May in the garden

The fern leafed peony is a very exotic plant and lives next to the little rockery in the front garden,.  It's wonderful show is not long-lived, but it is quite elegant.  It has the lime green coriscan helebore for a good foil to the bright magenta perfectly formed flowers on their background of ferny green leaves.

The ajuga is putting on a grand show in the little rockery at the front garden.

This the Mountain Avens, or Dryas Octopetala.  It also lives on the little rockery.  It has these lovely white blossoms  held above the evergreen, oak-like foliage; on a small scale.  This plant is happy to spread along the rocks over clay.  The flowers turn into very nice fluffy displays of seed heads that give the base of the West Coast Planter the look of a chiffon gown. 

This is a look at the woodland garden along the side of the garage and part of the path leading to the back woodland.  There is the bleeding heart, anemorella, cyclamen, the self seeding honesty, a  perennial forget me not, that has the most gorgeous foliage.
These photos are from about a week ago.  Since then I have been working at reducing the Virginia creeper to about 4 feet high, on its climb up the telephone pole.  It took about 15 years tor reach its height..  but I hope to have before and after photos of this end of the strip between Shauna's driveway and mine. It has been a big cleanup.  I have 12 bags of leaf mold kind of stuff collected to use in the Woodland, after I am sure all the Virginia creeper and St. John's wort clippings are dead.  I have this in 12 twenty litre plastic bags, for now.  Since the big green compost bin is full, I have more of this vine clippings stacked along the woodland path, that you see above..  I have about 8 feet to clean up on the street end of this strip.  I have spent at least 16 hours on cleaning this strip, so far.  On Friday, I used my weed be gone to spray some of the more persistent weeds along the strip.  But the morning glories will need constant attention.  I sprayed the woodland path, and hope all the thistles are gone for good.  I hope I can salvage some of the twiggy stuff for the woodland path.  Next compost day is the 24th.  I shall be stomping over this collection of twiggy material to try reduce it to leave some stuff on the path, and reduce the size of the material to go into the bin, next week.

Today, it rained.  There is about 1.5 inches of rain in the gauge.  This is fine, it gives me a break from the exercise of cleaning up the strip along the driveways.  I must have about 16 hours invested in this clean up, so far.  The Virginia creeper and the ivy took about 16 years to grow to these proportions, so its a fair trade off. The creeper is cut down to about 4 feet, that will be going up the pole in no time again, I am sure.  The St. John's worte has been clipped to ground level.  It will be even more healthy and growing thickly after its pruning.  The Agave has been cleaned up.  The New Zealand flax could not compete with these plants and the snow.  It is history.  I have uncovered about 3 feet of driveway where the plants were growing.  There was a lot of debris inside the old creeper's vines.  I believe the squirrels were nesting in this nice secure place.

Alas, I no longer see the squirrel that once did the high power line runs in such an acrobatic display.  Lately, I have been waking up at 5 in the am and watching the creatures in my front garden and in the deer pasture just across the street.  We have deer, rabbits, and many  regular visiting birds.  The tree in the front has not leafed out yet, so I can see the front garden from my living room window.  Its designed for this view.  The view from the lower floor window is good too.  The lower floor view goes on throughout the year and is shady in the summer with the leaf canopy of the liquid amber tree. 
Since it was raining today, I went to Cannor Nursery and picked up a few more plants.  Basil, a few annuals and 6 more perennials.  I think I will be adding then to the pots I have on the deck.  There is a hollyhock and a delphinium for height.  Snapdragons and petunias to fill out the containers.   Some chinese vegetables and one tomato.  Four new little goldfish for racoon fodder.
Otherwise, I am almost finished the Girl who Played with Fire book, the 2nd in the the Stieg Larsson series of books.  As my IT friend Ken said, the characters get more weird as the series goes on.  I want a really good book to read about the computer world of today.  I doubt I will find it. I want a good novel with good information about how much this IT communication has changed our societies.  I understand that people now text message their friends that they are going to call them later on their cell phone.  :-)))  Parents have their children wired into their Blackberries to keep track of where they all are in their busy lives.  And FaceBook knows everything, just like god.  Its amazing how much stuff people put on their FaceBook and other social networking sites.  When there is a crime to investigate, it seems there is always something about it on Facebook.  People make themselves so vulnerable.
My last site meter counter said I had an average of 89 hits per day.  Not too bad for someone who is not even trying for hits.  Speaking of which, Megashot is, as usual, a place for people to gain recognition for their photography.  I get tired of the games they play to try to stay ahead of this game.  People are interesting, on the internet or off.

