One thing that I am doing is rearranging and dividing some of my perennials as they come into growth. I divided some achillea (yarrow), moved a couple of nepeta (catmint) plants that were too far forward in the bed and also moved some astilbe that had grown up along with the coreopsis that I had moved last fall.

Happy gardening!

Pankaj

Yes, my wife Karen "caged" the peonies last weekend. I haven't been fertilizing anything either, relying on adding a couple of inches of good organic leaf mulch every spring, but I've been wondering if that's enough, especially given the density in which I am planting.

Mostly I rely on compost added in the fall in lieu of fertilizer. I add the compost in the fall for several reasons; first, it serves as winter protection/mulch in the years when we don't get much snow cover (winter winds can be fierce here on the coast), and second, my compost is never completely finished in the pile so it will finish over the winter as it sits on the soil. I also leave most plant debris such as leaves and cuttings on the garden to serve as its own compost-in-place. I just clear enough off so that bulbs, etc. can get through.

That said, I do fertilize the roses with Espoma Rosetone in the spring (I did it last week) and I also fertilize the daffodils as they start to recharge their bulbs after blooming (I gave them Rosetone this year since I had it already. I doubt if they minded).

The peonies were staked a while ago and I need to take the squirrel-proofing cage off the one rhododendron whose buds they eat. The flowers are opening now so it's safe to uncover it.

Claire

Claire, do you cut off the spent daffodil flowers or leave them on if you want the daffodils to naturalize?

Back in the 70s or 80s we watched Crockett's Victory Garden on Boston tv. The show was so popular there were several books published. Even the first one that is focused on vegetables has some annual and perennial flower information in it but I think there's one that focuses on flower gardening. What I like about these books is the month by month guide of what to do. I usually see at least one copy at used book stores but your library might have them.

My husband bought a used John Deere riding mower for me to use but the mowing deck was removed. I just have a cart I hook behind it to carry garden tools and buckets of weeds. It's a long walk to our weed dump. I do the garden but he does the lawn so he has a similar model JD mower which is now about 25 or 30 years old. Last year he lucked into a third one for $100 because it needed a new ignition switch. So what are we doing in the yard? He's doing maintenance because his mower had a fuel problem (turned out to be a crunched fuel line) and mower #2 dropped the mowing deck. Yester the seat on his backhoe fell over. He's doing prep work to get it fixed but it will need our son to do a welding repair. Mower #2 has the mowing deck set higher to use on brushy areas that he just likes to keep trimmed.

I have two shrubs that are being choked out by my foolish planting of tansy in a good perennial bed. I shouldn't have done it. Mental note to rip it all out. These shrubs will get some coddling and composted manure.

I am amazed at how much some yarrow plants grew in one year (or is it two?). I have mental notes to move some plants. I love lambs ears but they are taking over a section of a pathway bed.

I make a vow to get rid of piece meal plantings and letting things self sow. I check how woody some of my herbs have gotten. Last year the original sage finally died out but it had layered and younger plants are ok. But not where they are. I make another vow to rip out some of the creeping thyme that is spreading too far.

My husband reported deer tracks through the vegetable garden. I bought some animal repellant spray that maybe I can spray today since it's finally not raining. I suspect the deer have enjoyed at least one hosta and those leaves don't re-grow this season. The mayflower viburnum is missing half its tips so the bloom is not as pretty as it should have been.

My father used to love to fish but wouldn't eat fish so my mother used to give away the fish and bury some of it in her perennial garden.

I think my most important chore that usually gets neglected is the afore-mentioned tansy removal and any other freebie plant that is spreading too quickly. One bed had a major plant removal last summer and I lost some nice perennials that got choked out because I didn't dig the invasive plant out soon enough. One year I bought limelight artemesia which looked pretty but was just as invasive as the gray kind.

I also work at edging the beds because we have lots of weedy grasses and other plants that put out runner roots that try to invade my beds. I am probably stooped to have vegetable beds surrounded by lawn but it looks nice when it's neat. I like my spading shovel and garden fork. I also have a hand weeder similar to a Cape Cod weeder that is wonderful. I don't know why good hand weeders aren't sold in hardware stores. I have seen some at very good nursery stores.

I also check Craigslist for free manure. My husband got a PU load of free horse manure nicely aged as soon as the ground was dry enough. The owner even loaded the truck. It went quickly because it was free and owner loaded.

