Spring has been off to a slow start. Not surprising with all the cold and rain. But it seems to have finally arrived in time for Bloom Day.

Not near as many plants are in bloom this year, compared to last year, but I’m sure enjoying what is showing off.

DAFFODILS
A small variety of flowers in the daffodil family are blooming in most of our flower beds.

VINCA MINOR
I love the blue/purple color of this flower. I am disappointed, though, that it’s creeping nature doesn’t keep out the weeds. And, it’s a pain to pull the weeds among all the vines.

RED FLOWERING CURRANT
The Red Flowering Currant does grow naturally around our house. I bought this one, though, and two others. They are in my Bird Village.

LEONARD MESSEL MAGNOLIA
One of the very first plants I planted when we bought our property was this beauty.

CAMELLIA
I don’t love the Camellia’s, and I don’t dislike them. They grow well and flower beautifully, so they stay.

KING GEORGE HEATHER
Heather in the front yard with our new bunny, Thumper.

WESTERN TRILLIUM
Growing among the ferns and fir trees in the natural areas surrounding our house are Western Trilliums. They are one of my fav’s.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BSuzdDRhZWl/?taken-by=ridgetop_farm_and_garden

I’m hoping the weather clears up soon. My flower beds are in desperate need of some TLC. Hopefully next month I’ll have more on display.

To enjoy more Bloom Day posts check out May Dreams Garden

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Every year at this time I have mixed thoughts about our flowerbeds. I love all the blooms. The flowers are beautiful. But, as a whole, the beds are very unkept and overgrown. It is impossible for me to keep up with the weeds and deadheading. Too many flowerbeds, too little time. I’m working on coming up with a solution to this dilemma. Unfortunately, the solution will take a lot of time and a complete overhaul of at least one flowerbed.

Here are the majority of plants blooming now, amongst all the crazy.

This is the time of year when the shasta daisies really show off – and we have a ton of them.

The lilies/day lilies are also taking over the flowerbeds.

Every year I throw new wild flower seed in the meadow hoping for a little variety. And, every year the same ol’ daisies and blanket flowers take over.

The weeds are in full swing right now.

Stinking Chamomile, or Anthemis cotula. I acutally don’t mind this weed, but it does stink.

Top left: White Clover
Bottom left: Canadian Thistle
Right: Lady’s Thumb, sometimes referred to as smartweed

Queen Anne’s Lace

The butterfly bushes just started blooming, but they seem to be fading quicker than I remember in the past.

Potentilla ‘Goldfinger’
I don’t love this plant. But, it’s hardy and is a reliable bloomer each summer.

The lavender in the Bird Village, Lavandula ‘Jennifer’,  is looking lovely.

There is a little section near the pond in the front yard that I enjoy. Purple lavender growing next to the pink flowers of what I believe is a Potenilla plant. Nearby is also yarrow in a darker shade of pink.

A few other random items in bloom. This year the nasturtiums are putting on a poor showing, which is a bummer. I love nasturtiums in my summer gardens.

Left: Mallow. It’s pretty. But, I don’t recommend it. It grows like crazy… in all the places you don’t want it.
Right: Hardy gladiola. I adore the chartreuse color.

Calendula

We struggle getting plants to bloom in Farm Kid 2’s flowerbed. It is a favorite place for our chickens to take dust baths. This year, though, we don’t have many free ranging chickens, so the wildflowers actually have a chance to show off. I love it.

Pansy’s and viola’s are looking great in the shade garden. This is another place we struggle keeping flowers alive due to the chickens, but not this year.

We also have flowering going on in our food garden – like this tomato.

Flowering in herb pots. This is the first time I have grown tarragon and I’m loving the golden flowers.

I have to make our flowerbeds a priority. In the winter, there isn’t a lot of interest, but in general they look ok. Everything is green and vibrant in the spring, which is my favorite. By mid summer, though, there is just too much going on for the flowerbeds to look nice. I like a cottage, informal look. But, I’ve been struggling with making it informal, without looking unkept.

With a lot of work, maybe next July’s bloom day will have the whole effect I’m going for, not just pretty flowers.

