Put to Bed

Thinking up post titles involves some atrocities.

I FINISHED the South bed.  Apart from mulching and edging and possibly some more hollies underplanting the tree I selected which is....

... a Golden Raindrops crab.  (Ducking and hiding.)  I am not fond of tree selection.  In theory it is cool, reasoned, and orderly process.  In practice either I wait until fall, when I seem to be looking at scratch-n-dent trees, or I do it in the frenetic 6 weeks of spring when the nurseries are packed, things are selling out like mad, I have to throw a burlap bag over the head of a nursery employee to get help, and stress has triggered my sympathetic nervous system such that my pulse is actually faster trying to capture and take home a tree.  When I do select a tree (wait, I read about this one... nice small fruits easy for birds to eat... the nursery manager likes this one... right shape...bloom color I wanted... spread is a couple feet too wide, can't I fudge that?... nice size tree... hey, good price!)

I do a lot of reading about gardens, my current hyperfocus.  I know this is not how you're supposed to pick a tree.  But I snag the tree and come home and then read about how the spread is too wide and it's susceptible to fireblight and you know, you really shouldn't plant a tree that close to the house...

Large men helped me install this tree (I didn't have to pay them, I have two on the premises).  12-15 spread, 6 feet from the house.  Yes, I can do the math.  We can call it "Larkspur's Folly."  It has hollies under it in what I fondly hope will be an attractive underplanted effect*.

I was so thrilled with the new bed, the first we've put in since we built the house five years ago, that I lured my husband out on a blanket to come sit next to it.  I will take pictures but without the mental & physical calorie expenditure of this fraught process, it won't look like much to an outsider.

But to me, it's lovely.

*Unless the hollies die because, as observed in the Penn State Extension Service publication on broadleaf evergreens, which I tracked down and read, they fry from a Southern exposure to winter sun.