Memorial Day Weekend

I trust everyone enjoyed the weekend.  We had two nice days and a wet conclusion.  A few garden pics from the past couple of weeks.

The Ajuga I bought last year like the rock garden...gotta watch 'em...don't want them to like it too much...

 Best year ever for my rhododendron in the front yard

 A new acquisition - an azelea

Here's the bed I wrestled from the rain forest last year.  The spirea I transplanted from the "dog" yard.  Love it when a plan comes together...

I contacted the coach of the Thunder Mountain High School football team an hope to have 8 tons or so of gravel delivered next week and some strong backs to haul it!

What a Week - Sunny and Warm

A great gardening week.  Bought several flats of annuals - yellow and pink snapdragons, three flavors of dianthus and two of trailing lobelia.  Planted almost all of them.  Also an assortment of stuff for the bait barrels out front.  I'm also hardening-off my home grown perennial seedlings.  I planted the seedling dahlias yesterday and the primroses and columbine will be put to ground tomorrow or Tuesday. 

I've also potted-up the English Daisies I started from seed.  And a half dozen hibiscus.  The hibiscus will winter over in pots.  I move stuff from my upstairs closet seedling room to the garage to begin the hardening-off process.  I have learned the hard way that hardening-off ain't a cakewalk.  Wind kills.  Sun kills.  And rain kills.  Gotta crawl before you walk!

My dahlias are doing OK on the deck.  I did not put them under the eaves when we had our last storm and I'm afraid they suffered from the wind and rain.  I tied them up today and gave 'em some fertilizer - they should be happy for that.

Here are a few pics.

Bait buckets planted.

Bought a yellow azalea for the new bed. 

Nothing says Spring more than Leopard's Bane and a bleeding heart.

Apple blossom time...Juneau style.

Pink ones too.

 Now if I can only keep the porcupines at bay...

 

  Ain't they pretty?

My final hardening-off exercise will be for the double impatiens my mom kept over the winter.  She puts stems in water and they enthusiastically root.  I've had 'em in peat pots for a month or so now and they are ready to roll... 

 

On to the General Election

All the polling indicates that Donald Trump really will, after tomorrow's Indiana primary, become the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee.  Secretary Clinton has already achieved that status. 

So...the general election will be between one of the most credentialed candidates in recent history and perhaps the least qualified of all time. The odds strongly favor Secretary Clinton; but it is a peculiar year. 

I stood for Bernie in my caucus and sent him money.  And although I never expected him to win the nomination, I did expect him to make Secretary Clinton at least more responsive to a truly progressive agenda.  The jury is still out on that one.

By the same token I did NOT expect The Donald's shelf life to last beyond the first primaries.  I assumed we'd get some retread like Jebb or proto-retread like Marco.

The Donald should not be underestimated. 

On the positive side, Secretary Clinton has been scrutinized for thirty years.  Her skeletons are old enough to be in a museum (that's a strange statement; but somehow it works).

Also on the positive side, Trump's skeletons are still moldering....and many have not been unearthed.

And...also on the positive side Secretary Clinton can make a convincing case in most any policy area where The Donald simply has no policy and is unlikely to propose one.

Because the downside is that The Donald's whole general election campaign will be exactly the same as his primary campaign.  LET'S MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. It will be a campaign based on his charisma and personality.  Period.

So....we'll see...

Time for Bernie to Acknowledge the Inevitable

I have donated generously to the Bernie Sanders campaign.  I stood for Bernie at my Democratic Caucus and was gratified to see a huge majority of my district do the same.  Senator Sanders swept Alaska's caucuses in a landslide.

The reasons I supported Senator Sanders are very straightforward.  His analysis of the major issues facing our country is substantially the same as my own.  First and foremost, the issue of income inequality.  The disparity in income that has increased steadily since the 1970's is not an Act of God.  It is the direct result of political decisions made over the past forty years.  The Republican Party has contributed mightily to this massive redistribution of wealth - from the middle class to the rich.  Ronald Reagan, in particular, gave political legitimacy to the vacuous "trickle-down" economic theory. Taxes were cut-favoring the wealthy over everyone else.  Public investment was strangled for infrastructure and much else. 

The wealthy have done what one would expect.  They have used their enormous wealth to protect and enhance their political and economic advantages.  Senator Sanders' analysis of a corrupt and broken campaign finance system is right on the mark.