To enjoy more Bloom Day posts check out May Dreams Garden

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Another June, another great display of color. All the flowers seem to be blooming earlier this year. I’d guess my flowerbeds are nearly at there Summer prime and summer hasn’t even technically begun.

BIRD VILLAGE

Lupine and Shasta Daisies.

Potentilla ‘Goldfinger’

Yarrow

Hairy vetch in our little meadow area. Purple is the usual color. But, I spotted a few white blooms, which I have never seen before.

SHADE GARDEN

FRONT YARD & POND

Creeping Jenny

Lavender next to the pond

Lavender ‘Grosso’ near the cement wall

Black Lace Elderberry

Thyme

WILD FLOWERS

Wild red elderberry & daisies

Foxglove

All year I wait for this time of year in the garden and it always seem to pass too quickly. I need to learn to step outside and just enjoy it, as opposed to stepping outside only to do yard maintenance.

To enjoy more Bloom Day posts check out May Dreams Garden

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• We went camping over the weekend and enjoyed a homegrown chicken.

• Yarrow is blooming

• There are sections of the path in the bird village that is in desperate need of a trimming. The ferns and daisies have gone crazy.

• We don’t have a tire swing, so the kids made one.

• I planted three barrels with herbs.

• Farm Girl picked me a wild flower bouquet on a day I really needed it. Love her.

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May & June are my favorite months to enjoy our flowerbeds. This May has not disappointed. The foliage is filling in and the blooms are lovely.

BIRD VILLAGE

There is a lot (almost too much) going on in the bird village. After many years, this area is finally starting to feel like a complete project. If only I could keep the weeds out…

Snowmound Spirea

Lupine
This has been a great year for the lupine.

Lincoln Star Clematis

Allium

And more beautiful blooms

Near the Bird Village is a native rose that’s looking great.
And, there are a couple iris’ in our little meadow.

SHADE GARDEN

Top Left: I’m not a huge rhododendron fan, but I love the light purple blooms on this one.
Right: Variegated Weigela. Love it and all its pretty pink flowers.

FRONT YARD & POND

The lithodora is looking fabulous this month.

Top Left: Variegated Vinca Major
Top Right: Cotoneaster
Bottom Left: Thyme
Bottom Right: Hardy Geranium

Top Right: Columbine ‘Aguilena’
Bottom: Easter Egger hen searching for bugs in the creeping thyme

To enjoy more Bloom Day posts check out May Dreams Garden

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• The birds are still busy singing

• There are tadpoles in the runoff area of our pond for the first time ever. Maybe it’s silly, but I’m so excited to see them there.

• I’m not as excited when I see the garter snake that has made the pond and surrounding areas its home.

• The snakes have been out like crazy. The lower right photo is Farm Girl holding a small one. She likes searching under boards and pieces of wood for them.

• Year after year the swallows make a nest in a bird house in the bird village. I’ve never seen babies, though. Curiosity got the best of me one day and I grabbed a ladder to take a peek. Nothin’. I couldn’t see anything except the nest. I’m not sure if they actually have eggs in there or just like to build a nest.

• Purple is the color of the month. The majority of blooms in the flower beds are purple. I’m not complaining.

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The summer of 2009 was spent installing a cement path in our bird village. I could complete 2 forms worth each day while Farm Girl napped. By summer’s end I had a 4′ wide path meandering between the bird village and our little meadow. At the time the path didn’t have a good place to end. So, it just stopped on the backside of the meadow. My idea was that one day we would have a deck or patio at the back of our house and I would continue the path to wherever worked best to go with the deck/patio.

It took 7 years, but we now have that patio. Next up was completing the path – which we just did a couple weekends ago. Woo hoo!

My Method

Let me preface this post by saying nothing about my method is perfect. The path itself is not absolutely level. It’s level enough. The path is not perfectly straight. It’s straight enough. It’s slightly wonky and rustic, which fits right in with the rest of our yard.

