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Spring has sprung!
I feel like I only recently discovered the beauty of Peonies! As it happened, I stumbled upon them while looking for flowers for my wedding bouquet. Since the flowers included in our package sucked, and buying real flowers while in St. Lucia wasn’t really an option, I opted for fake flowers. *GASP* I was lucky to find a website that sold very realistic looking fake flowers and I was able to get a family friend to put them together. I think I spent under $75.00 for the whole thing. Not too shabby!
Where I’m actually going with this post is, I finally bought a peony bush this weekend! I’ve wanted one for a while and last year they were a little more than I wanted to spend. Yesterday I found one at Lowes for $24.95. I didn’t really have a place for it, you know since we don’t really have a yard, but I just HAD to have one. I ended up planting it on our side yard next to a holly bush. This probably wasn’t the best place to put it but the tag said it needed partial sun. Originally I thought about planting it under the deck but that gets a lot of the hot midday sun. So for now this is where it will live. There are already some buds so I’m hoping it will bloom pretty soon.
In other yard related news, I have 6 iris about to bloom, my azaleas are also about to bloom, and my gladiolus are coming up nicely. All in all I am very happy with the current state of the yard. I planted the gladiolus about 4 weeks ago I think. I bought a bag of 60 at Costco over the winter for $12.00. I didn’t plant all of them though. I gave a few to mom and I’ll probably give a few more to a co-worker. I mean 60 is kind of a lot. Haha
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Root rot
A few months ago our landscapers decided they needed to do some “drastic” pruning around the neighborhood. Well the bush under our deck was one of the victims! Needless to say I was LIVID to come homeland find our bush hacked to pieces.
After a few emails to the HOA, it was agreed that the landscapers would replace our bush. I did some research and decided on a fragrant tea olive bush. I must say I was a little annoyed when the new bush was finally planted. It was no where near the “mature” bush I was hoping for.
The past few weeks here in Raleigh have been crazy with rain. Almost everyday we’ve gotten rain, ranging from light showers to downpours with flood warnings. The other day I went around back to check on my gardenias and noticed the tea olive looks terrible. At this point I think it might have root rot from all the rain. Who knows really. All I know is that Matt and I will most likely have to replace this bush AGAIN in the fall or early spring.
~k
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Yard work
For the past 2 years, or however long I’ve lived with Matt, I have HATED our bushes out front. Now I’m not really a gardener but in the past few months I’ve done pretty well keeping my plants alive, minus the rose bush. I don’t wanna talk about it. 😉 I had already decided as soon as fall came I was ripping those ugly damn bushes out and putting something else in.
Before Well yesterday was that day. Matt and I ran to Lowes and bought a small shovel and some mulch. While we were there we looked at plants and I think I’m going to put a few small azaleas in the space but I wanted to wait until the bushes were gone before buying something else. We got home and while Matt was watching football, I grabbed Julio and we went outside to pull out the bushes. This actually turned out to be a lot more difficult then I thought it would be. Thankfully the ground was wet so that made it a little easier but there were still spots I just couldn’t get the shovel in. Matt finally looked outside and came downstairs. He ended up having to help me get all 3 bushes out. Suckers were super heavy. I didn’t really expect that. 🙂
Once we got the bushes out the flower bed was a mess. Not to mention there was a ton of trash in the ground. I found a bottle opener key chain, a long yellow plastic thing, and some netting. Thankfully I didn’t find a snake or any other creepy crawleys. I tried to get the dirt spread around but it was really a disaster. Matt suggested we buy some edging while we were at Lowes so he helped me put that in and that helped to define the space. Once we had the edging in we put down the mulch. Oh man, you can’t imagine the difference. The space looks SOOOO much better. Even with no plants it just feels clean and crisp. I am really looking forward to putting in more bushes and hopefully keeping the space a little more organized. 🙂
After ~k