That's a good reminder, defrost, of how important the non-plant garden devices are to gardening. I really need to do some maintenance on my Fiskar's pruner (a far cry from a John Deere mower).

PankajT: I leave the spent daffodil flowers on so they can form seed pods if they're so inclined. I also leave the foliage intact to feed the bulbs. I'm not a particularly neat gardener so a little fading clutter doesn't particularly bother me - there's always something else that's new to look at.

Claire

I usually deadhead the daffodils since mine seem to create more bulbs at a rapid enough rate that I don't need seeds. Right now I am planting warm weather veggie plants out in the garden (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant) and will start seeds of cukes, melons and squash to plant out next week. Cool weather crops were planted several weeks ago.

I am continuing to edge the veggie garden - like defrost, mine are surrounded by field grass, so the edging is ongoing.

I will be weeding and mulching, both in the flower gardens and the veggie paths of the veggie beds and some of the beds themselves - I often do that in the fall, but I was sick much of last fall and early winter and nothing got done. I also don't fertilize except for plants in pots, but I do use compost and occasionally use alfalfa meal on clematis or roses.

I put out my peony cages on those plants that need it (the large doubles) as soon as they are sprouting, so mine went on a couple of weeks ago. I find if I wait until now, the leaves don't fall naturally.

I am removing a quince that is fairly homely much of the year and is very visible in the foundation plantings. I moved several rooted sprigs two years ago to the back garden since the bees love the early flowers, and now that I am sure that they are going to survive and seem immune to the voles, I can remove the one in the front yard.

I am up-potting several plants that came in the mail until I am sure where they will ultimately be planted.

I did some looking for poison ivy yesterday, and the leaves are still small. In about two weeks I will get out the glyphosate to spot spray since I am quite allergic to it, so we are slowly pushing it back away from the house.

I need to raise the brick edging along the flower beds where the voles tunneled under them and they have dropped down into the tunnels.

I moved into a nightmare 2 years ago. Every couple of days I am digging up the orange nightmare that is oriental bittersweet. The previous owner just let it go and I probably have miles of the orange roots in my yard.

We only have a little bit of oriental bittersweet plus the multiflora rose that is very invasive. My husband is passionate about digging both out. We remain vigilant about what's growing along the edge of the road because Japanese knotweed started up. I think it probably came from the town mower since there are large stands of it about half a mile from us. Right now it is individual stems that might get 2 feet tall before we notice it. Then he goes out with heavy duty brush killer.

I also do not fertilize anything in the garden. We add compost to the gardens and also weed and mulch heavily in early Spring. Because we live along a river and because the neighbors on along the river have never "gardened", we find that our yard is loaded with "stuff" all summer into the fall if we don't put down a protective mulch barrier.

I dead-head my daffodils for the same reason as NHBabs. Because of all the compost and sun, our daffodils multiply. Deadheading prevents seeding.

As for fertilizing our rhododendrons ... no, I don't. I use my mother's trick of adding coffee grounds around the plants during the fall and winter months. I prune these and other flowering shrubs right after they've bloomed, especially the ones along the foundations.

My dh loves the look of grass and so is in charge of the lawn. He spreads organic fertilizer in the spring and fall.

Recently, new neighbors moved two houses down. They've done massive amounts of landscaping, building bird houses and a duck box for the river, reclaiming their end of their yard from phragmites, and getting professional help to save an 80-ft tall pine in their yard. While cleaning up the river's edge, these folks found an old car motor, tires, and other junk people that pitched into the river over the years! Sadly, many of our long-time neighbors have viewed the river as a dump. But people like these folks have helped "inspire" others to clean up along the river and in their yards. It makes for a healthier river ... as long as they don't use chemicals.

Molie

So I took the plunge and fed all my roses today with Espoma Rosetone and the daffodils with Espoma Bulbtone. Thanks, Claire, for your inout; I think that encouraged me. I plan to leave the bulbs now for the rest of the year but will feed the roses every month. Let's see how they do.

Molie, when you say you mulch heavily, what do you use as mulch and how much do you use? You have a really pretty garden, so you're obviously doing something right.

Pankaj

PankajT, thanks for your kind words about our gardens. You mentioned Espoma products ... that's the brand my dh uses when he "feeds" the lawn.

As for our mulching, this is the first year in the 14 we've been here that we bought yards of mulch and had it delivered from a place where they use hardwood chips. For all the other years we've "mulched" our gardens with a topping of free compost from our city. Using compost has really improved the condition of the soil and resulted in very healthy plants.

