Calum Memorial Garden is in bloom

Since we purchased most of the flowers for it in spring last year, the garden is mostly filled with spring-time bloomers, so here are some photos taken yesterday:

Bleeding hearts

Bleeding hearts

Tiarella

Tiarella

Jacob's Ladder

Epimedium

The woodland phlox still hasn't quite bloomed yet, but has some buds.

These painted ferns aren't part of the Calum memorial garden per say, but are close by (and they're just so cool looking):

Japanese painted fern

Japanese painted fern

Bulbs galore

My last work of 2011 (early December): planting roughly 100 bulbs in the backyard in pouring 45 degree rain. Not the most fun way to spend a Saturday, but I was convinced by my Mom to go out and do it (after all she gave me half of them!) and that the reward in spring would be worth it, despite the fact that this is way later than these should typically be planted. So, since doing unconventional things comes naturally to me, I did it! This is what I planted (excuse the mud, they were taken after I planted them - many months later, in fact):

Daffodils

Tulips

Blue bells

Crocus

Allium

My Mom gave me all of them except for the Tulips (which I purchased at CostCo) and some of them are in memory of Calum: "Remembrance" Crocus and "Baby Moon" Daffodils (I can't remember if any of the others have a connection). Due to lack of space, I couldn't plant them in the memorial garden (but they are special nonetheless), so instead I planted them nearby in the backyard along the lawn in front of some trees. Not being anywhere near skilled at garden design, I tried to plant them in a logical fashion that might look ok (but most likely probably won't), so we'll see how it works (assuming they even come up)!

(Note: this is a back-post, posted on 3/20/12)

God remembers.

So on numerous occasions I have forgotten to purchase (twice) and plan a spot for forget-me-nots for our Calum Memorial Garden - a garden in our backyard in memory of our son we lost to miscarriage earlier this year. Well, today we went to a memorial burial service provided by the hospital for all the miscarried babies so far this year and each couple that attended received two small packages of forget-me-not seeds:

Oh, they have no idea how special these are to me as I can't help but believe that this was a gift straight from God, and it brought tears to my eyes.

I may forget, but my God does not.

Lots of mulch.

Today we had a special delivery of 10 cubic yards of mulch in our driveway. I put down a 8x10 foot tarp and it is completely buried.

10 cubic yards of mulch.

 A big pile of work next to my new wheelbarrow.

I finished up for the night a bit ago at around 9 because I couldn't see much anymore and I was being swarmed by mosquitoes. I came home from work early at 4 so I could get to work on it. Today reached a high of 87 degrees and was very humid (70 degree dew point) - it was great.

I got the Calum Memorial Garden mulched first, then pretty much the whole front yard, and then part of the side. I still have some areas in the backyard that I plan to mulch, but I need to pull some stuff first. I think I might end up with some extra.

However, this seemed like a logical time to make some changes so I could mulch some more areas... I ended up pulled up the other 2 holly bushes (they were in the worst shape of them all), so now we have no more holly bushes. And I was very close to pulling up the overgrown bushes in front of the window, on the left in this picture:

Current front yard landscaping (you can see the new mulch on the left).

But I held off... for now. My wife and I discussed it and I think we're going to pull it up along with creeping juniper next to it (I'm not strongly opposed to it, but my wife doesn't care for it, and it is probably the area of the yard that gets the most sun, so it has potential to house some sun-loving plants). I don't have much planned other than removing them and mulching, though, and that's kind of a problem. Here's a visual of my current thinking:

The game plan.

Remove the two bushes and split the decorative grass into two and transplant them over to that area. The problem with the decorative grass where it is now is that it's too big and blocks the view of the rose bush behind it next to the garage. It also blocks a sprinkler head that is there. I know "twos" aren't typically a good design, but I feel like it would look better than keeping it as one. Perhaps I could break it into three, or plan a third type of grass with it. I don't know. Or maybe this is all just a bad idea. The upside is that it would give us some of the more sunny areas to plant other things.

