Seedfork's blog: Planted small new bed at the end of the drive

A couple of years ago I picked up several truck loads of compost materials, but I just dumped them at the end of the drive where the soil had eroded away pretty badly. It just sat there, and rotted away making for some lovely soil. Well, I finally raked it back into a bed shape for about the hundredth time, every time I do the armadillo digs up the bed and destroys it. But it looked so good with that prime soil I decided to take a few surplus plants that reproduced very well this year and put in that little bed. It is not complete as far as the planting goes, and I am sure I will have to monitor it daylily for the armadillo damage and water. That bed is next to the curb, so all the water is diverted by it into the storm drain at the far end of the bed. It was in the high nineties yesterday so the plants are looking pretty wilted in this photo even though I watered the bed very well.

I had a large crack in the drive right in front of the bed, the ground is settling and the crack had widened out enough recently it needed to be repaired, so while I was at it (I had bought the materials two months ago) I went ahead and repaired the big crack. It doesn't all show in the photo, but it was cracked all the way though the curbing on the far end.

This clump of 'My Path' bloomed on June 11th of this year, and I took this photo at 4:30 this afternoon, it has seven blooms and still lots of buds, that's over a month without missing a day of blooming.

My Peruvian Daffodil is getting ready to bloom, caught the little frog in the background, he is very tiny, must have not been born very long.

My huge clump of Crinum Lily in the front bed is already blooming, the Agapanthus right behind it is just finishing up for the season.



I decided to add a few wheelbarrow loads of compost to the bog bed after finishing up everything, and as I turned to walk up the hill past the shed, there lay a copperhead right across the path. I can't remember exactly, but it seems like I kill at least one every year somewhere in the yard. I was wondering when one would show up this year, now for the next few days I will be very cautious when stepping into the beds to pull weeds. I must say I have had the fewest snakes ever in the yard this year,two garter snakes, a white oak snake, a don't now what snake and this copperhead.

Well, when I went down to the triangle bed down in the bog area where the new daylilies are planted, I found several plant tags missing and scattered about, along with several daylilies. So enough is enough, I rounded up some metal stakes, got out the deer fencing and put a temporary fence around them. I should have done that at the start, but the armadillo had been missing in action for a few days and I thought I might be able to get by without a fence, then I just kept putting it off. I am now not sure of the exact locations of some of the plants or the tags, but I do have a map and when they bloom I will be able to narrow down the name to the correct plants. It will be interesting to see if the evil armadillo tries to dig his way under the netting. I put soil all around the edge to hold the netting down, but I may also have to add stakes all around if he digs under the fence. The deer fencing I think was eight feet wide, and it was folded in half, giving me a four foot high fence of double thickness. It was very easy to work with and just took a few minutes to do the entire job, I should kick myself for not doing this the first day I planted the daylilies.

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