Senator Sanders gets it.  I am not certain that Secretary Clinton really does.  President Bill Clinton moved the Democratic Party decisively to the "center" in the 1990's.  It was a very astute political tactic and served the party well.

But 2016 is not 1993.  And good tactics from 1993 do not make good strategy for 2016 and beyond.  Again, in my heart-of-hearts, I fear that Senator Clinton may not understand that.  

Nevertheless, the jig is up.  Senator Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee for President in 2016.  It's time for the two campaigns to sit down and negotiate Senator Sander's withdrawal in a manner that is beneficial for Secretary Clinton, Senator Sanders and, most importantly, the rest of us.

Senator Sanders has served the Democratic Party extremely well in 2016.

Don't blow it, Secretary Clinton. 

Rehab Complete

It took three days of four hours or so (all I can stand to do in one day in my advancing years) to rehab the "island bed" in the front yard.  Serious pick and shovel action.  I'm afraid I took out quite a few roots from the Spruce tree; but I'm optimistic no serious damage was done.  There was virtually no real soil in the bed.  Just the original fill which is very sandy - great drainage but no organic material and lots of small to medium sized rocks.

I tapered the digging; I dug less deeply the closer I got to the Spruce so the new soil is deeper in the front of the bed and less so in the middle.  Seemed like a sensible approach.  Not that I really know what I'm doing...

I dug out all the salvageable perennials.  A few didn't make the cut that were too infested with grass or weeds.  I replanted some and will replant others in different locations in the yard.

Here's the final result.

 Tomorrow I will mow and weed whack - weather permitting.  And I will pot-up some stuff in my closet into gallon containers.  Some of the perennials I have started the past few years have done well.  But many have not made it through the first winter.  So...the gallon pot treatment for part of the latest seedlings.

And after that...it's plant buying season.  Annuals and a few perennials.  God I love Spring.
 

Project Island Rehab

My big project for the Spring garden season is to rehab the "island" bed in the front yard.  I have not done so previously simply because the stuff planted there was doing OK and I had other fish to fry.  But the time has come!

The "island" is simply where additional fill was mounded when the house was constructed to create a raised bed on the cheap in the front yard.  The previous owners were judicious in their selection of plants for the bed and it worked reasonably well.

But I would like a little more variety so its time to spend a boatload of money on dirt and colored concrete.  Woohoo!

Both my Jeep and I are getting older.  We let Home Depot do the loading at the store and delivery.

 The "island" has become a tangle.  Without a border grass gets thrown into it every time I mow.  And the soil is rocky, sandy and without nutrients.

Time for a change.  And luckily nothing required but money and manual labor.

I like it. The temporarily orphaned primroses and lilies are resting in the bait buckets for a day or two. 

Gonna have to get a lot more soil though.  Hopefully I can get another pallet of the reasonably cheap stuff.  This is almost half of what I bought. 

God I love Spring.

First Post of the Year

Welcome to 2016.  So far it has been most noteworthy on two fronts.  The political - which I may or may not get into later.  And the meteorological.

We started 2016 already well into an El Nino event which typically means a warmer and wetter winter than normal.  The El Nino intensified as did the typical effect on Southeast Alaska.  From December until the present it has been abnormally warm although the precipitation has not been extraordinary.  What has been extraordinary is that almost all of the precipitation has been rain.  I have not shoveled snow once in months.

There is NO snow anywhere near sea level around Juneau and there has not been for almost two months. 

About three weeks ago I spotted the first Trumpeter Swans on the lakes where I walk the dogs.  That's about a month early. 

In late February I had a lot of shoots appearing in the garden.  A recipe for flora fatalities most years. 

But March was warm and forgiving and now on April Fool's Day I have a garden that, in many respects, I would typically expect to see the first week of May.  Several shrubs are completely in leaf.  My rock garden has blooms!

So...here are the first gardening post pics of the season:

 Had three bio-domes going in early February. 

 Everything is all potted-up as of today.  I have a total of four flats.

I've got six planters in my bedroom and five in the extra bedroom.  Begonias, Geraniums and Dahlias wintered over in the garage. 

But in the rock garden things are already happening.  A primrose pal. 

Woohoo!

Yesterday I finished raking the yard and hit the turf with 60 lb. of moss kill.  Also tidied-up the four big box raised beds.  Today I transplanted a few perennials from Point A to Point B and rehabbed the beds in the dog yard. 

God it's nice to be outdoors!