Notes to Self

Blogging in the actual garden on my phone, which is a first. Here are some notes from the season: We've had mostly a good spring.  After two or three weird and distressingly hot days in April, which meant that my tulips were shot really quickly, it turned cool again, down in the 50s to the low 70s. Lots of rain. The evergreens have made great progress this year. The limber Pines have candles that are like 8 to 10 inches long. There's even a few inches on the slow growing yews, which I want to hurry up and grow so they can make a wonderful green backdrop to my roses.

David Austin's were really stunning this spring. I can't really explain it. I didn't prune, they were the only ones I didn't really get to. And they just exploded.  I had a decent success with my new grow lights this year. Some highlights: lots and lots of thyme, larkspur, poppies, and these marvelous very blue annual salvia.  Delphinium were a bust. I do think I started things too early and they had to wait too long to go in the ground, had a pretty good success rate overall. As far as things that ought to be done, I think perhaps those red drift at the end of the rock garden should be replaced with something else, maybe pink Striatum geranium. While it would mean parting with the butterfly bush, it probably makes sense to replace the butterfly bush with another narrow sweet bay magnolia. The peonies look great this year, but I want some additional colors. Everyone else has a gorgeous mid  pink :)  I want some more Iris Caesars brother. peony Coral Charm. Of course Bascobel rose.

Tulip Results

Not enough--

Charming Beauty. Did I really buy that few? or are they languishing in the basement?

Angelique. I bought and planted loads but they are still Not Enough.  Also not as double as I would like. Was that a weather thing, or the strain? Great color though.

The viridiflora, purpley ones, white lily flowered ones, and plain pink are are all a splendidly good idea. No duds.  Just not enough and not enough pink versus the purple and I WANT MY CHARMING BEAUTY.  If I get Chris to turn my new cutting garden area into a raised bed, I should pave that with tulips in the fall.

Of course the weather was tough this year-- several very hot days, 80 plus, so they really shot fast and got all rushed together and we didn't get the best display. My lilacs bloomed mid-April and the allium are getting ready to pop and it's not May 1 until tomorrow. But climate change is not a thing. Let's all be clear about that.

Notes for this year/next: pull all the tulips and replant. Keep up the nice display in the front bed. I could probably do with some pools of them on hemlock hillock. Like the pools in the fence bed near my newly planted (yay!) raspberries.  Could do more there really. Would love some more Winston Churchill daffs but I put along the back bed, although we had the usual problem of the choking blanket of mulch. Anyway, daffodils are a different post, although I will put in THAT post, the sundisc ones are DEAR and could definitely be added to the opposite side of the path.

Excited about my peonies blooming, woot.

More Notes for Next Year:

Lurgan's Greenhouse all the way. Huge selection of $2 perennials. Bought blooming forget me nots and those sweet yellow things I put on the wall whose name I forget. Awesome! Fabulous!

Spring is Coming At Some Point

Not yet. We are under a foot and a half of late snow out there, after a very mild winter.

Garden developments:  DH bought me growlights. The good kind that apparently are coveted in marijuana production.  All Amazon reviews seem to be from hopeful weed growers, some of them with not very good spelling (stay in school!)

Under the growlights, I tried some things and failed with others, and am now hoping I didn't start too early-- depends on what the weather does.  What look like successes so far:

poppy (lots of that)
Veronica Georgia Blue (ditto)
Salvia Blue Angel
Mother of Thyme
Culinary Thyme (too much! somebody come take some! ack!
Larkspur

Delphinium were a bust as were eupatorium and for the most part penstemon.  Moderate success with:

Indian Springs hollyhock
Rose Campion

I was fairly scientific this year and bought a box of cowpots, hoping this will please the larkspur and poppy when they can go in the garden without a lot of root disturbance. Liking the cowpots so far.

Note to self: Park Seeds fancy selfwatering start system with the space age sponge thingies was a bust.  Some seeds never sprouted and other sprouted but didn't grow, so $34 not well spent.

Additional note to self: Outside Pride's seeds had a great germination rate and there were tons of them.

The timers are great, and my favorite systems are the self watering kind with the wicking mat. Need to see if I can buy or McGiver (with wool and styrofoam apparently) some more.

This year's focus will be, I think, on developing the bit of yard outside the fence.  I ordered 15 raspberry plants, shocked at myself that I had never put in raspberries and deciding they were more important than some silly ornamental thing. I also got seduced by Instagram into buying Floret Farm's Cut Flower Garden, which was worth every penny of the $18 I spent. Gorgeous hardback book with useful and specific information.  I'm thinking of turning the last bit of open ground by the driveway into a cut flower bed. It's a terrible position, right out front, and would have to be grassed over or replanted in shrubs before we sell the house in a few years, but when you want cut flowers and you're out of room-- what are you gonna do?  I guess I could make my patch next to the raspberries... the lot next to us is vacant and if my cut flowers overreach a bit, it won't cause any lasting harm. I think that bit is about 15' wide and maybe 30 feet long... even with A Lot of raspberries, there might be a little room for say a 4x10 strip of flowers.

So what I do want in my 4x10 strip, based on Floret Farm's luscious book?

--more peony always and forever, especially Coral Charm and Raspberry Sundae
--dahlia, especially Appleblosom and the staggeringly expensive Cafe au Lait
--delphinium-- I can order little packs from Graceful Gardens of the New Millenium series
--cosmos, Double Click Mix
--snaps, madame butterfly or chantilly mix

Erin of Floret Farm emphasizes lots of filler for bouquets. My yard is blessed with a lot of wonderful things I can use, so I'm not so worried about that.