Materials

This section of path is 4′ wide by 20′ long. Here are the list of items we used:
• 20 – 80 lb bags of concrete
• 2 – 50 lb bags of play sand
• 1 – Shovel
• 1 – Broom
• 1 – Walkmaker Form (we used the Country Stone Pattern)
• 1 – Trowel
• 1 – Finishing Trowel (or board at least 2′ long)
• 1 – Mini Cement Mixer (or Wheelbarrow)
• 1 – Gloves (cement is horrible on your hands)

Prepping the Area

Using a flat bladed shovel I “leveled” the path-to-be area. Because the cement will creep into low spots I didn’t worry about making the entire area perfectly level. I made sure the path would be at an equal height where it met the patio and also where it connected to the original path. Other than that I just eye-balled and dug out a gradual slope between the two places.

Making the Path

I mixed all the cement for the original path by hand. It got the job done and I love the path. But, I wasn’t stupid enough to do it again that way.

This time Farmer John rented a mini cement mixer. Together, we completed this section of path in an afternoon – as opposed to it taking me all summer.

I don’t know the ratio of cement mix to water we used. Farmer John just added water as needed. When I mixed the cement by hand I added more water then he did in the mixer, but it’s really just personal preference.

I would line the form up so the top was level with its neighboring cobblestones. Sometimes this meant digging out or adding a little dirt to get the form level. It’s not a difficult task, but it can be time consuming.

After Farmer John poured the mixed cement onto the form we used a trowel to push it into the different spaces, making sure to push the cement into all the corners. We have a finishing trowel to level the cement… but an old board was closer so we used that instead.

When moving along the path, we rotated the form a quarter turn to vary the directions of the cobblestones.

We repeated these steps for hours. Align the form, mix cement, pour cement, squish cement around to fill in all the cavities, level cement. Repeat section after section. I knew the process was slow. However, the turtle speed drove Farmer John bonkers.

Combining the Two Paths

It did get a bit tricky where the old and new path came together. I knew there would be a space at the beginning or end of the path where the Walkmaker form wouldn’t fit perfectly. I chose to start this new section at the patio end of the path so any space where it didn’t line up could be better hidden among the already unperfect cobblestones as opposed to the straight edged patio.

Sure enough when we got to the old section of path there wasn’t room for the form to fit, yet there was a big gap that was going to need filled. My solution for the majority of the gap was to use the form just as I had with the rest of the path – except I had to move the form away from the path so it could lay flat. After the cement dried a bit, I picked the pieces up and moved them to the path. It worked fine. It was just a little more difficult digging out the ground to make sure the top of the cobblestones lined up so there weren’t major tripping hazards.

Even after moving the individual pieces there were still small gaps to fill. I made cardboard forms to fit in those areas and filled them with cement. It’s not perfect, but I am probably the only person who knows about the inconsistency.

Finishing the Path

After the cement dries (I waited 2 days), the final step is filling in between the cobblestones with sand. I dumped 2 bags of sand on the path, then used a broom to push the sand in all the crevices.

And, Done!

The photo on the right shows the problem with completing this project 7 years later. There is a definite difference between the cement recently poured and the original path. Oh well. I’m so happy to have the path complete, it hardly bothers me.

The Original Path

I started out making the path one form (2′) wide, but soon realized it should be wider. So, the path is two forms (4′) wide.

I purposely added curves to the path. I used a similar method to what I mentioned above when I combined the old and new paths. However, now that I’m done I notice on the Quikrete site they show an alternative (probably better) way to create a curve.

In the original path I tried stamping words into some of the cobblestones. It only worked so-so. So, I didn’t bother adding words to the new section.

I repeated the Walkmaker form over 50 times to create the first section of path. It was worth it.

This original path was one of the first hardscaping projects I started when we moved here. It feels fabulous for it to be complete!

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Spring is officially here and we have lots of color. Yay!

A few daffodils & tulips are still blooming nicely.

Grecian Windflower – not many came back to bloom this year

These two are newbies that I don’t remember flowering previously.

Black Lace Elderberry
Flaming Silver Pieris
‘Mediterranean Pink’ Heath
‘Heavenly Blue’ Lithodora

Apple Tree

Creeping Phlox

Plum Tree

Left: Japanese Rose
Top Right: Spanish Bluebells
Middle Right: Viola
Bottom Right: Camellia

Lilac

Bleeding Heart

Left: Osmanthus Burkwoodi
Right: Pink Dawn Viburnum

Holly

Ajuga

Barberry

Leopard’s Bane

This is a plant we got from my parents yard years ago. I’m not sure what it is.

