Yesterday, at about 3pm, it started to rain. A very soft drizzly rain. Of course it's gonna rain.. I just spent the previous 2 days watering everyone and I left the windows down a crack on my van. This morning, though, the clouds finally broke.

My drive into work.

I never would have thought so when I lived in the NE, but I do really appreciate fluffy clouds out west.

We've had overcast skies the past 2 days, and it is much appreciated here. Years ago, I would have been heading to the lake on this weekend, but now I'm trying to move overgrown plants so I can plant new ones. With everything so dry, if I can't have rain, clouds are the next best thing.
Whew. I'm so tired I can't even explain anything. Before I moved here, I was moving plants from the other house because realtors kept telling me my overabundance of plants was preventing a sale. I plunked things down in a group, hoping to come up with a landscape design later. It's now several years later, and plants have grown ridiculously fast, so I have to deal with moving mature plants, mainly shrubs.. When I move plants, I try to shade them with a chair, but it's been so windy, no chair will stay in place. I can't keep a hat on in the wind, either, and can't rely on sunscreen alone after the skin cancer ordeal last year, so a little less sunshine is ok by me!

Realtors understand what usually sells. They are good at playing the odds. But sometimes they just don't figure on rare people who have taste. Our realtor joked that the first thing someone who bought our house in NJ would do is bulldoze the plants in the front yard and install sod. Actually, I thing that happened a few years after we left. But what he did not know was that the densely planted back yard would be perceived as being rich and park-like by the people who would eventually buy it. They brought their six year old son along and he did not want to leave the back yard. They had to promise him that they would return in order to get him to leave. So they bought the house.

Sometimes a richly planted garden actually helps sell a house. But sometimes one moves them at the realtor's request because it's a cheap source of good plants.

No clouds here, now. Just got in from a bit of stargazing. Good excuse to be out in the cool evening air.

That's the reason why we were able to buy our house so cheaply... the landscaping was almost 100% dead in the back yard. The front yard had grass growing (watered daily), but the backyard was trashed. Only thing alive was the 3 trees, the lilac, & some snowball bushes that hadn't bloomed in about 10 years. When the realtor walked us through the house, she was pleasantly surprised about the newness of everything inside (the previous owners completely remodeled the ranch floor, but the basement was still original 1983). But when she walked out to the back yard, she was stunned on how crappy the back yard was. I was too, this house had been on the market for over a year, no wonder it hadn't been sold in a HOT real estate market. So we bought it. I bought it knowing that it was going to take YEARS to get it to the point I was going to be happy with it. I'm getting there.. probably 2-3 more years before I see in reality what I envisioned 3 years ago in my mind.

Our house was on the market almost a year in a slooooow market. The people who finally bought it were from South Carolina, and they said my lush landscaping was the only property they had seen that didn't look deserted to them. (meaning, the garden was bright and colorful!) They understood when I said it really was low maintenance, because there was only 1 grass path to mow, and no weeds, and all the plants were perennial, and well established. Everyone else uses ugly bark mulch, and I had groundcovers everywhere. No mulch needed.
i miss that house. I'm shoveling mulch at this house...waiting for the day when I have groundcovers and no weeds.

One of the first gardening books I read was by an English author who was both puzzled and annoyed by American gardeners' use of mulch. I took the idea to heart and ever since have seriously under-used mulch. I keep thinking I can get the effect I want by interplanting my roses with other plants. I'm not completely sure it's working. But I have had some measured success.

In one part of the garden is a ground-hugging veronica that expands about three inches in each direction each year. Although it only barely chokes out weeds, its blue flowers look good with pink Chatillon Rose and other pink roses in the area. In another part of the garden I have some peppermint growing between roses. It tends to romp across the garden, showing up where it is not welcome, but it certainly does a good job choking out weeds. I love the smell, so I don't mind pulling it up where it doesn't belong.

In yet another part of the garden where the soil is sandy and spare I have planted daffodils and lavender. There's also a stand of Jupiter's beard. In spaces between I have planted roses. It makes for a space where roses play an essential garden role, but are not the central characters. The area is edged with nepeta "Walker's Low" which grows marvelously well here with just a bit of supplemental water. The presence of daffodils in a bed has posed much difficulty for me because the dying stalks malinger for a long time. Tulip plants, by comparison, are long dead and blown away by mid May, but daffodil stalks are still turning brown. The lavender is only now beginning to reach a height where it can hide the daffodil stalks, so the bed is still a bit ugly in May.

In one bed I have a lot of daylilies between roses. Daylilies are slow growers for me, but there is a kind of inevitability to their progress. In its third year the weed level is fairly low and the daylilies are just beginning to cover nicely. There are places in the garden where I've planted clumps of cannas or dahlias between roses. So although my roses do not repeat in fall I still have lots of fall flowers in the perennial/rose beds.

Finally, there is the experiment with cerastium tomentosum - seen here as a background to Lili Marlene:





So I have been really trying hard to avoid the whole mulch thing. Last August I would have told you it was hopeless, the weeds were overrunning the garden. Right now, though, I have a bit more hope. I definitely see a place for mulch in the garden, yet I hope that it might never be seen.