I think I'm going to do it. And if worst comes to worst, we can always try again.

Here's a rough idea of what I'm thinking:

What the executed plan might look like.

If this is accurate (and it's probably not), then the grass may not be enough to block the view of the irrigation system back-flow valve that sticks up about a foot and a half or two. We may need something a bit taller.

Here is a blank canvas for pondering ideas:

What should fill that void?

I'd say that area gets part to full-ish sun. Anyway, I don't know what to do... time to sleep.

Forget-me-not

For some reason, I can't for the life of me remember anything having to do with forget-me-nots. First, I forgot to purchase some for our memorial garden, so I said I'd have to make sure to save a spot for one when planting. Well.... I forgot! So, once I actually remember this plant, I'll have to find a spot to squeeze it in somewhere.

In other news, yesterday I attempted to measure the areas that I want to mulch (everything, basically) and calculated it out to be approximately 1000 sq. ft. So, to cover all of that area with 3" of mulch, I'll need about 9-10 cubic yards worth. I was about to place an order, but decided to hold off since we don't have a wheelbarrow or cart and there's no way I could effectively spread all of that around without one. So, this will soon be my next yard project.

Calum Memorial Garden is planted

The sun came out today for just a little bit and allowed the temperature to reach 72 degrees, so my wife and I got out and worked on the memorial garden for our son and planted the plants that we purchased yesterday.

I started out by digging up the phlox and transplanting it to the front yard. My options for where to put it were limited, but I snuck it in near the hydrangea tree:

Phlox transplanted to the front yard.

It will hopefully be more happy there. However, prior to moving it I noticed that the lower leaves of about half the plant had some dark speckles on the leaves.

Dark speckles on lower leaves of Phlox.

I thought that it might be the powdery mildew disease that Phlox are prone to getting and it might be, however, upon looking at photos of the disease online, it doesn't look very similar, being not white and all. In any case I pruned off every leaf that had it. The really interesting thing is that those speckles weren't present yesterday. I looked at a zoomed in photo taken yesterday and they don't appear to be there:

Photo of the same plant just yesterday with no speckles present.

I did a quick online search and found a forum post with pictures that look similar (yes, quite the scientific diagnosis). According to the responses it's leaf spot fungal disease / septoria divaricata fungus and is spread from the soil. This would make sense since we were digging up plants there and soil was flying everywhere and I know some landed on and near the phlox plant. We also had rain last night that could have splashed it up onto the leaves. I'll be keeping a close eye on the other plants we just put in in that area. I need to get some mulch ASAP to help prevent it from getting on the plant leaves. I can't believe how quickly that infected the plant. I hope it survives because I really like it, and of course all of the new plants that we just labored over.

Anyway, I also transplanted the other hosta that was behind the phlox to the north side of the house along with the other hosta I transplanted over there yesterday. Boy are there a lot of roots over there. I could barely find a spot to plant them (oh and I almost cut our cable line...). Here's a shot of what that area looks like now:

North side of the house with hosta transplants.

There'll be a stone pathway through there soon someday.

And after deciding how to arrange the plants (which was borderline random), my wife and I got to planting them and this is how it ended up:

Calum Memorial Garden

To finish it off we are going to get an engraved stone to put in it.

Here is the list of plants that we planted:

Wild Sweet William, Woodlan Phlox
'Blue Moon'
(Phlox divaricata)

Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans)

Tiarella 'Jeepers Creepers'
Creeping Foam Flower

'Praying Hands' Hosta

Dwarf Goatsbeard
(Aruncus aethusifolius)

Bleeding Heart
(Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba')

Golden Bleeding Heart
(Dicentra spectabilis 'Gold Heart')

White-flowered Epimedium
(Epimedium x youngianum 'Niveum')

New Guinea Impatiens
(Impatiens hawkeri)

Who names these things?? Woodland Phlox - hey that sounds nice; Jacob's ladder - sure, I can buy that; but Jeepers Creepers? Dwarf Goatsbeard? Huh??

