Busy Summer
Last spring and summer I spent travelling all over, seeing other gardens, visiting friends and family. This year, I mostly stayed home, gardened on a budget (I spent a grand total of $12.30 on seeds and plants, how about that?) and had tons of visitors come to see my garden. I also made use of my gardening skills helping a few people get their gardens in order for parties and visitors, designed new gardens for some budding gardeners, and started a new gardening business! It’s been a really busy summer!
The season started out with a series of plant and garden art sales that were well attended and lots of fun too as I sold off my extra annuals from my own collected seeds (the woman who bought a flat of my very special impatiens loves them and wants two flats next year!). The woodland wildflowers and perennials went too, plus some of the garden art. The garden was open for strolling around, and the dogs acted as tour guides sometimes. Although it was a lot of work for weeks before potting up plants and getting ready, I had a good time, so I may do it again in a couple of years, maybe even next year.
Lets not forget the MG garden walk in July! It was terrific to see some of you and enjoy your company wandering around the garden sipping iced tea. It was great fun if you missed it! The annual ‘Phlox of Sheep’ were the big hit of the evening- they were just spectacular, and since I had planted almost four flats of them wherever I could fit them in (a bumper crop that weren’t really in bloom for the plant sale) the garden was very fragrant! It’s a variety of annual phlox that I’ve never seen at the nursery, lovely shades of cream, peach, coral, pink and soft yellow in a very pretty combination. I save the seeds from my plants and start them indoors every spring along with the impatiens. I used to buy the seeds at Franks- Thompson and Morgan carried them, and luckily had started just saving the seeds to get a bigger crop when we lost Franks.
I almost feel like I had a bed and breakfast here this summer. First, an internet friend passed through here on her way from Minnesota to Pennsylvania and stayed for a couple of days on her way there, then on her way back too. We spent a lot of time sitting on the deck, or out in the driveway sitting area just enjoying each other’s company and the flowers. Then the first week-end in August, we had two gentlemen stay with us for a few days as part of a large choir touring the area from Cornwall, UK! It was one big party from Thursday to Sunday, as we hosted some small dinner parties for 7 or 8 out in the garden and relaxed out on the deck. We fed them out of the garden, enjoying fresh homegrown peaches over ice cream, tomatos, cucumbers and herbs on a salad, green beans and summer squash.
This summer, besides trying not to spend any money on gardening, I experimented with a couple of new things that you can try in your own garden. At the MG plant sale in Belleville, I did a mixed planter demo, and showed how to plant in a basket lined with newspaper, so I planted a few of those here too to see how well that worked. Both the baskets and the newspaper lining are holding up well, and when I dump the baskets out after the first heavy frost, the liner can just go in the compost with the contents- no plastic to pick out. I also am growing summer squash in five gallon pails with drainage holes in the bottom. That seems to be working OK, I think extra fertilizer is required- growth is slowing down and getting smaller, so I just added some 12/12/12 to the pots. Yield is probably not quite as good as plants in the garden, but summer squash tend to overwhelm the gardener, so I’m OK with that- there’s just two of us here. In fact the entire driveway pot vegie patch is doing really well, thanks to watering every other day, additional fertilizer and lots of sun.
And lastly, the new business! It’s really just a new name for what all of us as Master Gardeners do all of the time- educate the public, and help people learn to enjoy gardening. It’s been seen on CBS this morning, and in the Detroit Free Press on August 3, 2007 and elsewhere in the country in other papers. Someone has given it a label- Gardening Coach- and started a kind of movement! Suddenly there are great gardeners all over the world putting out a shingle, setting up small businesses and showing homeowners how to garden right in their own yards. I’ve set up a web site you can visit here called Garden Coach-Ellen Leigh and over in the side bar, and have more information about the trend with links to other sites on my blog in other recent posts below. While I don’t expect people to come beating down my door, it does lend some structure to something I do anyways in my spare (LOL!!!) time.
Gotta go now- dead heading and weeding, watering and fertilizing to do!
See you in the Garden!
