A Look Back at 2011

Happy New Year to everyone!  A new year always brings the hope for better times and the chance to start afresh, oftentimes with plans to make important lifestyle changes. I've made my usual resolutions--eat healthier, lose some weight, exercise more, etc., etc.  I've also promised myself to make some changes in the garden this year.  Before I completely forget about 2011, however, I wanted to take a look back at the past year in the garden to remember what worked and what needs to be done.

The lily bed in January '11

January picked up where December '10 left off--snowy and cold--and ended with a blizzard that paralyzed much of the Midwest.  I can remember watching the news videos of Chicago traffic stranded in the snow on Lakeshore Drive after I had spent a day walking in the spring-like warmth of Portland, Oregon.  Each night I called my husband and talked to him after he had put in another 12-hour shift of plowing snow.  I was so thankful I had skipped town just in time, but payback came when I landed in Indianapolis the next week and had to spend an hour chipping ice off my windshield before I could drive home!

I spent the endless days of winter, though, checking out armloads of gardening books from the library and making detailed plans of the new arbor bed I had prepared the previous fall.  Dreams of the ultimate perfect garden kept me going through those cold, gray days of January and February.

Diane, yours truly, Monica, Lisa, Beckie, and Linda,  March '11

Even March started out cold, as Beckie, Lisa, and I had to bundle up to go to the Chicago Flower and Garden Show where we met up with fellow garden bloggers Diane, Monica, and Linda.  But it was a typical March--one week cold and snowy and the next with days in the 70's.Anxious to get a headstart on the gardening season, I started a few seeds indoors along with some winter sowing begun in February.

By March 15 a few little snowdrops--my first ever--and crocuses were blooming, 

and the foliage of tulips and daffodils were emerging.

My favorite place to be in the spring--my front yard.

Finally, the calendar said it was spring, but it was really April before it arrived in my little corner of the world. Spring--my absolute favorite season of the year!  Nothing makes me happier than seeing the first blooms on the redbud tree and then the crabapples burst forth in full bloom.  Garden work was delayed as the proverbial April showers turned into downpours, and strong winds blew away the crabapple blossoms much too soon.  But at least we were spared the floods and devastating tornadoes that hit many other parts of the U.S. this year.

'Professor Rontgen', a ruffled orange beauty with petite 'Fur Elise' in the foreground, both newcomers this year.

Finally, it was tulip time!  I'm not sure if I like tulips so much because of their unique beauty or because they are the ultimate symbol of spring for me.  Whatever the true reason, they are my favorite springtime bloom  and worth every minute spent on aching knees planting them each fall.

Spring was a whirlwind of activity as we prepared to leave the country for Daughter's wedding in Cancun and then, on our return, preparing for the wedding reception here on our front lawn in early June.  All I remember about May (after the wedding, that is) is furiously planting, weeding, mulching, and generally trying to get everything spruced up by the fourth of June.  Still, I took some time to enjoy the new irises--all passalongs--blooming for the first time in the lily bed.

'Rocky Mountain Blue' columbine, mid-May '11

I was also thrilled to see the first-ever blooms on the columbines in the shade garden.

Summer started early with some of the hottest days in early June, including the day of Daughter's reception.  June seems to be a transition time in my garden, with not a lot of blooms, but the shade garden was at its peak.  Summer blooms seemed out of sync, with the lilies later than usual and the coneflowers appearing earlier than usual. One of the highlights of the June garden was my first success in growing poppies from seed.

Agastache 'Heatwave' mid-August '11

After consistent rain throughout the spring, the water supply suddenly dried up in July, and we went into a second summer of severe drought and high temperatures.  After working feverishly in the garden all spring, I became a little lazy and ventured out to work only in the cooler hours of early mornings before heading back to the comfort of the air-conditioned house.  Much of that time seemed to be spent in the new arbor bed (subject of a post soon to come) weeding and watering all the new plants.  I fell in love again---with agastaches!  These first-timers in my garden thrived in the heat and drought and were a hit with bees and butterflies alike. 

'Limelight' Hydrangea September 'll

On a local radio show devoted to plants, one of the plant experts commented this fall that this had been a great year for hydrangeas--but not in my garden!  The drought seemed to hit them the hardest, even though I was diligent about watering them regularly.  The 'Endless Summers' produced lots of new foliage, but not many blooms.  The new Hydrangea paniculata 'Vanilla Strawberry' produced blooms, but they were much smaller than I expected.  It's the only paniculata I have planted in full sun, and I'm beginning to wonder whether that was a good idea.  We'll see how it does this year.  But the worst was my new 'Pink Diamond,' the hydrangea I thought I had killed last year.  It had some scrawny foliage, so I know it's still alive, but not a single bloom.  Only good old 'Limelight' (not so old, actually) lived up to my expectations, looking as glorious as ever by the end of the summer.

Looking back through last year's posts, I realized I never mentioned much about my vegetable garden.  Since I'm already turning this post into a novel, it seems, just a brief recap of the veggie garden:  spinach and lettuce did well in early spring, but the sugar peas were planted too late to pick more than a handful.  Green beans were a success as usual, with enough to put up in the freezer, but the squash and cucumbers were a disappointment.  The green peppers were a complete failure--they failed to grow past their original size and didn't produce any fruit at all, a mystery I have yet to solve.  The tomatoes were the biggest success, next to the green beans.  I planted half the number I usually do, but they still produced more than enough for us.  For the first time in several years, they weren't affected by tomato wilt, perhaps because of better spacing and the sturdier tomato cages I invested in this year.

As if to make up for the hot and dry summer we endured, Mother Nature rewarded us with a glorious fall.  The natives went crazy in the butterfly garden.

Front corner of the arbor bed, with petunias, zinnias, white cosmos, and pentas vying for attention with the fall-blooming 'October Skies' asters.

The new arbor bed reached its high point in the fall, with all the late-blooming annuals finally blooming.  With the warm temperatures, most of the annuals lasted until late October.  The warm and sunny days stretching into November also meant I had plenty of time to get fall clean-up done and some new bulbs planted for the coming spring.

By December, the garden had been put to bed for its long winter's sleep, but winter seemed slow in coming.  A far cry from 2010, the snowiest December on record,  2011 ended with only one light snowfall and some unseasonably warm days.  With Christmas preparations uppermost in my mind, I forgot about the garden until this week when I finally had time to look back and reflect on it.

Shade Garden, mid-July 2011.  I love it, but I wish I'd paid more attention to spacing!

If you've made it this far, thanks for hanging in with me on this long-winded review.  To be honest, this review of 2011 is as much for me as for any readers willing to trudge through it.  Although I was better about keeping a garden journal this year, every little bit I can do to remember details helps.  It's always good to look back at the past and remember our failures and successes, so we don't make the same mistakes again--though I'm sure I will be making lots of gardening mistakes once again in 2012:)  One of the biggest mistakes I've made, I realized this year, is planting everything too close together, in trying to fill up every inch of bare soil I see.  This year I've vowed that instead of adding another new garden area, I'm going to re-work the ones I have and try to give all these plants some breathing room!

And so we put away the calendars for 2011 and begin anew with 2012.  I'm looking forward to the next few months looking through gardening books and catalogs, once again planning that elusive perfect garden.  Happy Gardening in 2012!