Knowing your shortcomings is important, and I admit that one of mine became apparent while I worked in the yard this week: Having lots of projects "in the works," all of which are only halfway finished. I don't know why I have such a problem with this at home, because I love the feeling of accomplishment that comes along with finishing a project at work. So it goes, I guess.
The most pressing problems involve my failure to provide the necessary structure for certain plants that require it. Remember the Dortmund rose I've been raving about for a year now? My thoughts when I planted it this spring went something like this: "Well, I'm working 70 hrs/week right now at the garden center, so I'll just get this guy in the ground and put up a trellis for him later."
"Later" is a pretty unspecific time, but I'm pretty sure that it has come and gone in any case. Dortmund sprawls through the bronze carex on the corner of my porch, lax and limp instead of upright and thriving. One thing that I failed to consider when placing it was that the rest of the porch post above the brick you see in the picture is a wide, smooth, house-colored expanse where my house numbers reside. I can't cover those, and I really have no other logical and visible place to move them.The other thick porch post is on the far side of my house, nowhere near the driveway or front door. Not good for porch numbers--and being the northwest side of the porch not great for a climbing rose, either. The two brick pillars that flank the front steps are topped with simple metal posts that don't show up much visually but keep the porch roof from sagging in the middle. Again not good for porch numbers, but possibly workable for a climbing rose support since I don't mind them being completely covered. They would get a bit less sun there, however.
My other option is to leave it where it is and direct most of its canes toward the side of the porch (with a few strays artfully arranged to show the house number) once they reach number-height... I'll probably need to sketch this out to get a visual before I make a decision on which way to go here. (Any thoughts or advice from those who have grown climbing roses? This is a first for me.)
My other pressing project is to finish the grape arbor, so I can stop cutting back the poor grapevine and start harvesting more grapes! I did get one post up and level (with the help of a sledgehammer-wielding boyfriend) but then a thought occurred:The lot line on the left of this picture will soon be designated by a new fence, and I know that the length of backyard I am fencing is not evenly divisible by the 8ft fence panel size. Maybe it makes more sense to make the arbor fit the leftover odd size (assuming it's close to what I want anyway) than to make the arbor first and fit the fencing around it? It would certainly make for a cleaner look. So I put the rest of that project on hold until the fence goes up.
So the fence needs to go up soon, but I can wait to move the rose until the spring if need be. After seeing these unfinished projects on a post, though, I really want to get going on them already! Ah well... maybe I'll just go out and clean up the trimmed blackberry brambles and weeds that you can see in the Japanese rock garden above. I just noticed that I stopped my trimming to get the first red arbor post in the ground, and never picked up my mess when I was done. (Might I have some form of project or garden ADD?!)
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