The way I look at it that an English garden & a Colorado garden has a few things different, mainly cold (it doesn't get that cold in England due to the currents), humidity (a gazillion times drier in Colorado than in England), length of growing period (7 months if I'm super lucky, 4 months if I'm unlucky), and altitude (6000+ ft versus, what, sea level?). Thus, mulch for me! Every rose that was under a ton of mulch has done exceedingly much better than any rose that wasn't mulched (with 2 rare exceptions - Austrian Copper & Theresa Bugnet). I have 2 roses completely buried in vinca - a Perfume Tiger and my Cardinal Hume. Both are stunted roses.. I don't see *ANY* canes whatsoever.

I agree completely with what you say about humidity and moisture control. The soil is cooler in England, the air carries more moisture, the winds are calmer: all these things preserve soil moisture. Also, earth is less plentiful in England and people need to plant plants close together. There's an endless supply of it out west.

I have not tried growing vinca or with other plants typically sold as groundcovers in the NE because I fear they would outcompete most of the plants I really want to grow. I do see roses as shrubs, though. If a rose cannot compete with a short plant that is not known for romping too much - a salvia, a monarda or a dianthus for example - then I am tempted to allow it to wither away and be replaced by something that can. It seems to me that the roses growing near my peppermint are actually happier than roses growing in other parts of the garden. So sometimes this version of companion planting can work.

Funny you should mention Cardinal Hume. I moved it from one side of the path to the other this winter. Its new location is closer to the frontier and seems to invite more grass. It seems to be quite unhappy for the change. I guess some roses compete with weeds better than others. I'd have thought CH would have been one of the former.

A couple of roses I'm surprised that is so happy is either Sheila's Perfume or Melodie Parfumee. Both of those roses (which, ironically, are right next to each other) are about 5' and about 2-2.5' around. MASSIVE upright roses. Sheila gets only morning/noon sun, but Melodie Parfumee gets up until about 430 sun. Both are pretty close to the house, so there's the protection-from-hard-winter-wind factor. However, Cherish, which sits directly between the two, is a pathetic little sprig. Two of my Sterling Silvers & Red Golds are in the same row as Sheila.. they're doing quite well as well. Actually everyone in the front yard for the most part is doing quite well except for that poor CH.. I didn't even realize there was a rose there until it bloomed! The vinca there is over a foot tall and extremely mounding. It's a weed there. I've thinned it out, but it still keeps going crazy. The reason why it's going crazy there is because when I water my mini bed or my shadow corner, all the run off goes down the sidewalk & drains right *there*, so it gets plenty of water versus everyone else.

Wind is a huge factor, and I never realized just how much until now. My last house had a fenced yard on a slight slope, with large trees on the lots to the north and west of me. Just about everything I dropped on the ground took root and grew. The only "weeds" were cultivated plants that dropped too many seeds.
This house is 3 miles straight south of that one, and what a difference. I now own 2 weed identification books and still see thorny weeds that are not listed in either book. i own and use 2 mulching machines, 2 compost tumblers, a Stihl yard-boss and a rototiller plus a large Kubota tractor with all kinds of implements. And a backhoe. whew. Whenever I make a new bed, I till it, add all kinds of compost, plant it and spread bark mulch. I have discovered it takes about 3 years fighting weeds in any given bed before I can enjoy it. If I mulch a bed, the soil is improved and the weeds suppressed, and maybe the groundcovers have a fighting chance.
This week, I've been frustrated with my semi-formal raised rose bed. Initially I formed it with ugly old railroad ties, so it is 16' on each outer edge, with a keyhole shape, meaning open in the center and an opening on the west side. I have Homestead Purple verbena and dianthus as groundcover. The outer edges have creeping phlox. Right now the roses are between flushes, the verbena is burning up, and the dianthus has bloomed and gone to seed. The whole bed needs work! I bought large stone blocks to replace the railroad ties on the inside of the keyhole...as soon as I get a cool day and enough energy to pull out the ties. There's got to be a better way to underplant the roses. I've tried wave petunias, portulaca, green sedum, nepeta, miniature daylilies, evening primrose. Nothing looks good for a long enough time. The rosarians in our rose society 100% recommend mulch around roses. No plants whatsoever, so there is no competition for water. If I go that route, it means that for a good part of the year, that bed is downright unattractive.
Oh, Toni......I've seriously derailed this thread...i'll start a new thread. Sorry! Just can't get my mind off this since I'm watering like crazy, wishing for rain, and wondering how I'm going to get through the really hot part of the summer.

Cindi - I'm not worried about derailing threads.. I love it! It just shows the ebb & flow of thought, and since wind carries clouds, it fits!

Be careful what you wish for..........we just got a hail storm like I've never seen in my life.
My plants are totally shredded. I'll post pics on another thread.
There's flood warnings out for my area now. Seems we got a micro-downburst after our 21 minute hailstorm.
I have not checked to see if the basement is flooding. I'm still in shock looking at the ground covered with 3 inch deep hail, and leaves off the trees....looks like fall, but with green leaves covering the icy ground.

Omg!! I just talked to a friend in Oklahoma who's growing out some roses for me if they ever get any leaves due to black spot. Luckily he wasn't hit by this storm that was so bad it was in the front page of CNN with 3" hailstones and massive flooding. And we're as dry as a bone here...