Growing a Green Thumb: Summer Colors to our Denver Victorian Farmhouse
As you saw from the last post, we have $100k+ in hail damage from the Colorado storm that took some major bites out of our Colorado farmhouse. Unfortunately, working through that size of a project is a major waiting game. I suck at the waiting game.
The first summer at the farmhouse, we focused almost exclusively on clean-up outside. We planted one perennial garden. This year we went from 0–60mph on gardening. That’s how we roll. Check out what we’ve done so far…
New purple leaf maple tree. That was fun to dig a hole for. By fun, I mean fun for me to watch while hubs did 80% of the digging. Ok, 90%. I was a stellar cheerleader though.
2 Jack Daniels whisky barrels. Yep, the real thing, with residual whisky smell to boot.
Filled those with an evergreen dwarf tree in the middle surrounded by geraniums and a little purple flower that hopefully will grow to drape itself over the outside of the barrels. Placed under our 2 largest windows, we can see these in the morning from the inside of the house.
Sticking with the barrel theme, 4 smaller planters on the corners of the gigantic concrete patio. Filled these with…. everything. My fav addition was celosia, with fiery red and orange stems that brighten up the whole planter.
One more planter started the quest to add some spice to the garage area, where hubby requested a little more color. I don’t want a bunch of planters on the ground for fear they’ll end up victims of rushed car departures or stray volleyballs. We are thinking hanging planters to get color without stuff on the ground, stay tuned…
Gardens in the ground
These guys are a little less exciting in photos. “Here check out this giant mound of dirt where wildflowers will hopefully pop up in 3 months..”. But here’s some of what we are doing with gardens.
In the front a wildflower garden. After seeing lack of activity I tilled all the soil, fertilized and now am watering this mound of dirt daily to try to get some wildflower action from the seeds we spread…
Next to the front walk an area that refused to grow grass persisted, so I figured if grass won’t grow, may as well dig it out and try flowers. Makes for a more pleasant walk up for the mailman! So I did. Dig it out, put in fresh compost, and working on a makeshift border out of random bricks I found in a pile in our backyard… work in progress.
4 more garden areas in the backyard and side yard are slowly getting filled with flowers. We mostly put perennials in the ground. We’ve got Columbine, Snap dragons, African daisies, salvia, and everything in between. All depended on the soil and how much sun each garden gets. May as well try it all out and see what grows!
Also been keeping busy nursing the plants we inherited with the property to see what we can salvage from the recent hail. We have huge lilacs and lots of roses that are hanging on for dear life after getting pummeled by golf-ball sized hail. Cross your fingers for them…roses have a few blooms but nothing compared to the show they gave in their first 2 years.
