LysmachiaMoon's blog: Dissatisfied.

Every year, right about this time, I get dissatisfied with my gardens. Right now, with a long dry spell and record-breaking heat for the past week, everything looks wilted and gray and drab. It's late enough in the season that a lot of my plants are already starting to wind down for winter, so that certainly doesn't add to the charm. Areas that just a couple weeks ago, under the influence of plenty of rain and not so bad temps, I was referring to as "lush" now just look overgrown and weedy.

But there's an upside to this. I see things with new eyes. I spot what is going well, what didn't work at all, what needs tweaking next year. This morning after I watered the Pot Corral, I sat down with a notebook and jotted down ideas for next year. Overall the Pot Corral was pretty good. And I got three more huge terra cotta colored pots (plastic) for next year. So I want to figure out what should go in those. I still need to get more color. The orange cannas were OK, but not the pop I was hoping for. The little red and yellow flowered canna was disappointing, so small it got lost. The plants are doing well though, so next year I may have more flowers. The seed-started coleus were definitely a success, but those awful tan colored window box planters ....ugh. I'll need to paint those black for next year. I also need more height, more drama. The big maple tree that shades the Pot Corral has a crotch about 8 feet from the ground and I poked around there this morning and I think I can fit a pot up in there, with something that will trail downward. Maybe an acid green sweet potato vine. All for next year.

I'm also thinking of moving the Japanese Maple from out of the center of the Below the Deck Garden (BDG). I sorta cringe at the thought. I bought it several years ago, on discount and half dead, at a very good price. Nursed it along year by year. This year it is about 4 feet tall and doing very well. It's obviously happy where it is. The problem is the color. It's that deep burgundy/plum color that, although striking and lovely, looks totally out of place in the BDG. Truth is, it sticks out like a sore thumb. What I thought would look really good and appropriate in that spot, as a centerpiece for the BDG, is a standard (tree shaped) wisteria. I need something with just enough height but not so tall that it's going to block the view or interfere with overhead wires. And I HAVE a wisteria, a nice healthy one that's languishing in the shade of the Grape Arbor Garden, where my hydrangeas are. It really would be no trouble to lift the wisteria and put it where the maple is now. In fact, I could swap the two and pop the maple in where the wisteria is now. Or, I could move the maple up to the Asian Garden where it would look amazing. The only problem is keeping it alive up there until it establishes. This would mean remembering to carry water to it for a year, every week or so. I hesitate only because I dread losing the maple. If I plant the maple in the wisteria's place, it's going to need constant monitoring for water as well because that's where the roots from the big silver maple (Pot Corral) and the roots from the arborvitae both intrude. This needs thinkin' on.

I painted one of my concrete koi today, deep "goldfish" orange. It went well and I think I'll get out the white paint and do the biggest koi and one of the smaller ones. The fourth one I think I should also paint orange. Once I get the "background" color on all four, I want to tape off areas for accent color: black, orange, and white. So I should Google on koi and get some pics to use as a guide. Anything will look better than the faded and worn off red paint they came in.

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Had lunch with friends, two sisters and brother. Delicious Asian cuisine, but I couldn't quite understand why the entire conversation had a slightly "Alice in Wonderland" quality about it. It didn't hit me until I was home much later. They were all three pretty tiddly. This perfectly explains why M walked out of the restaurant holding the bill folder and almost didn't pay for lunch, why E and P had a long rambling discussion on the merits of eel and why nobody but me noticed that there was a tiny pink lightbulb (purely for decorative effect) in the grated radish side dish.

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