gardening

Notes for 2009:

• Get a grip on the weeds. Probably next summer won't be as favorable as this summer has been, but really--next spring I need to get Preen (which is, I understand, a pre-emergent herbicide) and newspapers and plastic and woodchips down where appropriate. I've got poison ivy growing all over the place, which I've just sprayed with Roundup, and will have to spray daily for the next week--I think weeds are developing a resistance to it.
• Figure out a place to move the heuchera by the giant hosta, which is smothering them. They're going to be hard to place, I think, because they're such an odd color--I forget the name of the variety, but they're sort of purple/mahogany with silver patterns on the leaves, and that doesn't go with just any old thing. Maybe I could put them near the solid purple one (v. Plum Pudding, I think), and they could sit there being somber together.
• Thought: Would a butterfly bush grow in the raised bed by the driveway?
• Remember to look for a bridal veil spirea--the old-fashioned kind--next spring to plant east of the house.
• Like many people, I'm trying to reduce the amount of grass I'm growing. There's a space between the back of the house and the garage where I have a flower bed (sort of) along two sides, and then a strip that served as a hosta nursery several years ago and currently has 4 big hostas that need to be moved and a lot of poison ivy and other weeds, and then some straggly grass, and then the sidewalk from the house to the driveway. For years--very nearly ever since I moved into the house, and certainly since I laid out the skeletal garden mentioned above--I've wanted to replace that scraggly grass with a brick patio. I was also thinking how pretty a carpet of mixed crocus would look in the hosta nursery in the spring. Planting them would, however, require disposing of the poison ivy and removing the rotting woodchips over the landscape fabric as well as the landscape fabric in order to reach the actual soil, so I think it's a project I won't start this fall.
• However, the place where I *want* grass (the dog pen) grows less and less grass each year. This, I've tardily realized, is because every year the trees around here get bigger and bigger so grass in the dog pen gets less and less sun. If only I could have that wretched maple taken down! It would let a lot more sun in, and we'd have a lot more grass and less bare dirt.
• I think I'd also like to have the ash tree outside the bedroom removed. I have nothing against the ash tree, actually, except that it's a forest tree growing about 10 feet from my back door, not the ideal position for a forest tree, and it's shading out the roses and clematis I planted when it was smaller, not to mention the grass by the back door, leaving nothing but dirt (and mud, when it rains), and has grown up into t he electric wires that run along the side street. I would replace it with, say, a dwarf apple or a crabapple--preferably a sterile variety that would bloom but not set (and drop) fruit. Something small that would still provide some shade for the shade garden I've got going on the north side of the sidewalk (this one runs from the backdoor east to the side street; the one to the driveway runs north), but not overwhelm everything around it, or get into the electric wires.

I had actually about got myself worked up enough to go borrow against the equity in the house to get as many as possible of the dangerous/nuisance trees (the mulberry pieces have been falling out of all summer, the ash, the deformed blue spruce, that wretched maple, the dead tree leaning over the dog pen, and the hateful tartarian honeysuckle) taken care of, and for some work on the house (like new floors in the kitchen and bathroom and a shower in the bathroom--my knees hate folding up into that bathtub) when the economy collapsed this week. Guess I'll wait a while longer.