Pruning and Planting

We had a gorgeous, sunny day yesterday, so we spent all afternoon outside working on garden stuff. Hooray!

One little chore we got done was pruning the raspberry bushes. There were quite a few dead canes, some of them hollow in the middle--bug hotels. Some pieces of the crowns even came right out of the ground with just a tug. I noticed quite a few carpenter ants as I cleaned up the canes, leaves, and other debris around the base of the plants. I hope a little better housekeeping will mean fewer homes for those ants right next to our house. Last year the berries we got were very small--I'm also hoping this pruning will encourage production of bigger berries.

I had also purchased 12 daylily bulbs from Costco last week when we were there, so we got those planted. 3 each of: Doublicious (orange with a double flower), Condilla (yellow with a double flower), + 3 each of Fire and Fog (red with yellow border), and On My Own ? (yellow, single flower).   I'm not sure if they'll make it or not--the one package seemed too wet, and several of the leaves were slimy. The other one seemed too dry, and they didn't really even seem alive.  Oh well. We'll see how they do and if it was worth it. I usually try to avoid purchasing anything alive at Costco.  I put them around the base of the biggest aspen on the slope back there.

We also raked out quite a bit of dead grass from around the aspen tree where we wanted to plant.  This hillside will become beautiful! I'm determined to make it so.  I can't handle the "dead bunch grass" look. Even it was green and alive, I see so much more potential for that slope.  We kept running into thin pieces of pebbly cement sort of half-buried, I assume to help hold up the soil or something. I pulled them out whenever I found them.

Next up: blueberry bushes, if I can figure out where to put them!