2026 CW28 - Starting Over Mid-season?
This was a slow week for the garden. I spent multiple evenings this week after work at the dentist office having some work done to repair a chip in a tooth. I took the cats up to Sara’s clinic for their annual checkup and shots. I made good progress on the fence replacement (thanks to family help!). I kept up with maintenance cutting the grass and cleaning the house. With all of this in mind, surely you can understand how the garden took a back seat.
Autonomous Blooms!
Despite the lack of attention from me, the garden is still able to make an impact and progress all on its own!
After months of waiting, we FINALLY have our first glimpse of the colors to come from our Princess Flower plants in the blue ceramic pots in the raised bed garden. I admittedly have not done much by way of research on these and did not know what to expect from the blooms. These are honestly smaller than I expected, and it is looking as though these will more closely resemble a hydrangea than larger singular blooms as I somewhat expected.
Most of you probably thought that these little guys had sung their last song for the season (as did we), but a surprise late Peach Gladiolus popped up in the front beds this week! It sure was nice getting one last look at these sensational plants.
Wear Your PPE!
As referenced in this week’s introduction, one evening this week was dedicated to some yard maintenance to include cutting grass and edging the beds with a string trimmer. String trimmers, even with their existing guards in place, still present a tremendous risk to the operators when contacting small objects such as gravel, rocks, or wood chips.
No one in garden understands the consequences of such risks this week better than this Elephant Ear leaf! Incredibly, this piece of Wood Mulch was ejected from the string trimmer at the perfect velocity to wedge itself halfway through the leaf. Now just imagine if this were your eyeball!
Petunia Mania!
After months of contemplation, Sara and I finally decided to make a big move for the garden and order a few cases of new plants for the front beds. These new annuals, the Supertunia Vista Bubblegum by Proven Winners, have set high expectations for us! These plants were Proven Winners’ “Annual of the Year” in 2017 and promise dense mounds of vibrant pink blooms two feet in diameter.
Out with the Old!
All of these fresh petunia plants are great, but where are we going to put them?? Well, Sara and I did something rather unusual for us: we ripped out an entire flower bed mid-season to renovate and make room!
Well, what was initially planned to be a simple insertion into the front flower beds ended up as a complete demolition, with us removing all remnants of the Gladiolus, Caladiums, and existing Box Woods!
Though it was disheartening seeing our front flower beds, the cover picture of our home, be torn out, it was still fun to see all of our Gladiolus stalks together in a wheelbarrow where they would spend a few days while we continue renovating the beds.
Once the beds were completed emptied, all of the old mulch was removed, irrigation lines were displaced, and the remaining dirt was leveled it was finally time to start laying out the new Petunias. Unfortunately, this was Sunday evening, and it began to rain quite heavily, so you’ll have to come back next week to see how this bed renovation turns out!
Pets New and Old!
As I said at the start, there were not many garden updates this week. But that does not mean that we did not have visitors around the yard!
This week, a Red-Headed Woodpecker paid a visit to the yard, going to town on our last remaining Water Oak along the back fence line. Unfortunately, I was unable to get to my DSLR in time, so all I have to prove this visit happened is this less-than-ideal iPhone photo from far away.
To round us out this week, Scout was caught Sunday evening enjoying the garden in possibly the absolute best way as she basked on a bench in the window of our bedroom while the afternoon rains watered the vegetable garden outside.
