Hey there, long time no post
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Hello, RF. It's good to catch up with you and your family.
I've had my portion of tribulation with the knee replacement failure I've recounted here. Nonetheless, my wife and I are still in our home and keeping on with various activities.
Your saga of instruments prompts me to relate mine. My Yamaha Clavinova began losing notes. A technician determined that the keyboard sensors were failing. No replacement parts were available and no used parts became available on eBay or wherever else the tech looked.
I'm now looking at a replacement. The leading contender is the Yamaha NU1XA hybrid piano. It has the action of a Yamaha upright piano but with sensors that activate the electronic portions of the instrument. I've been very impressed with the feel of the keyboard and the sound is also very impressive.
I'm probably going to proceed with my purchase this month.
Please keep us apprised of events in your household.
Big Al
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I didn't know that rose of sharon was invasive. I put them in an area that would be mowed around. (Around which will be mown?) Will that contain them? They do grow in the South, but I've never had one. I don't remember them being invasive there, but I do know that they have a reputation for being unkillable, which is what I need in a plant.
I see Solomon seals in neighborhoods around here, so they seem like a good bet for a native that will do well and be pretty. I also see bleeding heart, which I've always loved and never lived in the right place to grow. My neighbors have the exotic variety, but I see on the New York native websites that there are native bleeding hearts, so I'll look for those. And maybe some of the exotics, too, since they don't seem to be invasive.
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@wtg thanks for the photos of the peony vs. bleeding heart. Definitely not the leaves of a bleeding heart…
Here are two photos I took earlier this week.
My plant identification app says it’s either a “cottage peony” or a “common garden peony”
@ShiroKuro yeah, that's a peony. Pretty. Ours always bloom on Memorial Day weekend, but this year the weekend is early and the weather has been cold. We planted three bare root 7 years ago, and two are just starting to come into their own. One is still struggling--I think I put it too close to the sidewalk and the roots don't have enough soil.
I'm fond of them. We got a few as a housewarming gift at the old house and they were pretty spectacular by the time we moved out (22 years later). They are always covered in ants when in bloom so I never cut them and bring them inside.
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I didn't know that rose of sharon was invasive. I put them in an area that would be mowed around. (Around which will be mown?) Will that contain them? They do grow in the South, but I've never had one. I don't remember them being invasive there, but I do know that they have a reputation for being unkillable, which is what I need in a plant.
I see Solomon seals in neighborhoods around here, so they seem like a good bet for a native that will do well and be pretty. I also see bleeding heart, which I've always loved and never lived in the right place to grow. My neighbors have the exotic variety, but I see on the New York native websites that there are native bleeding hearts, so I'll look for those. And maybe some of the exotics, too, since they don't seem to be invasive.
@Mary-Anna ok , I lied. I just checked, and neither roses of Sharon nor lilies of the valley are on the invasive species lists in NY or in MA. My bad, and sorry I rained on your plant choices.
My experience with rose of Sharon was that I had to pull seedlings every day or so and during blooming I had to deadhead every day. Jeez they are pretty though.
My experience with lilies of the valley is that they formed a matted root mess that is impossible to eradicate even after 8 years of aggressively tackling it. But the flowers are darling and the foliage attractive. YMMV.
The big concern with actual invasive plants isn't so much what we see in our own yards but the effect of birds distributing the seeds in wild areas where they choke out beneficial and native species and reduce biodiversity. So I guess I'm a bit overzealous.
And of course plants are native or invasive depending on their locations.
Here's a better resource than me for checking for natives in North America :
https://www.wildflower.org/plants-mainAnd for invasive:
https://www.invasiveplantatlas.org/index.cfm -
@ShiroKuro said in Hey there, long time no post:
@wtg thanks for the photos of the peony vs. bleeding heart. Definitely not the leaves of a bleeding heart…
Here are two photos I took earlier this week.
My plant identification app says it’s either a “cottage peony” or a “common garden peony”
I didn't realize it had bloomed. Definitely a peony!
guidelines for transplanting:
https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-transplant-peonies-4579809
Ya learn something every day. I didn't know it preferred a late summer move, before it goes into dormancy.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Am with @rustyfingers on the rose of Sharon. Pretty flowers late summer, at a time when other plants are winding down. OTOH, seedlings galore. I enjoy them on other people's properties. Maximum beauty, minimum work.
I have lily of the valley, with mixed feelings. My mom's favorite flower, and that's the only reason I've kept a patch of it. I have to dig out a bunch of it that has crept into a path.
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Whatever anyone does, do not let this plant anywhere near your yard:
Bishop's weed. Nearly impossible to rid yourself of.
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@wtg Bishop's Weed (Ground Elder) is a nightmare. I have found that the variegated variety is not as bad here as the solid green variety, which I would not wish on anyone.
@Bernard The variegated one is awful here. A friend dug up some hostas for me to take to our vacation home in Door County. There was one little tiny bit of the dreaded weed in the clump, which I thought I removed. Every spring it would pop up and we'd dig it out. I was terrified that it would take hold up there and I'd never get rid of it. Took five years of watchful gardening before it was officially and permanently eradicated.
It is an evil, evil plant.
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@ShiroKuro said in Hey there, long time no post:
@wtg thanks for the photos of the peony vs. bleeding heart. Definitely not the leaves of a bleeding heart…
Here are two photos I took earlier this week.