Of course, exposed compost is a great landing zone for weeds that blow into our yard. The two of us would be forever weeding all summer long. My dh has arthritis and isn't able to work in the yard like he used to. The gardens are too much for me to handle alone, so this year he said we were buying bulk mulch. I'm not complaining ... I think it will help with the workload.

Molie

We went to the JFK Library with thousands of others (this is Boston!) to celebrate the anniversary of his 100th birthday. When we came home from the mob everyone but me took a nap. I wandered in the rain around the garden like a zombie, doing an inventory o: annual weeds ( garlic mustard, lesser celandine, buckthorn seedlings and the tiny ones that carpet the ground), looked at 3 June hostas reverting to blue, the huge ligularia that's too late to divide, the tomato patch with last year's cages toppled over, the dogwood that didn't survive transplanting and the 3 hellebores 'solar flare' that are waiting to be planted. That's just the beginning.

I fought my anxiety by gathering an armful or two of weeds and redesigning portions of the garden that caught my eye. Then I remembered a deadline: potting up plants for the plant swamp.

Give me a few hours, GardenGod, so I can make a dent in my list.

Marie

Ah, Marie! Our gardens are never "done" ... sometimes I can almost hear mine laughing at me as I walk toward the house, "And you think you're finished? That the weeds won't come back? Foolish, foolish gardener ... you will never be free of us!"

My dh often says that when we downsize, we will have a postage-stamp sized yard.

Molie

I think the fact that our gardens are never done is one of their greatest attributes ... we are constantly stimulated by them and have to adapt to their changing rhythms and the uncertainties of weather and soil. I've always thought that growing a garden is a bit like raising children and we all know that job is also ever-evolving.

Molie, I'm so glad you were able to rescue at least your mother's hostas. I love sharing plants with friends and family, but, alas, have nothing from my mother's garden ... which was in India!

PankajI, so true that the gardens are never really done. And it's also true that a gardener has to love the work of raising them as much as they actually love the plants, just as with with children!

I imagine your mother's garden in India contained many beautiful tropical plants. Is it possible for you to find out some of her favorite garden plants, or if not the actual plants themselves maybe her favorite colors and flower forms? That way you could plant one or two plants you know your mother would love.

We did that with my mother. She was partial to certain colors ... pinks and whites ... and grew many Mt. Laurel's. In memory of Mom, we planted a Kalmia latifolia 'Minuet', a very dwarf variety that has soft cranberry bullseye blossoms and would not overpower our gardens.

Molie

I never thought of it that way, Molie, but I have planted at least three types of flowers that my mother loved ... roses ( I have 8 or 9), hibiscus and dahlias. Now I'll think of her every time I see them :)

Today I got my tomatoes and basil planted ... I had been waiting for the weather to turn reliably 50+.

I spent the past two days planting and digging and weeding. That work made me realize how numbered are my days of being able to keep up with it all. I need to scale back what I grow each year because walking around our property, carrying potting soil and gardening implements, just about killed me. The hubby thinks we should get an electric golf cart, and I'm thinking it might not be such a bad idea. He carried the really heavy stuff for me, but I expect at some point neither of us will be up to the task.

I converted my "gnome garden" along the edge of the brook into all perennials this year, because the trees have grown up with roots underneath that I'm afraid of harming by digging the soil there for annual flowers. I planted more perennial salvia, which does well there, and I encourage the wild daisies to grow amidst the daylilies. (In early spring it is covered in daffodils.) So that garden will require a little less work.

This year I planted all my annuals that I start from seed (cosmos, snapdragons, strawflowers, and some others) in the veggie bed. The only actual vegetables I'm growing there this year is a hill of crookneck summer yellow squash, and some mizuna and dill.

Other vegetables are growing in pots on the safety of my front porch. (Last year everything was eaten by rabbits.) I have a box full of salad greens and radishes which I planted early and we are enjoying now. In other containers I planted carrots which I hope to harvest, and tomatoes and green beans that I don't expect to produce any amount of edibles but that I want primarily for greenery on the porch.

I have a dozen or so pots, both on the front porch and in my orange garden planted with marigolds, nasturtiums, and petunias, so I lugged those out for the summer.

Earlier this month and last month we planted about 60 seedling trees. The constant rain saved us from having to water them, and it also watered everything I planted over the last two days. That was the upside to all this rain!

