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My place has been, more or less, neglected for 11 months - brief, and mostly too-busy visits were about all I managed over the past year while I was living in northern Virginia. Leaving in early August was tough - but the winter also ended up being unusually warm and dry - so most of what I lost I lost due to lack of water.
So I've been watering. A lot.
And everything is happier, slowly but surely.
About two years ago I started moving perennials that were being shaded out by fast-growing cypresses and surprisingly fast-growing live oaks to a border near my vegetable garden beds (and asparagus and blueberry beds). This side of the garden is extremely hot - full sun with some late afternoon shade - and in the winter, it's a spot that captures the cold air, and I see frost there and often no where else. So I started transplanting clumps of perennials to this warm spot before I knew that the garden would have to make it on it's own for a year.
The grasses did wonderfully, as did the crinums. The gingers weren't happy, and I lost a beautiful native coneflower with small green flowers (I need to find it again - I just loved it). My roses look like hell. The salvias are doing their best. The fennel a few days ago was covered in eastern black swallowtail caterpillars, then the chrysalis' disappeared too soon (mean birds!). A small vegetable garden is planted: an eggplant, two bell peppers and one jalapeno, four tomatoes, two basil plants, and one hill of canteloupe.
This side garden - a spot that I call my 'working farm' - is a bit of a mess, and needs care. It'll get it, although any real improvements might have to wait until the first cool breezes reach this far south, sometime in late September. But even as neglected as this garden has been, it's filled with hummingbirds every morning and every evening, and throughout the heat of the afternoon.
It's wonderful, being back in the garden.
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