English Daisies
I found a fun double headed daisy on one stem.

One evening Farmer John & Farm Girl were going on a walk. I told them to take my phone and take a photo of a trillium when they came across one. Apparently, they didn’t find a trillium so they thought they’d be funny and take these photos claiming them to be trilliums.

To see other gardens on this Bloom Day check out May Dreams Gardens.

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This week’s update isn’t an update on the week, but an update on our to do list. I like lists. Well, it’s not so much the list itself I like, but the crossing things off the list. So gratifying.

Since the photo template I use for our weekly updates has nine spaces, I’ll list only nine things that need done. There are, of course, about a hundred more items that could be added. But, we’ll start with nine.

1. BUILD BRIDGE
   When we added a pond to our bird village the overflow goes right through the walking path. The intention was to build a bridge over this area. We need to do that.
2. CLEAN UP PATIO EDGE
   This fall we poured a stamped concrete patio. I love it. However, surrounding the patio doesn’t look too good. We gotta fix that.
3. FIND USE FOR WINE BARRELS *In process
   We have 3 wine barrels that I love. But, I’ve never found a good home for them. It’s time to figure that out.
4. CLEAN SIGNS
   I have made a number of signs. Most of them have been around a couple years and could use a good cleaning – like the one in our bird village that has many bird droppings on it.
5. TACKLE THE BACK YARD
   Making anything of our backyard was on the back burner for a few years because the first major step was putting in a patio – and, that kept not getting done. So, I didn’t spend much time on it. We now have a patio. Woop! Woop! It’s time to get the back yard lookin’ good – without spending a fortune.
6. FINISH CEMENT PATH  DONE! To see it check out this post.
   One of the first things I did when we moved here was put in a cement path using a walk maker form. Farm Girl was just a baby and all summer during her nap I would mix cement and pour two mold’s each day. Eventually I got the path done – well, as done as it could be at the time. Now that the patio is in, I can finish the path.
7. CLEAN UP MEADOW  DONE!
   Last year’s perennials need trimmed in our little meadow. Also, the meadow has never looked the way I was hoping it would. I need to look into ways to remedy this.
8. BUILD PATH IN FRONT OF COOPS  *In process
   We had extra concrete when we had our patio poured. So, we quickly through together a form and poured the extra in front of one of the chicken huts. It doesn’t look fabulous, but I love that it’s not muddy in front of the coop. I’d like to add a mosaic of concrete in front of the other chicken hut and chicken tractors.
9. ADD FILTER & PUMP TO POND
   When we put in the pond in our front yard it was a last minute thing, quickly thrown together. We had a pump, filter and water wheel – but, no electricity. We now have electricity near the pond, so we need to get all those things moving.

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Well, I’m just gonna say it, I’m ready for the changing of seasons. This summer was too hot and way too dry. I didn’t spend near enough time in my flowerbeds deadheading, weeding and watering. And, it shows. I’m ready to move on and try again next year.

FRONT YARD

One. Literally one, flower is blooming in our front yard.

AROUND THE FRONT POND

The thyme still has some flowers. The bees are loving them.

The marigolds took awhile to get going, but they eventually flowered and are still putting on a good show.

A couple nasturtiums are continuing to bloom. However, most gave up a long time ago

SHADE GARDEN

A few weathered impatiens and violas are hanging on.

BACK YARD

The lone bit of color in the back yard.

BIRD VILLAGE

Left: A few flowers are doing their thing in our itty bitty meadow. But, most interest comes from the seed heads.
Right: The barberry is a fabulous crimson color. I wish I would have planted more.

Renegades – these rogue flowers opted to bloom in our gravel driveway near the Bird Village. They’re pretty, but out of place.

In the Bird Village Pond:
Left: Last September I transplanted a few geraniums to our greenhouse with the hopes of overwintering them. In the spring I moved them back outside. They’re still blooming along the pond’s edge.
Right: Pretty purple pickerel weed bloom

Many blooms died off long ago.

GARDEN

The self sowing calendula continues to bloom. Just a few years ago I introduced it to the garden. I’m so glad I did. I love it.

It’s not much, but at least there are a few bits of color to brighten the flower beds this month.

Sharing this post at May Dreams Gardens.

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