Bulbs away!

Thumb: "Uh, honey? Umm... I may have overdone it with the mail order flower bulbs."

Mr Thumb: "<sigh>"

Thumb: "Just a bit."

Mr Thumb: "Overdone? You? I can't believe it."

Thumb: "Again with the sarcasm..."

I got maybe a third of them planted: some scillas (and let's see how those turn out...), crocuses, and tulips large and small. I'd post pictures but firstly, it was dark by the time I finished, and secondly, even if it wasn't, there'd be nothing to see but soil.

Pot luck tulips.

Hydrangeas / hortensiat

If you want a big bush, prune lightly in early spring or in the autumn after flowering, just removing  the wilted flowers; this gives smaller flowers but encourages growth. For larger flowers, prune more strongly, e.g., half the annual growth.

When young, water regularly and do not let dry out. Older plants only need extra water in very dry conditions (such as the summer of 2018).

The best time to move it is in the autumn after the leaves have fallen.

(More info in Finnish)

Planting peonies

I'm considering alternating phlox and peonies for the mostly-sunny flowerbed, so noting down related stuff here.

Plant peonies in the early autumn and it'll flower in the spring. Weed and clean the bed well. Do the same in the spring and maybe put some sand on top, so the surface stays well-ventilated. Here's more about planting: https://www.meillakotona.fi/artikkelit/istuta-pioni-oikein-ja-se-kukkii-jo-ensi-kesana.

Plant the phlox on the spring. Divide the roots with a sharp knife and replant at a distance of 35-40 cm. More: https://www.meillakotona.fi/artikkelit/syysleimu-on-todellinen-perennakaunotar-nain-takaat-pitkaan-kestavan-kukkaloiston.

Awkward growths

And while we're on the subject of fails... I'm not sure that this really is one, and in any case it's not mine \o/  :D but something needs to happen with that crabapple tree. The way the tree has been pruned has the tree full of awkward angles and tangles.

Yes, one branch is supporting the other while passing over and under itself.

The tree is also full of dead twigs, even quite large ones, as you can see.

Too late to do anything about it before next spring (although I did cut off some really annoying and ugly dangly things), but I'm thinking quite a lot of it needs to come off.

EDIT: Madam Guru pointed out that my information was in error and that it is, in fact, okay to prune the crabapple in late summer. Yay! Pics will be coming up soon, no doubt.

Just... no.

Remember the explosion of a flowerbed full of alchemilla and phlox that looked like this in the not-too-distant past?

Well, after some growth and some heavy rain it turned into a very laid-back explosion.

The alchemilla flowers got tired and decided to lie down, bringing the geraniums and phlox down (for a change). Gaah. The stalks showed no sign of resuming an upright posture even when dry(ish) and were basically getting  smushed against the ground.

As I'm using the past tense you'll have guessed that I took action by removing the heaviest alchemilla flowers - I started out by cutting them all off, then realised it was too much and changed my strategy to thinning, but that wasn't much better, just the worst of both worlds.

The flowerbed now looks like a particularly shoddy explosion that someone half-heartedly tried to tidy up but made it worse.

What should I do? Cut everything off? Cut some things off? Dig the bloody thing up and plant boring but well-behaved bushes?

Ferns!

The raspberry bushes weren't the only thing I dug for today: I finally got my ferns! Polypodies (kallioimarre) and soft shield-ferns (kilpihärkylä).

I moved the little hydrangeas, which will probably kill them but they weren't really thriving in that spot anyway :/ Let's hope they do better at the other side of the yard.

Clearing the raspberry block

Today I've mostly been digging in the garden.

This morning I decided that this was the perfect day to move one of the raspberry bushes so that it wouldn't block access to the garden gate (once get a proper garden gate, that is). What made it perfect? Well, the fact that I was inspired to. Nothing in this household happens by design; if it's going to happen at all, it'll be ex tempore.

The gate corner before work started

 There was sooooo much soil and roots and soil and rocks and soil. Gaah.

I'd got to this point when H showed up and asked where I was planning to put all that soil. I made like I knew what I was doing.

 The hawthorn hedge on the other side of th fence keeps invading our side. The crabapple tree (just out of the picture on the right) has roots everywhere. Lucky thing H and his manly muscles were there to sort out the worst. The biggest root we cut was as thick as my wrist, but there were lots of finger-thick ones.

Together H and I lifted the whole bush with as much of the roots intact as possible; unfortunately not much of the root system made it, hardly any bigger ones at all.

After that H's wrist decided it wanted no part in these fun games, so I went on alone. At the end of the day there was actually too little soil rather than too much, so that worked out all right.

Now the gate corner is only waiting for the new gate to be put in! We'll also get some more stones for the path.

Dead things, or Should v. want

I'm doing my best to follow my new, self-valuing guideline "if it's dead or it otherwise stinks, just get rid of it", and attacked the greensplosion flowerbed from the previous post. I took out most of the phlox stalks that stuck out among the alchemillas, partly because they were catching the wind and bringing all the other plants down with them but mostly because they just looked out of place there. I trimmed the left side of the bed until it's nicely separated from the next one and the front until I could see the edge of the grass. I didn't have the supports to prop up the long stalks of the other plants. I'm still considering whether to keep that bed as it is over this summer or whether to pull everything up now.

Before

After

Hedge fun

The Internets told me that spring cleaning a hedge involved clearing out all the dead leaves and twigs from inside it. It took hours, but it was hugely therapeutic!

Here's the mess I started with. Also squirrels <3

I mean seriously.

Guess which side is done!

I hope my tetanus shot is still valid...

Here's the result (sadly without squirrels).

The hedge is so happy! I could swear these weren't there when I started.

Mr Thumb, who got to carry off all the dead stuff, is also happy. I hope.

Things that I learned:

• Get gloves that cover your arms. Ouch.
• When poking in the undercroft fluffing up dead stuff, keep your mouth shut.
• There's always good slapstick potential with a rake and a garden hose.

Spring cleaning continues

 I'm still not entirely well after overdoing things in the garden and losing my voice entirely on Monday, but, well. I was going to go for a nice little walk, peeked into the yard, thought "I'll just rake the lawn while I'm here" and ninety minutes later I'd cleaned the whole place and put in fertiliser. Oops.

Who can stay away from all this green!

I'm thinking of putting up proper trellises, cutting down the vines entirely and letting them regrow with more support. Is it too late for that this year?

Look how tidy! 

Even the front yard is looking nicer.

Mapping the current status

T&T who sold us the house came by to introduce us to the plants, which was awesome. I made a map and jotted down instructions. It's all perfectly clear now, isn't it?

Leikkauksia

Aurinko paistaa. Talipalloissa pyörii sinitiaisia, varpusia, talitinttejä, punarintoja, jopa mustarastas tuli osille. Ikkunan takana istuva viherpeukalo miettii tätä: Lehtipensasaidan leikkaukset. (Artikkelissa on myös hyviä linkkejä muihin kuin pensasaita-asioihin.)

Tehtävä: etsi kuvasta lintulauta. Kuvassa myös: osa puheena olevaa pensasaitaa.

Nähtävästi kyseessä on sen verran iäkäs pensasaita, että se ei vaadi järeitä toimenpiteitä vaan lähinnä trimmausta. Internetz ehdottaa myös, että aidan profiilia voisi kaventaa niin, että alaosa ei jäisi niin varjoon... tai ei nyt suoranaisesti ehdota, mutta antaa ymmärtää sen olevan mahdollisuus.