May in the garden

The star magnolia and the other one are in full bloom.  The area of the woodland beside the garage is at its best right now.  The path needs to be weeded.  But this area of the woodland is looking pretty good.  There is the bleeding heart, the cyclamen, honesty that self seeds every year in purple and white, the perennial forget me not which has terrific foliage, and the anemorella, which is covered with delicate blue blossoms.
Yesterday I spent about 4 hours out in the garden.  I moved the grass.  I did a bit of weeding in the moss garden, but it will need more attention.  A lot of the pea gravel seems to have disappeared from the dry stream, but not under the deck.  Very strange.  It will get refurbished when I get to this area to clean it up.  I did a bit of rearranging of the stones of the waterfall.  This waterfall is becoming more mossy.  The big work of the day was to mow down the edges of the st. john's wort along the strip between Shaunna's place and ours.  Then I swept up all the debris.  I have a heaping load of dirt and leaf mold that I am saving by the old compost bin, to be put on the woodland when I am finished cleaning it up.  This effort has given Shaunna and I more space on our driveways.  I have yet to cut back the Virginia Creeper and more of the St. John's wort.  It will all be mowed quite low and I am sure it will look very good this summer, after its pruning.  I finished digging out weeds along this strip and took a wheel barrow load of them to the green bin.  I need a sunny day so I can paint the wild morning glory .. a very rampant invasive weed .. with roundup.  This is an ongoing battle, as the people on the other side of this strip have never controlled the plants on their side. Shaunna and Gerald are going to be doing some work on their back yard.  I hope it included a retaining wall where their fence is falling over.  I assured her I would be quite happy to pay my half of the costs when they decided what they were going to do.  All of this vigorous sweeping seems to have given me a very sore wrist.  I put cold packs on it for a while after I got into the house.  It is still sore today, so I have taken the day off.
The world wide weather seems to be one crisis after another.  Japan had a huge earthquake awhile ago, that took out one of its nuclear power plants.  I believe they have it under control now, but am afraid to look.  There has been horrible flooding in Australia, and now some on the Canadian prairies.   Violet windstorms in Southeastern US, and terrible snow storms in eastern Canada.  I shall have to re-read that book called Climate Wars, again.  Its all pretty scary, when you consider the power of these earth movements.  We have been most fortunate where we live... just a late Spring.
Our Federal election is over and we have a Conservative majority in the house, with Stephen Harper as Prime Minister.  The first Green party member of parliament was  in the Saltspring riding.  Elizabeth May has made history!  A week late for May Day, but there she is!  More good news for us, is that our Vancouver Canucks are doing very well in the playoffs for the Stanly Cup.  There has been some very exciting games that go into overtime... good hockey!!
The Prince of Wales is wed.  It seems to be a very big thing.  People in Victoria went to the Empress for a 2:00 am breakfast to celebrate the once in a life time occasion.  More in the news... Osama bin Laden was killed by the US Seals when they raided a compound in the mountains of Pakistan.  From a book I read about the origins of these terrorist groups... this mountainous area has long been a stronghold for them.  Some of these groups have their roots in the time of the British control over India.  Sometimes it seems we reap what we sow.
On a happier note, my blog is again registering high eighties hits, and climbing.