mulching in this garden yesterday afternoon, I had used about two-thirds of this latest load.

I absolutely adore my truck!

Shoveling mulch, pushing the wheelbarrow, bending and lifting and scooping and spreading mulch on the garden beds ... done correctly, this is great exercise.  This morning, my shoulders and upper arms are sore, and my thighs and butt are killing me.  (It's an extra added benefit to be sore in all the spots that need some improvement.)

After I spread the last wheelbarrow full of mulch, and I put my tools away, I took a few minutes to sit and appreciate my accomplishment, then I went off to take care of other things.  This morning, I will be back outside again ... working in the miniature garden that I built last year along the fence behind the greenhouse.  Maybe I can get the rest of the mulch out of my truck before it rains in the afternoon.  Wish me luck.

See you outside!

Way To Go, Winnie!

Please allow me to introduce to you the newest Therapy Dogs, Inc., certified member of Blue Grey Therapy Dogs ... our adorable little Ms. Winnie Pearl!

Notice that her tiny little tag says, "I am a Therapy Dog."

She passed the initial Therapy Dog test easily ... getting along with other dogs, allowing strangers to pet and hold her, walking nicely on a leash and taking commands.  She and I had then had to pass three observations in real-life situations on the weekends after the test:  one was at Petco, one was at a rehabilitation hospital, and one was at an Autism Awareness Day fair.  Winnie wagged her tail and begged for pets, even giving kisses to some of the strangers that she met.

I was so excited when her registration and tag came in the mail the other day.  All she needed was a vest to complete her working ensemble.  The regular therapy dog vests are all WAY too big for her (even in the Extra Small size).  It took me a little while of trial and error to modify an existing tiny dog harness pattern, and I think it turned out really cute.  Pink camo fits Winnie's personality, and it should attract attention and can help start conversations.

Now that Winnie is official, she and I can begin our visits ... which will mostly be reading days with children at the local library, along with special events (like the Autism Fair we attended two weeks ago).  Today, she and I will be working the afternoon shift at the Greyhounds Rock booth at Fredericksburg Brewfest.  She won't be there as a therapy dog, but she will still work her adorable Chihuahua magic to help me separate the fair-goers from some of their money, with merchandise sales and donations ... all in the name of a good cause.

I adore this little dog!

If Looks Could Kill

Ruby uses the dining room window as her spot from which to view the world.  (She is up there doing that right now, as a matter of fact.)  She perches with her back feet on the church pew below the window, her elbows on the windowsill, and she looks for bunnies and groundhogs and all other types of intruders.  

For the past few days, Maggie has been enjoying the same windowsill for afternoon sunbathing.  

I was fortunate to be sitting here with my iPad, so I could capture what happened yesterday while Maggie was snoozing in the sun and Ruby charged up there, thinking that she heard something in 'her' yard.

Maggie:  What do you think you're doing?  This is MY window now.

Ruby:  We can share.  I think there's a groundhog out there.

Ruby:  (snuffle, snuffle, snuffle)

Maggie:  (looks disgusted)

Ruby:  back to guard duty.

Maggie:  Stupid dog.

The Quality Control Team

It rained all day yesterday.  Instead of doing what I had planned for the day (which would have involved hauling furniture in an open pick up truck), or working outside in the garden, I sat at the sewing machine for a little while and put together a slipcover for this ottoman that's been living in my stash.

You can see that it meets with Alice and Dorothy's exacting standards for quality and comfort.

I was going to paint the legs, but now I've decided not to.  Whoever buys this at the Lucketts Spring Market can paint them, or leave them the way they are.

(Note to self:  Gotta remember to wash and iron the cover before I take it to the market, in case folks are allergic.)