A few weeks ago, (maybe it's been a month now!) I was chatting with a co-worker about planting a few hydrangeas along the back of the house. She said she had way too many young shoots that she was going to be cleaning out and she'd be happy to give me a few!
Here they are, 4 little shoots of hydrangeas starting to take root. Well, while planting them I found more grubs (ICK!) than I would like in my garden beds and since we've had an awful infestation of Japanese beetles the past few years I knew it was time to take drastic action and not wait for them to attack again this year.
I'll be honest. I did my research. Last year we used Grubex. too little, too late. This spring I tried Milky Spore first. It's a natural bacteria that kills grubs. I will say, it's expensive. It's a pain in the you know what to put down because it's powder and has to be applied with a teaspoon in a grid-like pattern spaced 1ft apart. Of course, AFTER I spend hours applying it to certain sections of the lawn (they didn't have enough to cover the entire lawn at the store) I came across this study done at UNH - right down the road from us: http://extension.unh.edu/resources/files/Resource000876_Rep922.pdf
Greeaaaaattt. I don't have 3-4 yrs for the bacteria to build up and I'm not sure what type of Japanese beetle we have. Sigh. So much for that. So I went to Amazon.com and got 8 bags of Grub Control w/Turf Revitalizer which targets 4 types of grubs and numerous other insects. It works immediately. yahoo!
I spread that on the ENTIRE yard (I won't call it lawn) on Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend and then snapped some shots around the yard:
My Mum brought me some of her Lily of the Valley last summer and I planted them in the front bed to fill around the little bushes and trees. I didn't plant them at the right time of year - just kinda plopped them in there, so I'm thrilled that they are up and flowering this year!
My FIRST LILAC blooms!!!! My little twigs along the garage wall are happily growing and this one decided it could muster 3 blooms :-) I'm so excited!!! I dream of this wall being covered by towering lilacs that bloom all summer long!
This is the twiggy maple tree that we've almost lost to Japanese beetles every year since we planted it (3yrs). Yes, it's still staked, but I've loosened all the ties so it's mostly standing up on its own now. Although with all those crazy leaves on top this year I think it looks like a lolli-pop!
These are the 2 larger lilacs that we planted last summer. No blooms but the leaves are coming in strong. I wasn't really concerned about them too much, but still nice to know they're healthy!
Back of the house for the start of this year - pretty pitiful since I put in those raised beds a couple years ago! I've been slowly putting more dirt/topsoil/loam into them every year in an effort to get them filled. The end boxes are doing better than the taller middle ones.
WOW! the grass is bad back here too :(
Sunday of Memorial Day weekend Reese and I took a trip to Lowe's and stocked up on some bigger hydrangeas that were on sale along with more good garden dirt :-)
I hope to get all of these into the garden this week - it will absolutely help with the bare bones look we currently have going on!
The rest of our weekend was filled with friends, family and a few hours of downtime with Reesey-face :-)
It went by all too quickly, as long weekends are wont to do, but it's a wonderful start to SUMMER!
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