Feeding My Addiction

Today I acquired yet more plants. A button bush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) and a couple northern blue flag irises (Iris versicolor). The button bush is going to go in an area up against the fence where there used to be a retaining wall, and the irises will go in my backyard flower garden. I'm really enjoying having a yard that actually gets sun.

New Mystery Plants

Found a couple new volunteers today. This one is some kind of coreopsis. Possibly Coreopsis grandiflora or Coreopsis lanceolata.

And this is an aster. I think Erigeron annuus, annual fleabane.

Friends!

The more natives I plant, the more cool new insects I see. I think this is a long-legged fly.

Bumble bee butt! Flower is an ornamental penstamon, but apparently still meets their standards.

Monarch caterpillar mowing down on common milkweed.

Strawberries!

Free Trellis

I have a trellis addiction. I'm also very cheap.

Some ornamental clematis by my driveway needed something to climb. I tried netting, thinking it would look cool as it was basically invisible against the vinyl fence, but it kept getting tangled in everything. I made do with some cheap wire tomato cages for a while, but they didn't have the look I wanted either.

Then a friend's underbuilt porch/awning collapsed in a storm last summer, and they were kind enough to let me take the vertical supports. My original plan was to weld them into something, but I abandoned that idea when I realized the metal they were made of was too thin.

They sat behind my nearly-completed chicken coop for almost a year. I have a bad habit of piling materials back there, as you can see.

With the clematis coming up in the spring, I had a deadline. I finally cobbled the supports together into something. Aside from electricity, this didn't cost me a penny. I had gotten the 2x4 for free, salvaged the sheet metal screws from work, and welded the corners out of some angle aluminum from an abandoned project.

I used leftover brackets from the vinyl fence to attach the trellis to the fence. It's so lightweight that I'm not worried about it pulling loose or damaging the fence.

I was assured that clematis would grow as high as they possibly could, up to 20' tall. Clearly this was a lie, as mine lost interest after less than 6'. But I'm still pretty happy with the look. The clematis on the ends are Warsaw Nikes, and the one in the middle is a lavender variety I can't remember the name of. It's never been very enthusiastic.

Rain Garden #1

I started this rain garden in October 2018 to handle the runoff from part of my garage roof.

It began life as an unassuming mud pit a few inches deep with a berm around the border. The pile of rocks under the downspout are to prevent erosion. The fence is to keep the dogs from trampling everything, or worse.

I found a native fern on late-season clearance and transplanted asters, prairie smoke, and a wild rose from elsewhere in my yard, plus sowed some swamp milkweed and hairy rose mallow seeds. It hit -30F that winter, and nearly everything (except for the prairie smoke) died. None of the seeds germinated.

The rain garden mostly got put on the back burner in 2019. It was taken over by various weeds and native volunteers. I did find some more ferns for it, but wasn't optimistic that they would make it. I also worked on a new fence.

 

The good news was that the rain garden was still doing its job of letting water runoff slowly drain away. Also, at least one monarch caterpillar took advantage of the common milkweed and smartweed that had popped up. (Monarch caterpillars can only eat milkweed, but they prefer to go elsewhere when they reach the chrysalis stage.)

Finally this year I picked up some plants to fill the pit in. Black eyed susan, purple coneflower, swamp rose mallow, a sunflower, and marsh blazing star. Some wild roses and asters also found their way in there, and the ferns are flourishing. One rose mallow has already died, but the rest of the plants are establishing themselves.

Once I get this rain garden established, I would like to make one along the edge of my driveway as well - but that one will be much more of an undertaking.

Brief Introduction

This blog will be a bit of an outlet and also a way for me to track the small victories in my messy urban garden.

Soil testing? Fertilizing? Nah, let's just throw a bunch of seeds at the wall and see what sticks.

I grow food, ornamental flowers, and native plants. My yard is happy green chaos.