November 4, 2018 – Tiger Lilies revisited

         See my October 15, 2016, blog for the origin of my Tiger Lily bulbs.  It is a cute story of how I obtained such fine bulbs and a review of how I replanted them in 2016. Two years ago I planted 40 bulbs and now that amount has more than doubled.

         Yesterday I dug up the tiger lilies –they were overcrowded as well as infested with wiregrass.  It was one of those “cussing projects” and I had the strength to tackle it. It was a take-no-prisoners skirmish on the wiregrass at the same time saving the plump, quality lily bulbs.  I took my time digging the bulbs by hand – that is really the best way so that you don’t chop them up with a shovel blade.

         This 4^th of July they bloomed spectacularly and when I cut the stems down in late August I counted the stems as I tossed handfuls on the wheelbarrow.  I cut 100 stems not including the half-dozen stems I brought in the house for display the week of the fourth.  100 stems – which was easily 500 to 600 blooms.  Now that is a display!!  So, lifting, dividing and refurbishing this garden is well worth it in my opinion.

         Every few years you need to lift and divide Lillium lancifolium, also known as Lillium tigrinum.  Last spring the plants looked crowded and I put lift and divide on my TO-LIST for this fall. 

         When I lifted the bulbs yesterday, many had multiplied into a clump of 3 or 4 bulbs. I ended up with 109 medium and large bulbs and couple dozen smaller bulbs [still blooming size]. One clump had seven bulbs, picture below: 

         It is always a delight when you more than double your bulbs in only a few years.  It sure made me feel very “green-thumb-ish!”

         I set the lifted bulbs aside [covered in the shade] and tackled the entire flowerbed by digging through the soil and lifting the 20-year old landscape fabric that was buried 8 to 10 inches deep.  I tore that out as well as I pulled out all the underground wiregrass runners and roots I could find. 

         I will be honest – it was a two-day job.  I finished the removal of the old landscape fabric today. Then I sifted the soil and searched for more wiregrass root bits.  I re-shaped the flowerbed making it taller and tighter to the well house.  

         Lastly, I replanted with the largest 25 lily bulbs divided into 5 each on the four sides of the well house and then I set a ring of 30 large and medium bulbs in a circle around the square.  I have the rest of the bulbs earmarked as gifts to friends or for another garden.

         I dug the bulbs in, tamped it down and in a few days – it will rain.  Once it rains, I will sprinkle some weed inhibitor on the bare soil and then mulch it down and trim up the lawn edge.

         Hopefully I can keep the wiregrass out of it this next coming year – starting early and being vigilant. Maybe I can get three years out of this next go round as I planted the bulbs further apart.

         Please check my blog in the spring – I’ll take pictures of the fresh growth when it is up a few inches.  That always looks so rewarding to know I’ll have a stand of orange tiger lilies to celebrate “ . . . the rocket’s red glare . . . " the week of the 4^th of July.

        

March 30, 2018 – Disappointment and surprise in the garden

         Wire grass!  I have to admit, it has worn me out and I give up.  I am going to “let it go home to Mombasa,” in a give-up on something when I have tried my best to get it to work. [I am alluding to the scene where the character, Karen Blixen, in the movie Out of Africa is standing in the rain and the dam is breaking and she stops her natives from shoring up the dam and acquiesces to letting the dam dissolve into the water flowing to Mombasa.]

         Well, that is how I feel about the ugly green rectangular well house in the front lawn. I hate it. Everyone on our street hates theirs – as that is where the health department placed them in relation to our septic system and leach fields.  First, I tried shrubs around it to camouflage it.  That worked okay until the shrubs go so big my husband could not mow around it. Those were yanked out and I cut out the sod, which was predominantly wiregrass and built up a two-foot wide garden around the square well house.  I tried spring tulips and iris.  Still, the wire grass persisted. It has been a running battle with the wiregrass for several years now.  You can’t spray it to kill it or deter it in any way that I have found.  It simply re-grows or sweeps in from the lawn similar to Kudzu.

         The last round – a few years ago – I put out 48 orange tiger lilies. The well house garden looked good for the few weeks around the Fourth of July for a few years.  But, still, I was weeding every month trying to keep the wire grass from encroaching.

         Then, last October, the gardens were neglected for almost a month because of my tending to my Mom’s house, breaking down her household and cleaning out the house and getting it ready for market.  Nothing was done down here for one month, then another month.

         That was all it took; two months of wire grass and swoosh – thick as an expensive Mohawk carpet right up to the well house and even mounding up in waves, as it wants to swallow the well house whole.

         Underneath that luxurious mat of wiregrass were 100 or so orange tiger lilies asleep through this wet winter. Walking the dog, I have noticed the bulbs glossy green foliage poking up out of the wiregrass mixed with contrasting clumps of soft lamb’s ears.  I studied the wiregrass knowing I would have a battle on my hands in the spring.

         Yesterday was the skirmish with the wiregrass carpet and it won.  I sat back on my heels after I’d weeded the henbit and other succulent weeds that love to run and take over the four-inch growth of the lilies and around the lamb’s ear clumps.  Two hours and all that I was able to accomplish was pulling the succulent weeds out of the well house circle. I netted a full wheelbarrow of weeds and came to a realization. “I am done with this garden.”  The now tan wire grass has a few little green tips protruding, but when you try to pull it out – it is fixed as if in cement.  I stood up and dusted off my knees and with hands on my hips I finally said aloud to no one but myself, “Forget it, let it go home to Mombasa”.  I’ve knocked my head against this problem for several years now and it is not worth the time and effort.

         It is always hard for me to swallow failure.  The rest of this season, I will be merely going along and cutting the wiregrass down, by hand in and around the lilies so that they successfully bloom and then allow the stems to mature.  In the late fall I will take a pick axe and dig up the lilies and plant them somewhere else and then leave this well house unadorned and UGLY for rest of my gardening days.  It is not worth the effort – I have to chock it up to failure.

         I walked around to another part of the garden hoping to find something to cheer me up after such a failure.

         It didn’t take long.  I went down to the Zen garden and found my Siberian Iris are coming up nicely.  I was delighted to find the Colchicums that were planted two years ago making a showing. [See my October 10, 2016 – Surprises in the Fall Garden - blog for the history of these bulbs.]

         I planted these in the fall of 2016 and in the spring of 2017, I could hardly find them.  I wasn’t sure if moles had eaten them or possibly deer.  I spotted only a handful of leaves and was about to yank them out. But, my sentimentality got the best of me and I thought, the few that are left, might actually get bigger in a few years.  Let me wait and see.

         Fast forward to yesterday.  Lush strappy green leaves, I counted 18 or 20 when I had planted 28 [to match my calendar birthday].  WOW, how nice – I hope to get a lovely show this fall when they show off their pretty pinky purple petals.

         My big failure was softened by a lovely surprise.  That is the nature of the full cycle of a gardener’s life; a disappointment on one thing, then a lovely surprise from another.

Even though I have been gardening now for decades, I’ve got to learn to take it all in stride and press on with renewed optimism.

Happy Easter to you.

A fresh spring brings forth fresh optimism

in this old gardener.