My plant identification app says it’s either a “cottage peony” or a “common garden peony”
I didn't realize it had bloomed. Definitely a peony!
guidelines for transplanting:
https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-transplant-peonies-4579809
Ya learn something every day. I didn't know it preferred a late summer move, before it goes into dormancy.
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I didn't buy any bishop's weed. Yay! Who knows what might have come with my friends' plants, but I didn't see any bishop's weed in her yard.
I knew which plants tended to be invasive in Florida. Well, mostly. Now I'm really curious about rose of sharon, because I've never seen it on a list of invasive plants, but I don't think it's heat-sensitive, so maybe it throws off all those seedlings there. Crape myrtle would do that, but I had a big yard when I had crape myrtle, so I just moved the seedlings someplace where I wanted color six or eight months of the year. My next-door neighbor at that time was really into gardening and she loved invasive plants the best. I counted five flowering plants in my yard that had come over from hers, and her four o'clocks looked like an invading army heading out into the common area behind our houses.
My mother is also the reason I got the lilies of the valley, wtg. She loved it, but it wouldn't grow in Mississippi. She did have something that looked similar. It may have been summer snowdrop.
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Isn't it funny how we have fondness for our
mothers' and grandmothers'families' flowers? A visit to my Grandma in Medford OR always included a tour of her garden. One time I was struck by her combination of red rhodies and white woodruff blooming together. I vainly tried to recreate that in Massachusetts. They don't bloom at the same time, and the woodruff dried up and disappeared. Duh. -
We lived in the country, sort of. It was the best of both worlds, in that our house sat on four acres, but we were ten or fifteen minutes from town. My parents kept more over an acre of that land as the yard, which Daddy mowed with an old Cub Cadet tractor that came with the house, so Mama gardened with a big canvas. She planted roses and small flowers that you had to get close to see in the back yard. In the front yard, if it couldn't be seen from a car hurrying down a country road, it wouldn't do. Under some truly massive pine trees, she planted tons of azaleas, which grow to the size of a minivan (maybe a school bus) in that climate. They were honestly spectacular. She also moved azaleas and some redbud and dogwood trees out of the woods behind the house into the front yard, and she had a behemoth of a wisteria climbing up one of those pines and a yellow jessamine climbing up another. I remember daylilies, too, and nandinas and a pyracantha and masses of orange cosmos in the fall.
This happened over years, so I don't remember her as being one of those people who was always out in the garden. I think she tended it a little at a time while we were at school, and also she planted things that didn't need much tending.
The subsequent owner clearcut the lot and bulldozed the azaleas early in this century. Nevertheless, this is what people from my hometown still think of when they see me. They say, "I drove by your house and thought of your Mama and her azaleas."
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We lived in the country, sort of. It was the best of both worlds, in that our house sat on four acres, but we were ten or fifteen minutes from town. My parents kept more over an acre of that land as the yard, which Daddy mowed with an old Cub Cadet tractor that came with the house, so Mama gardened with a big canvas. She planted roses and small flowers that you had to get close to see in the back yard. In the front yard, if it couldn't be seen from a car hurrying down a country road, it wouldn't do. Under some truly massive pine trees, she planted tons of azaleas, which grow to the size of a minivan (maybe a school bus) in that climate. They were honestly spectacular. She also moved azaleas and some redbud and dogwood trees out of the woods behind the house into the front yard, and she had a behemoth of a wisteria climbing up one of those pines and a yellow jessamine climbing up another. I remember daylilies, too, and nandinas and a pyracantha and masses of orange cosmos in the fall.
This happened over years, so I don't remember her as being one of those people who was always out in the garden. I think she tended it a little at a time while we were at school, and also she planted things that didn't need much tending.
The subsequent owner clearcut the lot and bulldozed the azaleas early in this century. Nevertheless, this is what people from my hometown still think of when they see me. They say, "I drove by your house and thought of your Mama and her azaleas."
@Mary-Anna said in Hey there, long time no post:
The subsequent owner clearcut the lot and bulldozed the azaleas early in this century.
How awful!
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I have Bishop’s weed. Ugh. Can’t get rid of it. It was variegated when I got it, but I think a lot of it has reverted to plain green; there’s an awful lot of it in the front yard. I’ve decided that it’s just going to look like an overgrown cottage garden out there. I also have a ton of pink Japanese anemone, also hard to get rid of. I bought these things 25 years ago at a native plant sale, not knowing that “native” means “will spread like crazy and take over your home.”
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Triclopyr (new, safer formulation of Roundup) and a paintbrush will solve your problem. Weed-b-Gone ( less toxic yet) will too.
May not be your thing but it will work.
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Triclopyr (new, safer formulation of Roundup) and a paintbrush will solve your problem. Weed-b-Gone ( less toxic yet) will too.
May not be your thing but it will work.
@Steve-Miller Thank you. I’ve always avoided RoundUp. I don’t know if I have it in me to do this much yardwork, though!
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I just got an up-close look at a new-to-me invasive plant. We spent the day at Tony's mom's house and there was a ton of rosa multiflora in her yard.
I'm 99% sure there's another new-to-me pest in that yard in the form of trees of heaven surrounding her pool.
As for the other weeds? Heck if I know.
On the plus size, there are magnificent two-story-high rhododendrons in full bloom all over the property. We agreed with the realtor who thinks we should take pics right now and call it The Rhododendron House in the sales material.
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Tree of Heaven is another invasive that absolutely requires Roundup or similar.
Or you can try pulling it - for a long time.
