h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Last Summer, I planted Spiderwort and Blazing Star in my garden. I didn't see them coming up a couple weeks ago, so I assumed they had died over the Winter. Nope, they're coming up fine now.

The azaleas I planted seemed anemic in their refoliation, but now they're really going to town.

The Jack in the Pulpit congregation continues to come up. There may be as many as seven of them, all offshoots from one healthy "Indian turnip."

Imn years past, I spread myself much too thin around the park. This year I will let others carry on the tradition, while I pamper the plants along the perimeter of my trailer.

The Starry False Solomon's Seal under my back door has tiny, bright white blossoms that smell intensely sweet. Who would have expected that?

I'm a putterer. No flashy, big projects to wow people, just a few little plants that I enjoy. :-0

Sounds great Paul. I'm only doing this big project coz I've neglected the garden for so long and finally had the time to do it. All on a low budget too, nothing flashy here!

Enjoy whatever outside space you have and stay safe.

Thank you so much.

I overplanted for six years. This is the seventh year, and I think I'm entitled to a sabbatical. I keep finding more patches of starry Solomons Seal that I had forgotten about planting.

here's a picture of the species:
http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/savanna/plants/starry_solomon.htm

And here's the false Solomon's Seal that isn't styarry:
http://wimastergardener.org/article/false-solomons-seal-maianthemum-racemosum/

The best thing about them is that they will thrive along the north edge of my trailer, where not much sunlight falls. They will also tolerate a bit of competition from taller plants.

What else could anyone do with such shady spots anyway?

Solomon's Seal is the band of our lives, grows like weeds under our fence from next-door and those roots and bulbs go pretty deep to dig out!

So, places that have it have too much of it, and places that don't have it need to have some added.'

My greenhouse is now in place, a lovely early birthday present from my wonderful wife.

It came, (the greenhouse not my wonderful wife) flat packed, when I was at work.

I spent the next few days resisting the temptation to start building it at eleven pm after my shift...and I'm so glad!

Last shift before I finished, I took the instruction book out, just to have a peek and get a headstart for the following morning.

Hmmm, nearly sixty pages of instructions, sixty!

One of those Euro-no-words-just-baffling-diagram-one-size-fits-all-punctuated-with-exclaimation-marks-and-arrows-type-of-manuals.

That night, I actually had a nightmare about greenhouses, honestly played on my mind big time!

Early start. To battle!

My lawn resembled the workshops at Star Labs, as we laid out the billions of parts in numerical order.

Tools, aluminium and polycarb panels glinted in the sunshine, threatening a day of frayed tempers and mind wrenchingly difficult instruction following.

Ok, it wasn't as bad as I thought, fiddly and time consuming, and obviously designed with six-handed humans in mind, and I had to do the door three times before the hiroglyphs made sense, but,eventually, with almost no snarling, there she was, finished and glinting beautifully in the late afternoon sunshine.

Another hour fitting my freebie, recycled, shelves and benches, carrying the numerous pots of unidentified green things from my old, tattered and torn, but much loved, plastic structure to their spacious new home.

Can't wait for things to bloom and more experimental planting and propagation.

I actually feel like a proper gardener!

Now to discover the identity of all your seedlings, how exciting.

all done....apart from two mysterious sprouts!

You'd think rabbits would hate the taste of milkweed. Apparently we have a very odd bunny that doesn't.

I have ten milkweed plants in my yard. Five are common milkweed, four are swamp milkweed, and one is Butterfly Weed.

The swamp milkweed are mostly under my eaves, where they get water as it falls form my roof.

Today's lesson: read the bleedin label!

Fed the plants yesterday, a nice top dressing of fish, blood and bone. Rained all night.

Let the dog out for his morning constitutional whilst I bumbled around with night-lag, trying to remember why I'd come out here in the first place...

Unfortunately, the dog went berserk, rolling around in my beds and destroying my tomato plants.

Meanwhile, I'm in the shed pottering because I still can't remember the job I needed to do, and catch sight of the warning on the plant food, that this product may be attractive to dogs!

Oops!

Gosh I hope your dog has recovered from his trip!

Did the dog make love to the "attractive" materials?

As a biker, I am frequently miffed by people (who've usually never ridden) telling me how dangerous motorcycles are.

I've missed my bike over the last few months, and was really looking forward to a ride today (obviously in line with the government's mindbogglingly contradictory advice).

Last night, I thought I'd get a jump on my gardening job list and attack the poppy bed which is now engulfed in a sea of Stachys Byzantina, or silver lambs ears, if you don't speak horticultural Klingon.

These things are invasive, big time. Woody, wooly, pollen and particle filled invaders. One tiny plant, put in a few years back to keep my poppies company has now achieved gardener's world domination.

I gave up trying to tease them out and settled for brute force, ripping up a vast carpet of roots and releasing a mountain of silver fur into the evening air.

Unfortunately, it happened to be the same air as my eyes were innocently occupying at the time!

I have never suffered hayfever, not a sneeze, ever.

This morning I woke to swollen, crimson crusty eyes and fur clogged throat, feeling like I'd had a good bedtime facial scrub with stinging nettles, with a nice acid eye-wash and gargle to finish.

Gardening is dangerous!

It also destroys any thought of a bike ride. (Apparently telling your mates that you're cancelling coz you're practically blind is not a valid excuse and I'm a wimp!)

So there you go. Turns out motorcycle riding is a lot safer than gardening after all, and bikers can be heartless buggers!

Garden safe my green-fingered, red-eyed, brothers and sisters.

Stachys byzantina - bikers' bane.

Condolences.

Three broken drill bits and a shattered chisel later I have my Arthurian/Highlander feature, all that for a plant to climb! Lol

You suffer for your art.

My tools certainly are!

I've pulled up a lot of lambs' ears, too. I say "Baah!"

Never thought we'd be so thrilled harvesting our first new potatoes, but we are!

I dreamed about giving apartment residents potatoes to grow in their rooms.