A New Year and not much to say

TPP isn't big on predictions or resolutions, so not sure what to blog about when many people are doing these subjects.  Several projects are on the to do list.  A new garden path across the front to help the mail get through.  A concerted effort to clear out crappy saplings, establish a path, and initial plantings for our woodland garden.  Writing some essays for a new botany book. Doing some antique stucco house repair and fix the front step/stoop problem using the $$$ approach and adjusting the adjacent landscaping that had out grown its place anyways.  All these things will come to pass.  Oh, that job list sort of sounds like predictions.  It actually sounds like Mrs. Phactor will be on the job and keeping things moving along. 
Our calendar is such an arbitrary thing that placing any particular significance upon a day or date just seems quite silly. It mostly serves to let us keep track of how old we are relative to other people and things.  Our "young" cat is now a quite mature 6 yrs old, although she still acts silly and kittenish at times to our delight.
OK, here is a blogging resolution.  TPP will try to do better and present or explain more recent botanical research.  A effort to communicate science to more people.
TPP is looking to purchase a plum yew, the sprawling, spreading form.  Anyone seen a good nursery source that does online sales?  Also looking for a decent sized 4'-6' winter hardy variety of southern magnolia. Town planted one on a neighboring street just to tease TPP, and its doing quite well considering, so must have one for the collection.  

Breaking long time resolutions and not your back

Quite a few years ago, quite a few apartments ago, and quite a few roommates ago, TPP swore he was not going to move any more hide-a-bed couches up or down stairs for the F1. This was just a common sense, survival sort of resolution so TPP had be good at keeping it. So it generated a certain degree of dread and foreboding when Mrs. Phactor announced that a loveseat hide-a-bed had outlived any limited usefulness it ever had and would not survive the transformation of a small bedroom/library into her retirement office. With the exception of a long-haired kitty-girl, no one ever found this particular piece of furniture very comfortable for sitting let alone sleeping, again with the exception of afore-mentioned feline who wisely eschewed the seat and mattress for the pillow top back.  So this seat is not as impossibly heavy and awkward as a full-sized hide-a-bed, but balanced against its smaller size is the fact that TPP is a lot older since his last hide-a-bed move. Part of the problem is the particularly odd door to this room, narrow and set at an angle to purposely make all ingress and egress difficult. Getting it in the room took a certain amount of brute force combined with an ignorance of physics and geometry, getting it out was no different, but fortunately the stairs are quite wide so standing the seat on its end and sliding it down one stair at a time did not require hefting its bulk. This proved quite successful, but then at the bottom you end up having the whole thing just hulking there, much to the pleasure of said cat who decided she could happily live with this new arrangement and perched herself upon the upmost end for  gazing out the window. Hopefully later today a couple of hulking brutes, or at least younger backs, will come to haul the object away for a new gig with someone needing just such a seat, probably one of 3 people in the known universe. Most happily TPP's back will survive this glad parting. And Mrs. Phactor is pleased with the outcome.

2015 Gardening Resolutions

Here's all the resolutions that came to mind.  Probably  have forgotten a couple, but these are enough to try to avoid breaking for now.  The main resolution is to take time to enjoy the process and the results. 

No Onesies – This remains a problem in our gardens, too many single plants especially herbaceous perennials.  This happens because of experimentation with new plants to see if they can survive the particular rigors of our gardens. Planting in groups makes for more expensive experiments. But planting in drifts and clusters is what produces more dramatic results. So resolved more group plantings. 

Less Grass – This is certainly a pretty easy resolution because our gardens continue to gradually enlarge and even coalesce. Grass is just so darned boring and so is lawn mowing.  

Plan Way Ahead – Let’s pay attention to information about the ultimate size of trees and shrubs, and for long term landscaping, plan way ahead.  About 12 years ago a thread-leafed Chamaecyparis was planted with plenty of room to grow, so much room that it looked a bit funny sitting there, but now it a massive, broadly conical bush encroaching on the front steps. It can be carefully pruned back some, but not enough to actually significantly reduce its size.  New plantings around a neighbor’s house have one of these false cypress shrubs about 3 feet from the house and surrounded by other plants. It was planted that way to look nice now with no planning ahead other than to sell the house.  Or the house with two young bald cypresses each about 10 feet on either side of their front sidewalk. Hint: they get really big. 

Double Check the Cold-Hardiness Ratings on Labels – Please understand, they (plant producers) lie. TPP bought a zone 5 plant that promptly died over the next winter and then further research from various other sources never found a rating above zone 6. This is unethical labeling of course. They also lie by omission when they market an alpine plant as winter hardy without telling you they cannot handle our hot, dry summers.  

Do More Garden Designing – TPP is not really a good desinging gardens on paper. Our gardens have never had a plan; he makes it up as he goes along, sort of organically.  Drawing up a plan to scale helps greatly with the spacing and purchasing of trees and shrubs to integrate new plants into the existing plants.  But, hey, when a new magnolia bargain presents itself, plans or no plans, buy it. 

Refurbish the Kitchen Garden – The past two seasons have not been kind to our kitchen garden that suffers from small size and too much shade. Without enough space to do significant crop rotation pathogens seem to be getting the upper hand. Some success with large container gardening is suggesting a new direction for this garden.  

Use Better Record Keeping – A comprehensive list of the plants in our gardens is lacking. It’s in the neighborhood of 300 species. A flowering log is kept, but records of when and where some plants were acquired is spotty at best (mostly marginal notes in our old Dirr).  Building a database is a retirement project. 

Find Durable Garden Tags – Tags really take a beating out there.  And this is also true for TPP’s field research. Apparently a lot of animals have to chew on things to determine if they are good to eat or not. Several different types of tags have been tried, and their longevity has not been good, and some of the tough ones, the real survivors, tend to lose their information.  Any suggestions along these lines would be appreciated.

Don't Be Too Fastidious - A weed here or there just doesn't matter. And gardens don't have to be all neat-freak tidy to be attractive.  So in general, so long as things are not seriously out of control, don't sweat the small stuff. Now if a wedding is being planned to take place in your gardens, then someone will probably want this resolution to be broken, but you know people should be paying attention to the event and the happy couple, and not to the neatness of your garden edges.