I also bought a few perennials this year from Bluestone's, a couple toad lilies for the pet memorial garden by the brook, and also a sedum (for a different flower bed) that I have been intrigued with over the years from all the photos on this forum and in my neighbors' gardens. I also planted pansies in the pet memorial garden this year, but typically they only live a few years at most, so I'm thinking about trying to establish a colony of trout lilies in their place in a few years. The pet garden used to be home to mini roses that were absolutely beautiful, but the bushes around that garden eventually grew and shaded out the roses, which typically only lived a few years anyway. It was futile to plant more since they had stopped blooming for want of sunlight. I planted a rugosa rose along the fence line and a climbing rose next to the house in their place in sunnier locations and both seem to be doing well.

As far as fertilizer, I don't use any chemical fertilizers ever, or even any packaged cow manure because I don't want to support feedlots or introduce the chemicals that doubtlessly it's infused with. I MISS not only our horses (grazing in greener pastures) but also the supply of horse manure that they gifted us with! Now I just utilize leaf litter, compost, coffee grounds, and water from my goldfish pool to feed my plants.

Wow, Sped! I shouldn't complain about our 1/3 acre yard. I recall that your gardens span a wide area ... lots of acres. And yes, sometimes we have to just look at the facts in a straight-forward way and say 'I'm done with that!' A golf cart is a brilliant idea.

Spedigrees, I like the bicycle wheel carts. I think Garden Way made them but I am very happy with an old riding lawn mower that hauls a small cart around. I can easily have 4 or 5 buckets of weeds to take to our dump pile. Even the lightweight tomato cages are hauled in the cart. It's a long walk from the storage area. Last year my husband found a similar model (John Deere) for sale that didn't start. He can fix things and all it needed was a new ignition switch. That was a steal. The mower deck was removed from mine. Our neighbor has a John Deere Gator which is really nice. I saw the grandkids using it to collect maple sap.

Glad you looked on the bright side with all this rain. We have a newly planted sapling, grass and all the rest that have appreciated the rain. In our area, the drought was declared over.

We have a JD lawn tractor and garden cart that we use to move things around, and also a wheel barrow that we've had since we bought the house in the 1970's. For just getting out to the gardens, I'd prefer a battery powered golf cart, something quiet and easy, but we'll see. I, too, looked at those garden carts with the big wheels at one point, but then when we bought the cart that goes with the lawn tractor, it seemed redundant.

Molie, I think that the mowed pasture part of our property is only a little over an acre, but it feels like about 20 acres when walking around it all day! I think that we are headed for a postage stamp sized lawn too. The idea of reforesting all of it occurs to me from time to time as well!

Spedigrees, your days of keeping up with your garden may be numbered, but the longer you do it, the higher that number will be! We had a gentleman in our neighborhood who lived to be 105 ... and he was out working in his garden into his last summer.

Yesterday was a weeding and mulching day. I also got in my dahlia
tubers. These were a gift from a neighbor and were one of my mother's
favorite flowers, so they have sentimental value.

PankajT, you have to post how some of your mother's favorite flowers look in your yard!

Sped, I really love to garden as you do, but the walking and bending and kneeling are starting to get to me. I'll stand up after 20 minutes or so and say 'where did that ache come from?' It seems like I ache in places I never noticed before ... arthritis, I'm sure.

Thinning my raspberries, sowing succession crops of green/beets, picking asparagus beetles by hand, and making cuttings of my elderberries to propagate!

Found a Colorado potato beetle on June 2 on some potatoes I missed last year in the high tunnel. We've been trying to stay dry. Yesterday was coldest and rainiest June 6 on record. Will get tomatoes planted and more peppers planted. I was finally able to grow Lemon Gem marigold seedlings this year because finally saw instructions that they need light to germinate. This is a lovely tiny edible marigold with frilly lemon scented foliage. I love to have some in with the vegetables as well as annuals but I've had a hard time finding them since the little local backyard greenhouse place closed. My porch is full of seedlings and purchased annuals. Spinach planted in April just sits there although golden beets in high tunnel are doing well. Sugar Snap pea plantings had either poor germination or something is eating them. I'll plant a third batch. With nights in the 40s I doubt if the ground temp is at 50 yet. A garden writer in zone 4 says he never plants his tomatoes until June 10-12. Potatoes are also getting planted late this year because a neighbor says if he waits until June 1 or later, he doesn't get potato bugs. Last summer I did hand picking at least twice a day and they still won.

