poplar road

Good job guys! I bet Richard is wishing he had the thumb on his excavator about now....

Thanks! Yes, that would make things easier, although it would have to be a pretty large bucket to pick up those boulders, they're half again as large as the current excavator's!

Tired and sore though he is, I think he might have tackled the next section last night, but we had to spray herbicide on the evil field bindweed (like a creeping morning glory) and knapweed in that area first and leave it for a week. Bindweed spreads with just the tiniest chunk of root (I've dug it out of my flower beds several times this spring with no luck), so we can't be digging it up and adding it to our fill pile until it's good and dead.

Richard has big plans but he's very aware there are only 2 weekends left to get this project 'done' at least to the point of tidiness before all our friends arrive. He's had some practice though, so I think he'll get it done. I wish I could drive that Bobcat so I could be of more help...

Very nice. I've always loved rock gardens. Need any common purslane/portulaca? I have TONS and it loves rocks!

I haven't come across portulaca... Aha, found it under annuals. Great, self-seeding and extremely sun-loving and drought tolerant, perfect!!!! If you come out for the August long weekend maybe you could bring me some seeds? If it produces seeds all summer long. I'm hoping my family will give us my grandmother's greenhouse this fall so I can grow things from seed with more success next year!

I love getting free plants. The yellow coreopsis my mom gave me is just began blooming this weekend, and my neighbour gave me some hyssop and something else she hasn't identified that has yellow blooms and grows several feet tall. Unfortunately she's been giving them to me at midday when the heat is too much and they instantly wilt - but if they live, they're perfect for my garden, right? I'm trying to stick to drought-tolerant , low-maintenance perennials but anything that self-seeds is great. Although I'm having trouble keeping my poppies in check, and when they spread into the lawn I don't have the heart to kill them, they're so beautiful. I got out the weed whacker, finally, and did most of the yard, but when I got to the side yard where all the poppies are, I lost my nerve and went around them. I'll collect the seeds of the most vigorous ones and then they have to go so we can get that area levelled out.

Wow, what a lot of work you're getting done on your yard and around the barn! Your rock gardens are lovely. I'm glad some of my flowers are growing for you. I wish your poppies would work for me, though I forgot to try sowing them again this spring.

All the plants you gave me are growing, although the phlox hates the heat, and the cranesbill geranium isn't flowering. Try sowing the poppies this fall, they might do better getting a bit of cold. They also like really good drainage.

I just started gathering seeds this morning - poppy, columbine, and lupin. I still have some left from last year, too. The nasturtium seeds I bought have done well - 25 out of 27 planted came up and are close to flowering. I wish I'd planted the whole packet!

Portulaca aka common purslane is currently the bane of my existence. It is a nasty, persistent, bitch of a weed that has taken over my little vegetable patch. Though high in vitamins and minerals (and can be used in salads) I would thoroughly like to eliminate it from my garden, but alas, it is herbicide resistant and the only way to get rid of it is to pick it. It has shallow roots, but it's a pain to pick because of it's pervasiveness and it's size. No seeds are necessary; it reroots itself from root, stem, or leaf - even if dried out and otherwise dead-looking. It makes great ground cover, but it's the last thing a vegetable garden needs. It has killed my chives, onions, and some basil.

I can send you some blog posts in which I heartily complain about the distress and work this is involving, if you'd like.

On the other hand, yes it would be great in a rock garden. And yes, I'd love to unload some and make it someone else's...uh...joy.

Ouch! Obviously not the same gorgeous flowering annual I found on a nursery website! I'll check out your posts. Sounds much more like my biggest bane, field bindweed. When I first moved in I thought it was a tiny version of morning glory, bad but not unstoppable, and with all the other work to do to tame this neglected acre, I didn't work very hard at killing it then. Now we've sprayed it where it's 2 feet thick and the only thing growing, but after a week it's hardly showing any damage from the herbicide. Meanwhile from the original corner I noticed it in four years ago, it has spread into and destroyed the lawn, has invaded another 40 feet of flower beds to choke roots and twine up stems, and will not die. Richard says to just give up on those beds, as he'd like to get rid of all beds bordering the house, to have rock firebreaks instead (silly man thinks a green plant is going to increase the chance of our stucco catching on fire when the next forest fire blazes through, hmph!). But giving the matting, twining, malicious nastiness of this vine, giving up would mean the same result as your common purslane - dead plants. Especially the roses, as it loves to climb. So I keep ripping the vines out, although they've gotten ahead of me since the heat made it hard to weed for long in that south-facing spot. I just hope as Richard starts pulling down the rest of the old east wall this morning, that the eight foot by three foot section covered in bindweed is finally dead. Otherwise we'll have replaced one ugly but limited retaining wall with another even uglier as the bindweed takes over and makes straight for my apple trees. I'm going to head out for a bit before breakfast while I can still wear long sleeves, and pull bindweed out of my roses for an hour. Grrr!

Oh, apparently it DOES flower - eventually. I'm not letting it get anywhere that big, though.

Yes, that's seems to be the only solution - keep ripping it out. I pulled up the bindweed in the bed below my front office window for the fourth time Saturday morning, unwinding it from around my rose bushes and trimming the bushes quite a bit just so I could get beneath them. Used to be so satisfying to get that bed looking nice. Now I know it will be covered in vines again within the week. I have two small pots of wooly thyme I was going to plant in the large gaps of dirt there, to keep the weeds down, but in another bed the bindweed is growing through my year-old, three inch thick mother-of-thyme with no hesitation. So is it worth putting another new plant through hell? Probably not. I might try mulching with gravel, but I doubt it will have much affect. I love gardening, but I'd rather move on to the next bed that needs work rather than going back to the same one over and over again. At least I didn't attempt vegetables this year! My fruit trees are much easier by comparison. Good luck with the portulaca battle!