Little Brown Thumb

Public service announcement: Don't buy this plant

2011-08-06T15:15:00.001-07:00

Whatever you do, don't buy this plant—no matter how pretty one of its names (snow in the mountain) is. It's goutweed, plain and simple, which really doesn't sound like something you'd want in your backyard, right?

Don't believe me? Read what others have to say:
• UBC Botanical Gardens Forums
• Northscaping.com forum

After digging up as much as possible (even the tiniest bit of root will generate new growth), I've decided to remove much of the soil from the roughly 2' by 2' patch, cover the area with plastic (and let it sit for a year or so), and burn the bits of root that I've already dug up (along with a few neighbouring plants whose root balls have been infiltrated by goutweed rhizomes).

I can't believe it's legal to sell this highly invasive, non-native plant in Canada. There is apparently one sure way to avoid having to deal with it: move to a goutweed-free location.

Here's an interesting fact sheet on goutweed.

Still here, almost a year later

2011-06-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have an excuse for not blogging: lousy weather and little to no motivation. But now that summer is officially here and we've had a few nice days, I'll show you what's new in the garden. Check out this slideshow of some of the flowers in our front yard.

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Garden 2011 - Images by Barbara K. Adamski

This week's bargain

2010-06-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

This week I picked up beautiful impatiens for only $1.95 a container at one of the dollar stores in uptown New Westminster. I bought two plants the first time, then went back the following day to buy four more.

This is how they look in the side yard. (To truly appreciate how far we've come, check out this blog's first entry.)

Lawn-free in New West, BC

2010-06-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

This is it. We no longer have a front lawn. No more mowing! Of course, what we have now is a bunch of dirt, but we're working on that.

This evening, the plan is to cover the front boulevard with seeds for Easy Care Groundcover from West Coast Seeds. According to their catalogue, it's a "perennial mix of slow-growing grasses and drought-tolerant flowers." That means no watering either! The mix contains fescues, ryegrass, clover, English daisies, white yarrow, baby blue eyes, and white alyssum.

I'm a bit nervous about it all. I don't do well with seeds, but I suppose that's just the way it is for people with brown thumbs.

Long-overdue update

2010-06-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it turns out that I have been too busy writing and gardening to be writing about gardening. Here are some photos show how far we've come (and to remind us how far we still have to go!).

First, some "before" shots, taken last summer. Pretty ugly, eh?

And now a couple of more recent pictures:

Our plan is to have creeping thyme fill in much of that empty space, but the thyme is creeping along ever so slowly.

Random flower

2010-06-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

From the front garden. More photos and a bit of commentary coming soon.

Ta da!

2009-08-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

So, we've finally completed the fence, gate, and arbour. We're still debating what to do with the open spaces we have on both sides of the arbour, however. We might fill them in with lattice so that the honeysuckle we've planted has a place to go when it gets tall enough. We're also contemplating putting a hummingbird feeder on one side and a wind chime on the other side (there's a nice breeze that blows through that part of the yard). What do you think?

There are, however, two catches. One, hummingbirds hate us. Seriously. In the ten years that we've had a hummingbird feeder or two in the yard, we've had only one hummingbird visit. And when was that? Last year, when we'd forgotten to put sugared water in the feeder. So much for that.

And two, we can't seem to find a wind chime that we like. And looking for one is a bit frustrating. Have you ever noticed that when you go shopping for a wind chime, the wind-chime section will be absolutely deserted until you go there and start testing out the chimes. Then, out of nowhere, streams of people answer the call of the wind chimes, head over to the wind-chime section, and start testing them out as well. Drives me nuts. Like I want to listen to several other people testing out chimes. Don't believe me? Try it yourself. Go on. Do it.

Fence post, part two

2009-08-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to write, but these photos are pretty much self-explanatory.

Fence post, part one

2009-07-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, building fences and gates is a lot of work--for J. (I'm the project manager, unsolicited advice giver, board holder-upper, and official photographer of the event. It's a bit easier for me).

J did an amazing job digging holes and setting the posts in concrete, didn't he? But apparently, that was the easy part.

Building the actual gate and fence is a little more complicated.