Molie, I have to try to get to the gym 2 or 3 times a week (this week only once) to keep my knees bendable. A friend suggested I was a candidate for knee replacement but my dr said if my knees feel better after exercising, that's good. The exercise keeps them lubricated. I have to be careful doing lunges and anything that requires knee bending but it does help. It gets a lot discouraging to have knees ache so much so I also sometimes take ibupropen. I'm also careful to walk downstairs in the morning because knees are stiff after sleeping.

I feel your knee pain, defrost, and the frustration of being handicapped by it, having been active all my life. I wear a knee brace on my bad knee (both are bad, along with both hips, but one knee is worse that the other) when I'm doing activities that put a lot of stress on it. Pushing the mower and using the string trimmer cause me to pivot on that knee, so wearing the brace is a great help.

Mostly what we've been doing is watching the cold rain water everything we have planted. Newly planted trees are loving it, but the garden flowers grown from seed, not so much. They want sunshine!

spedigrees, I understand the pivot problem. Glad the brace is a help. When I did Zumba, I got dance sneakers which are designed to allow pivoting. Regular athletic shoes grab too much. Of course, for gardening I wear worn out hiking shoes or even better, some sports shoes designed for kayakers. Kind of a mary jane style with Velcro strap. Well, at least they can get wet. Can't weed the new asparagus bed, I sunk in halfway to my knee. Hope you are getting sunshine today. I stopped doing Zumba because it was too much cardio. The gym classes usually involve some mat work so I am very careful getting down and up. The instructor suggests a Jeannie style sink into a cross legged position. Ha! I haven't found the magic bottle yet that will let me do that.

Found more potato beetles today. Feel bad for our neighbor farmer. The hay field looks horrible. Probably should have been cut a week or two ago. Not a good year to be a farmer.

I did a couple of years of PT exercises and this year for the first time in almost 10 years my knee is actually functioning in a fashion that I am not conscious of how I use it. So a few visits to learn strengthening exercises might be worth the time and money. Even though my joint damage hasn't changed, the muscles around the joint are strong enough to compensate.

The farmers who use our fields are grateful for the rain, I imagine. They decided to switch the corn and hay sides since the alfalfa fixes nitrogen. So for this year the whole field is alfalfa, and the newly planted side is looking great. It is fortunate that they didn't decide to do this last year with the drought conditions. They have cut the hay once already on the established side of the field, but since they use it for silage, it doesn't have to dry the way it would if they were baling it.

I spent today (an unexpected day off work) mulching paths in the veggie garden, spraying some of the poison ivy in the field and woodland edges, hunting for cutworms, and weeding. As I was finding cutworms, I disturbed a toad who seemed delighted to eat 4 of the cutworms for me.

Let's hear it for PT! Feldenkreist is effective practice that teaches how to modify body mechanics to decrease discomfort and move efficiently

Not to go too far afield. but I've had both knees replaced. As the doc said, when you are ready, you'll know. You won't be able to walk with out excruciating pain, it wakes you up at night (that's very significant) and you 've forgotten how to live without pain.

As that relates to gardening, I was motivated not to miss a gardening season and scheduled accordingly!

Lately it seems that all I'm doing in my yard is weeding: black swallow wort mostly, and a rather lot of crabgrass. I wasn't really up to much last year, and it shows!

I need to move some seedlings into bigger pots before putting them into the ground, and I'm working on getting rid of forsythia due to the sheer irritation that taking care of it is especially when it's out of the way. I got most of it, except one of the two places that I think were originally planted. Lots of hard work. I'm likely going to try sawing at it soon to get more of it down. I've dug almost all the way around, snipping roots as I went, but of course there are probably roots going straight down also. I've been removing its attempts to leaf out.

I've put chokeberry and serviceberry in, and am looking for native black huckleberry to finish with the area that the forsythia used to take over.

I mulched some of last year's brush using a lovely electric chipper shredder that I got a few years ago on craigslist. It can't do huge things, but it's still really handy and means I don't need to buy mulch. I've used what I made to cover where the crabgrass that I removed was, and to surround my chokeberry babies.

I'm a little worried the serviceberry is too close to a wall (to the garage on which the area sits), but we'll see. I wanted enough space to work on the forsythia, and not kill it in the process.