War and Peace in the Garden

This is part of the Virtual Garden Tour.  To take the whole tour, go here.

Please, at any time, click on the photos to embiggen.

The Garden at War

As my regular readers know, the Common Household gardens are plagued by fat Attack Rabbits, moles, chipmunks, and birds.  Also, the newspaper delivery person tends to throw the paper right on top of my little garden around the mailbox.  Why s/he can’t use the newspaper box that is right there, I don’t know. 

I decided to do battle using seeds.  Without doing any research, I decided that green onions would repel the rabbits, and forget-me-nots would repel the newspaper.  Well, it’s more that it won’t bother me so much if the plants that are destroyed cost me $1.50 for seeds rather than $20+ for plants.

I planted the forget-me-nots here, at the front of the mailbox garden, at the end of May.  

For the onions, I used a different war tactic.  I experimented by planting them in four different places.  I put some in the mailbox garden.  Then I put two rows in the strawberry patch, which is in the shade (not my decision to put a garden there) and has menacing amounts of weeds just next to it.

Strawberry-onion patch.  There is another row in front.

I put one row on the west side of the house, which seems to suffer from heat bouncing off the wall of the house and frying most plants I put there.

And one clump in the hillside, which is regularly beset by weeds, rabbits, moles, voles, snakes, birds, and gaboon vipers.

Here is how they are doing six weeks later:

Mailbox garden.
The onions are there, but poor and thin, like Oliver Twist.
The forget-me-nots are doing well.  I planned to
make a long row, but unfortunately dumped all the seeds
in one place.  I haven't thinned them out, because
they are on the Very Low Maintenance Plan.

Onions and strawbs doing well.
Except I keep stepping on that row of onions in front.

Onions and animal doorway.

Side of the house: NO ONIONS.  

On the hillside.  These are doing best, of the four locations.

So far, the war seems to be going mostly in my favor. Okay, so the onions are thin and unsubstantial.  Keep in mind they are still toddler onions.  It seems the rabbits are not eating them.  And the newspaper has landed squarely on the lawn ever since I planted them.

The Garden at Peace

While doing all this gardening, I made many serendipitous discoveries.

1, The strawberry patch is doing okay.

In mid-June we got two strawberries; at the end of June, 4 berries; last week, 11 berries.  The crop has doubled each time!

Tiny, sweet, and full of seeds.

2. One of my day lilies bloomed.  Usually the deerabbits eat the buds.

On the west side of the house.

Day lily mops (no blooms) at the top, forsythia, and weeds.

3. I found this:

See it?

There it is.

A raspberry!

4. Snapdragons seem to do well by the side of the house, unlike the onion seeds.  I also have a volunteer snapdragon up by the mailbox.

From the farmer's market, planted in
 the garden on the west side of the house.

More wildlife

Volunteer Snapdragon

5. The snow-in-summer is still alive. 

Snow-in-summer, in summer.

This is what snow-in-summer looks like in late May.  I love those delicate white flowers, and wish I could find more of this plant, but I never see it in the local garden stores.

Snow-in-summer, in late May.

6. This azalea did not bloom at all this spring, and I was pretty sure it was dead.  It isn’t.

Azalea in early May.  Looks dead as a doornail.

Azalea in July.  Alive, if surrounded by weeds.

7.  Our Kwanzan cherry tree also did not bloom this spring.  I was most disappointed, and guessed that  it was due to this winter's intense cold.  I am hoping that these are buds for next spring.

Buds (?) above the leaf growth

Buds (?) below the leaf growth

8. Despite being struck by early blight, I have two tiny tomatoes on my plants that are in the hanging planter.  No jalapeno peppers yet.

One of two tomatoes.  Not going to be the
bumper crop that we've had in the
strawberry patch

9. I also have these growing up by the corner rock.

The garden at the corner rock, also known
 as the Sewer Manhole Garden.

Yellow marigolds and purple petunias.

Unruly gladioli.  No matter how much I thin
them, they keep putting up new
foliage, but don't produce many flowers.

Hostas are blooming!
These usually are eaten down to the ground
by deerabbits or Daleks, so they never bloom.

Dianthus

10. And finally, my precious balloon flowers are going strong.

Thanks for taking this long, laborious walk around my gardens!

To return to the Virtual Garden Tour, click here.