First you have to buy the right boards. You wouldn't believe how challenging that is. We crawled over Home Depot's wood piles for at least a half an hour before we made two crucial decisions: 1) buy the two boards that we could find that weren't knotty, split or bent out of shape; and 2) go to Rona. And even though we were very happy with the planks we got at Rona, let's just say that they weren't as perfect as we thought they were. The square and the level were constant companions while we tried to assemble the gate.

Then we had to get the right hardware. We thought this set from Lee Valley would do the trick. But it didn't. Note the dimensions of the hinge--5 inches by 16 inches. Good luck attaching that to a 4 by 4 post. It's better suited to a barn door, methinks. Enter Home Depot once again. There we bought a new set of hinges and a door handle with a thumb attachment. We realized, however, that the handle wouldn't work for the thickness of our gate--a blessing in disguise, however, since the instructions made absolutely no sense anyway. So, back I went to Home Depot to pick up a very simple gate latch. While I was gone, J hung the gate on the Home Depot hinges.

Now here, dear readers (yeah, all three of ya!), is where I give you the one piece of really good advice I'm going to give you. When using hinges from HD, plan for the fact that they aren't as sturdy as they should be. Account for the fact that the hinges have far too much give. That way, when you finally hang that gate that you worked so hard on, and the hinges give out a little bit, your gate won't end up slightly crooked. Of course, if you're not a perfectionist, don't worry about it. But it you're an editor like me (and therefore rather particular about little details like that) or if you just happen to have a thing for well-hung gates, just keep that little bit of advice in mind.

Next up (I hope): lattice fences.

Bumblebees

2009-07-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

I can't recall ever seeing bumblebees in our yard before (usually we see only wasps). The side garden, however, is attracting bumblebees daily. Here's one hanging out in the lobelia.

The latest addition

2009-07-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

I was feeling the need for something smelly in the garden, since my gardenia is between blossoms. Lucky for me, the local paper's garden columnist, Anne Marrison, wrote about fragrant flowers in that week's paper. The next day, armed with the article, I headed off to Home Depot in search of a plant. I spotted this oriental lily (one of the plants Marrison featured) on sale. Its beautiful fragrance can even be smelled across the street!

Getting used to it

2009-07-13T23:08:00.001-07:00

The dogs were really bothered by the new path (they preferred the boring, straight route) but they're slowly coming around.

Getting started

2009-07-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of photos of the process. The round and square stepping stones were just temporary. We had a hard time making plans in our heads and on paper, so we jumped right in and started to play around with what we had so that we could get a sense of what we wanted.

It all started with a maple tree...

2009-07-11T13:12:00.001-07:00

Several years ago, I tried to tackle the front yard, with its straight lines, dried-up grass, and weedy patches. I bought a Japanese maple as a focal point of sorts. Bad move. It lived a short life, and I can't say for sure that it didn't suffer in its final days. It probably did. Its death, however, was a blessing in disguise. It was the wrong Japanese maple tree (I'm very picky about these things) in the wrong spot (I'm not picky enough about those things). But the end result was that I pretty much abandoned gardening. I mean, really, who wants to spend over a hundred dollars on a tree that doesn't even last a season?

But then I met our local landscape artisan. I'm serious. We have a landscape artisan in the neighbourhood. He's the one with the amazing garden. I was admiring his Japanese maple. It was exactly what I wanted. He told me where the Osakasuki thrives (medium sun/shade) and the best time to plant (when it's cool). And the next spring, he delivered one to our home.

So instead of tackling the front garden, we (hubby and daughter joined the team) thought we'd start with something more manageable, the very ugly side yard. The yard we walk through several times daily but pretty much forget to look at. I'd tried to beautify it before, but always ran into obstacles. When I tried grass, the moss grew. When I tried moss, the grass grew. When I tried periwinkle and sweet woodruff, they grew here and there but had to compete with moss and grass. A sumac planted itself there and looked pretty good for a while, but then the dog pruned it to the point where it was pretty much a stick jutting out from the soil. I couldn't win.

Here are the before pictures. Note the sumac stick (it's the tall, skinny, woody thing). The Japanese maple you see is still in the pot, waiting to be planted so that it can begin to do its job as inspiration to the green-thumb wannabes.