The Swamp Garden

From Cleveland.com weather report:

"It has rained in Cleveland on 51 of the first 68 days of spring."

In China apparently 2011 is the year of the rabbit, but in Cleveland, it has been the year of the raindrop.  It was a cold, snowy March and April, which meant that working in the garden early was all but impossible.   In the last week or so of May, we somehow managed to clean up the mangy, dank garden beds, weed, mulch and mow the lawn between thunder, cloudbursts, drizzle, hail, cold, intense wind storms and rain, rain and more rain!   Spring in Cleveland is typically predictable in how unpredictable the weather can be, but usually we have some breaks of glorious, mild, sunny days that allow for gardening.  And working in the late spring garden is usually a pleasure before the bugs and the intense heat of the dog days of summer drive me indoors into an air conditioned refuge.  But this spring, it's been impossible to do much at all - I wasn't able to divide the perennials or put new plants in because our already heavy clay soil was (and is) so super saturated. 

 

In the last week or so, between raindrops, I have managed to plant some of the pots on my deck and get a few herbs into the areas between the pavers on our patio.   I added some wooly thyme, creeping thyme and Corsican mint to the scotch moss, which I planted last year (and which I was thrilled to see survived the frigid temperatures and abundant snow of the winter of 2010-2011:

Anyway, in the last 10 - 15 years, my garden has evolved from a full sun garden - gloriously easy to grow almost anything - to a shade garden (oy).   Consequently, it's much more challenging to grow much of what I love and certainly more difficult to get color.  I have to be more clever and thoughtful about shades of green, texture and variations in height, and I'm not there yet.   So, here is what one bed looks like - the azaleas, bearded irises, hostas, bachelor buttons, columbine, and of course the mud seemed to have thrived this year:

And, here are some pictures that Abby took:

It's now May 31st, 90 degrees - hot and humid outside.   I'm sitting inside, in air-conditioning, typing on my computer, looking out at the bumper crop of mosquitos buzzing around in the garden.  In the words of the Bearded Iris (well, what I think it looks like it's saying anyway), "blech!"