I should really be doing retro posts

[derien]

But instead...

Below are the lilies I was looking for, which Hawk helped me transplant a few days ago. As you can see, each bloom seems to last only one day, and then the next bud blooms.


A close up of one so you can get the colors, as best as my camera can reproduce them. So, what kind of lily are they?


On the left, the mangled looking things lying down... that's what the new lilies look like now, which is why I clipped the flowers and put them in water. Some three year old came along and danced on them, apparently. >:( Hawk saw the end of the carnage, and that the kid's father apparently did nothing to stop it. (To the right is garlic, doing fairly well. He didn't touch those.)


And since I was out there I decided to take a few more pics of the garden in it's present state... down the row of arbor vitae, looking from the road into the property. Our oregano is particularly huge.


Thyme, surrounded by garlic.


A row of radishes, and then the yellow flowers are pak choy all bolted. Garlic beyond, doing well.


Shooting through the tree (you can't see the stair steps in the tree from this angle) down the row of blackberries. Monster berry plants, they loop up over the lower branches of the trees. Possibly about the same as the last pics we might have posted of them, only the path is getting encroached upon at the far end.


More garlic, doing well. Peppers to the right, not doing quite so well because they're in the shade of the stair tree.


The paleolithic dalek is a great place to put the water sprinkler (not shown, here). We're opening up the area where we previously just tossed spare rocks and wildflower seed and Eor has put in some herbs at the base of the dalek.


And from the other side of what was previously the wildflower pit, peppers which are doing pretty well because they're in the sun. Also, more bolted pak choy, leftish.




I think I started this because of Ironicbees post of pictures of the Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon. I don't think ours is anything like as beautiful. Maybe some day. ;)

Comments

[ironicbees.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like your garden! Maybe not as beautiful as the Japanese one, but it's still quite pretty.

*shakes fist at the kid who damaged your flowers*

Are lilies easy to grow, or do they require a lot of tending?

[derien.livejournal.com]

According to the random young guy we met on the street the other day on our way back from stealing these lilies (from a vacant lot), he said they'll take over the yard if allowed. They're very resistant to road salt (he said) and just as happy in sun or shade. They do like an area that's a little bit damp. So, I probably should have put them in the back yard under the stair-steps tree*, as I have a dark and perhaps a little damp area there where nothing wants to grow.

-------------------

*I think the tree which grew through the metal stairs is actually a walnut. Eor cut up the flight of stairs and sold them for scrap, but some were embedded in the tree.

[ironicbees.livejournal.com]

they'll take over the yard if allowed.

Really? It's probably best that we not plant any, then. Although, I've read that bamboo will do the same thing, but we have some that's pretty much stayed in place.

[derien.livejournal.com]

I think that kid was exaggerating a tiny bit - I've looked around and tried to pay attention, and it doesn't look to me as though it takes over like bamboo (or what we call bamboo around here, which is actually japanese knotweed). Hawk pointed out that in the vacant lot we stole our lilies from nothing had been taken care of for a while, and the lilies really didn't seem out of control. (He's met the people who lived there before the house was control-burned, and they were not interested in yard work.)

But don't get Japanese knotweed started in your yard, that stuff is horrible. In England they salt the ground and kill EVERYTHING to get rid of it. You probably can't pick it out, but there's a few stalks in the front of the last picture, amongst our peppers. No matter how often I weed there will always be a wheelbarrow full that have managed to get a couple of feet high before I catch them. We hatesssss them!!! In fact I pulled up some of those in that vacant lot, as well, and our neighbors happened to be coming by and laughed at me, as they think I'm obsessed with killing the stuff. ;) And they're right - I bought a machete just for that.

[ironicbees.livejournal.com]

Our bamboo's the real thing. I've seen a few shoots growing outside of the container mom planted it in, but it's pretty well contained and it hasn't caused us any problems.

The knotweed sounds like a massive pain in the ass. :(

[slicesmissus.livejournal.com]

How do you plant the garlic, is it just a matter of planting a clove?

[derien.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. :) You plant them in the Fall (September/Octoberish), though. Put them pointy end up about 5 inches, I think it is, down, and they're one of the earlier things to come up on the spring. The scapes are really the cool part, we eat those all summer, and then you pull up the plants (in late July or August around here) and you have eight cloves where you had one a year ago. Shouldn't plant them in the same place two years in a row, though, because of mildews... although we have done so, because I think we didn't read that until too late. We'll see how our root crop comes out.