Ready for summer.
My dear wife Karen wielded her mighty little hand shovel to place the two Gerber daisies we’d purchased Friday night — the only color she’d found at the apparently picked-over big box — into the hourglass shaped front garden.
I pulled out the bags of red mulch and poured liberally.
Karen placed and patted, lovingly, in the two gardens below the front windows, too.
We stepped back and enjoyed the Memorial Day Weekend view of the completed-for-now front yard of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Karen hopes for a couple more different colors of daisies.
And the butterfly garden out back still has two new lavender plants to be put in the earth. Black mulch must be purchased and spread. The butterfly bushes are the latest arrivers of all, though, so all that will come on another day.
Are you done with your garden planting for this year? Annuals, perennials, or mix? Red mulch, black mulch, brown mulch, natural mulch, or no mulch? Would you rather come over for a barbecue and admire our garden?
Mark Bialczak 
Lookin’ good! My parents’ much is coming Friday. I’ll be out helping them do some weeding and spreading. I actually love yard work.
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It feels real good to see the results of the sweat equity!
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I would rather admire your garden, Mark. Great job. It’s gorgeous! 😀
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Thank you, Rachel. We did more since the photo, too.
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Oh, I can’t wait to see the updates!
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Looks wonderful, Mark! Well done, Karen! Have a great day tomorrow.
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Thanks, Audrey. We are off soon to march in a parade. With Ellie B, aka Dogamous Pyle!
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Have fun!!!
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Marco, it happened again!!!! My computer crashed and burned Thursday night, and I had to replace it today. Had to reset passwords, and WP, as before, is not accepting my new password. Hate to ask, but can you contact support and yell at them for me? My photos are on that blog, and hopefully they will still be there, because if not, they were all destroyed except the ones I took at the orchard and on yesterday’s outing. Lots to say and no outlet. HELP!!!!!
Angie
Date: Sun, 25 May 2014 11:07:16 +0000 To: agw2536@outlook.com
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I don’t think you had to reset your password, Angie. The old one should have worked on any computer.
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I think I missed a story. Why is your garden hour-glass shaped. We’ll be right over with a peach cobbler I just made.
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We love peach cobbler! It should still be warm if you just made it, Dora!
The garden is hourglass shaped because I dug out the second section to match the first, in a mirror image. The first section was oval-ish. Put the two together, and now it looks like an hourglass. To Karen and I anyway. I think it it shaped like a classic Budweiser glass, too.
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Looking good
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We are on our way. That’s three total. If we leave Texas right now, we should be there by June. We’ll bring Shiner Bock beer and chips and salsa, and some of my bacon brownies. Please don’t eat before we get there.
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Yes I would rather come over for a barbecue and sit and stare at the lovely garden(s). I was going to say silently stare but I’m pretty sure if we were sitting in the backyard having a barbecue we would not be silent. 🙂 What would be the point?
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It would be one fantastic Chatter fest, this Bialczak barbecue, Colleen!
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Oh Mark…..some day!!!!! 🙂 Maybe we should invite other bloggers?
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Only our circle of friends, Colleen. Limit it to, say, our 100 besties who comment to us both.
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Good plan. Wouldn’t a WordPress BBQ be a great idea? 🙂
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Very nice job on the garden, Mark–a joint effort, of course. We have a lot of perennials and usually put pots of annuals around but we’re having a war with the squirrels and they are winning. An elderly neighbor feeds them so they come over and dig up the plants. Often, they leave a peanut shell in the hole to taunt me. Are squirrel guns legal in New York? (you know, the ones with the cork on a string. 😉
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The nut in the hole is just awful, Ermi. Perhaps shoot the neighbor feeding the squirrel with the cork on a string? You know, just on the foot as the food’s being spread …
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I love gardening, but don’t really have the space for it at this apartment.
Is red mulch cedar? I prefer dark mulch, but it all depends on what you are planting, house color, etc.
Love gerbera daisies, but butterfly bushes are the best! Strawberry scented 🙂
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The mulch is whatever the Scotts people stick in the back. I think it’s all the same wood, and I should go look … the color is what they put in it, too. It looks great, though, and does not leak into the soil.
Yes, the butterfly bushes look awesome and smell sweet to boot!
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Don’t tell Steve, but I have a few plans for some late summer colour perennials.
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Your secret is safe, Rachel. The fact that they are perennials, good choice! The plant that keeps on giving, in my gardening book.
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I moved into my house 4 years ago and tore out all the old bushes and put in some more controllable one. I also added black mulch. Every year since I have had unwanted stuff growing on top of the mulch (mushrooms, weeds & stinkhorns). I did put the the black plastic down but the stuff grows on the top. I just finished shoveling all the mulch out last night and am replacing with stone. I hope this solves the constant need to pick through the mulch. BTW yours looks great
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Thank you, Carolyn! FYI in the most problem weed areas, last year we tried the mulch-with-weed killer, and it helped a lot. But I think the stone will help a lot, too!
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Should be already to fire up the gill tomorrow and celebrate the men and women who gave their service for our country.
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Yes, big day to celebrate for all who served tomorrow, Kim. We are going to march in a parade in honor in the morning, first.
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Great job on the gardens, Mark. Tell Karen I said so. I know the “work” involved. I again will be out today to continue where I left off yesterday. [GRIN] xx Amy
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Thank you, Amy. Karen appreciates the compliment for her hard gardening! Continue your good works. 🙂
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And yes it is hard work. Bless your wife!! Love, Amy
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Put us down for a potato salad and a growler of some local stout for the BBQ. Yard looks beautiful Mark. You two make a good team. I like the look of mulch, brightens it up. I may need to try that.
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OK, menu requests noted, Sandra! It’s going to be a hum-dinger! Karen and I will have to team up on BBQ duty, too. Maybe mulch isn’t so much a thing out there in California?
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Pardon me for being unclear, Mark. We will be bringing the salad and growler as our contribution to the party 😉 regarding the mulch, is it wood chips? A difference of regional semantics perhaps?
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I love that you guys are bringing the salad and stout, Sandra! Regional favorites, yahoo!
Yes, the mulch is the wood chips, to keep in moisture and keep out weeds, so goes the formula. 🙂
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it looks great, and i think it makes your yard look very welcoming. i love to keep adding things to the yard/gardens at the cottage, and the yard is developing into big areas of vine and flowers and the gardens are filled with a mix of annuals and perennials. i love to play in the dirt, then love to walk through and enjoy it all. yes, a bbq would be great )
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This week, Karen remarked to me as we sat in our red backyard chairs when she got home from work how much more I seemed to be enjoying the whole garden thing than when we first moved in. And she’s right. They’re growing, and I love it more and more, too. Sounds like that’s your cottage way, too, Beth. Big BBQ, where will everybody park, oh, no!
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yes, it gets more beautiful as things begin to grow in. as for the bbq, details, schmeetails! i am bringing a retro jello salad of some sort.
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Oh, I love those. There’s always room for retro jello salad, Beth!
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Such satisfaction with new mulch. I no longer have a garden but I used to love the red wood colour. It always made it look cared for.
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It makes it all wrapped up and ready to go, I agree. Thanks, Irene. I hope you are well!
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Yes thanks Mark. I don’t have to ask if you as the gardening shows you are. Cheers
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I board so no garden. I would certainly enjoy a BBQ – haven’t had one this year yet! Nice yard Mark – very tidy and well balanced.
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Thanks, Paul. I like the way it came out this year. Karen picks the plant locations! A BBQ would be nice!
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