Anyway, in addition to the garden, my wife put together the pot of Begonias for the patio:

Pot of Begonias.

Brigitte & Nadine Rhine Begonia

They look lovely! My parents gave us a pot of yellow begonias as a house warming gift in 2007 and they bloom beautifully all summer long! That is why I bought them.

And finally to wrap this long post up, I planted another pretty hosta that we purchased next to some other hostas in the backyard:

It's the lighter colored green one in between the two large ones
toward the left center.

Hosta 'Orange Marmaloade'

Good luck, plants.

Unplanned plant purchases

Today we went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art gardens to enjoy the nice weather. And it was lovely. I walked around the gardens taking pictures of the names of various plants that were planted in areas that seemed to have similar lighting conditions to areas of our yard, mostly shaded to part sun. I'll save those for another post someday as they aren't too terribly exciting. But what is exciting is that we purchased some plants today! This was entirely unplanned. We ventured into the plant store that they have on the grounds and we couldn't resist purchasing some. Then since we needed some potting soil, we stopped at another gardening shop on the way home, and of course I couldn't help myself again and purchased even more. I don't have photos of all of the tags of the plants yet, but here's a photo of them:

New plants!

A total of 15 - better keep me away from plant stores or we'll go broke rather quickly.

I do, however, have plans for the majority of them. Most of them will end up in small garden that we are planting in memory of our son who died at birth in a miscarriage earlier this year. The spot we chose for this garden is next to the deck in the back yard. It's a shady location that gets an hour or two of direct sun a day, thus most of the plants we purchased are shade tolerant or partial sun. I like them. There's something about shade loving plants. They just seem more peaceful to me for some reason and I think for the purposes of this garden that is fitting as there was nothing more peaceful than looking into the eyes of our son. We named him Calum Saul - Calum meaning "resembling a dove" and Saul meaning "one who was prayed for". One of the plants I found is called "Praying Hands" Hosta and I just had to get it - the leaves of the plant are folded upward together and I guess someone thought that looks like praying hands - I don't know if I really see that, but I got it for the name anyway. We also got a couple of bleeding hearts - one that has red and white flowers and another that are all white.

Other than the plants for the memorial garden, I also got some annuals for our patio that I'll put in a pot (the yellow and orange flowers on the right in the photo). I don't remember what they're called.

So when we got home, the work began. The future Calum Memorial Garden is currently home to a large hosta and an intermingled mess of pachysandra and lily of the valley. He's a "before" photo:

Future Calum Memorial Garden location.

This is also the location where I planted the phlox last year. I'll be transplanting that very soon to a more sunny location.

We began by carefully digging up and separating the pachysandra and lily of the valley. And you heard me right - I said "we" - I am overjoyed to say that my wife decided to join me in this project! It was wonderful having her out there with me and I told her that she looks like a natural gardener. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a shared love for gardening!

Once we had dug them all up, my wife began the task of transplanting some of the pachysandra to a couple other areas of it in our yard that were sparse. We're hoping that it survives and eventually fills in those areas. We still have quite a bit of it left and of course there's also the pile of lily of the valley plants. I'm not sure if we'll try to transplant those somewhere else or not. We obviously didn't get to it today, so we may lose our opportunity anyway.

While she was planting the pachysandra, I dug up the hosta and moved it to the north side of the house. I ended up splitting it in two and replanting it in two spots there. I have plans to create a walkway through  for that area connecting the front and back yard. My idea is to fill the area with shade loving plants (the area is full shade) and there are already a number of hostas planted there. We'll see if the new hostas are able to get re-established there. The soil is very compacted and contains a good amount of clay and roots from nearby trees. It was difficult to dig the holes.

So after a good day's work, the Calum Memorial Garden is almost ready for planting. The only things left are to transplant phlox and possibly the other hosta (in the upper right of the photo). I noticed that I forgot to purchase some forget-me-nots (the irony...), so I need to remember to plan a spot for those in the garden once we get to planting it; if the weather isn't too rainy, we should be able to do that tomorrow!