So as soon as the snow melts, I need to get to work cutting down the overgrown disaster that is the easement, and put down paper or cardboard so that I can kill the turf/weeds prior to putting in my raspberries and row of cut flowers.

Edging, mulch, and nursery tours

Really they're more like nursery haunts. I have three good nurseries within five miles, and I keep touring them repeatedly this time of year, as if some new shrub will leap into my arms and beg to be mine.  I am running out of space, which is overall a good thing I guess, but it means that I am even more wary of making a choice, in case it's the wrong choice, Also nothing I do will live up to what Brian the most excellent Landscape Architect designed, so I'm inhibited. But that's okay.  I don't mind haunting nurseries.

The very pleasant landscape guys came and edged and lay unfathomable yards of mulch everywhere. Things look really snazzy, at least now that this morning's snow has melted, but I will have to dedicate part of tomorrow to determining where I have shy fern,  tulips, peony,  camassia, baptisia, and groundcover daunted by a uniform blankets of mulch. Landscaping and Gardening are somewhat at odds with each other.

I have several tasks this spring:

1. buy and plant a narrow flowering tree to replace the crab that got et by fireblight

2. choose and plant something to go next to our freshly sealed and snazzy driveway, which will thrive, filter winds, not get too large and yet be large enough, look handsome, entice wildlife, and not be daunted or uprooted by the unused drainage culvert underneath. So, no problem there.

3. plant the 18' wide area next to the fence in the lower part of the yard, ditto everything above except there is no culvert to contend with.  From last summer--

4. replace two sickly Autumn Twist azalea when they come up for sale. The new ones look fine

5. Figure out what to put under and around the white dogwood in the front bed. Dwarf Cherry Laurel? I shovel pruned the experimental gardenia that was there. It did not like our winter.

The nursing home in my back yard replanted their row of Green Giant in the one foot strip between paving and a steep drop, and for the third time (yes, third) in what, two years I guess, have lost most of them. You can see them struggling last summer in the picture above. They put some firs between us on the slope when I pitched a snit, and those came through fine, and the pines at the base are okay.  The person in charge of the landscape was astonished and angered that I didn't believe in the Green Giant solution as they were replanted a third time. He accused me of not having faith.  I suppose I should start jumping up and down again but at this point I am more amused than anything.

Spring Plans

I was out exploring the garden yesterday, doing a little pruning and clean up.  Things seem to have come through reasonably well-- though the "Elle" I left out of the ground disgracefully long  before sticking it hastily into an empty spot has turned totally black. I planted hundreds of bulbs and am seeing a few early ones-- iris reticulata and crocus. My current focus is the 18x 50 foot stretch north of the fenceline, where I want to put a bird-and bee-friendly hedgerow. Current candidates:

Hawthorne or serviceberry
Nellie Stevens holly x 3
Face down with winterberry
Tuck in a pussywillow or two
Ditto an aronia

I have my Beauty of Moscow lilac there because there just wasn't anyplace else to put it.

Blooming now: iris reticulata, crocus, witchhazel.

Late May is the Best

I was out weeding and mulching at our community garden today (our church grows vegetables for the local food bank).  We were all agreeing that right now in the garden is pretty much peak.  I think our heat rushed a lot of things into bloom, but it's beautiful regardless.  Click if you'd like to see them bigger.

Catmint, Pink Double Knock Out, baptisia, rose campion from seed, some giant Souvenir D'Andre Chaudron catmint back there, and part of my 3-Flower Maple which is suffering some sort of distressing wilt.  Shake it off dude. We need you.

Rose campion blooming.  Isn't the form pretty?  I don't know what the guys put in this soil but it is like something out of Marvel Comics.  Stuff just gets huge.

Front walk with new dogwood (Eddie's White Wonder)

Carefree Beauty deserves a nod.  Effortless and gorgeous.

Today's additions:  Hidcote and Provence lavender, a mini-leafed basil, and a dendrathema Clara Curtis.  I still have a fig tree (!), a very expensive Beauty of Moscow lilac, and an Elle hybrid tea out of the ground.  Manana!

 This is right after the mulching and edging was done in April:  woot!  Much crisper lines.

Kit Island: Baptisia, catmint, knock out roses.

This is Deutzia Yuki Cherry Blossom.  I just put in three in the hot West facing bed:  really like them so far.

Very pleased with the evergreens. Love the bluish note of the spruce, which I know was a goal of Brian the Landscape Architect.  The Encore Autumn Twist have really struggled. I put some Miracid on them today, hoping that would darken them up a bit.  They look anemic.  There's a view of the AntiGardener, transporting his chicken.

Back of Kit Island. You can see me trying to get some height/green backdrop near the house.  Those are yews, a Dragon  Lady holly and a Rocket Stewartia on the left.  Sweet Bay Magnolia on the right with some very happy Little Limes my friends gave me when they went on sale at the end of the season.

Tracy Di Saubato-Aust says you should plant serviceberry with itea, so I did.

Another view of sad azalea and thriving (so far) Cayuga viburnum and Winter Gem boxwoods.

The view from our back doors. I think it distracts pretty well from the ginormity behind it.

Apropos of nothing, this is a vignette I admired at Hershey Gardens:

Many plans and much to do.  It is a rather embattled time of life, trying to launch young adults, raise the middle schooler, and support the 80 somethings who are starting to have Issues of various kinds, all while battling the physical effects of midlife (I have metatarsalgia in my foot making it no fun to walk at the moment.)  But that forty minutes in the garden weeding and clipping and transplanting is soothing.  It's a lot of work but I would miss it terribly if I didn't have it.

It's a beautiful slow spring here.  I am ridiculously excited by the mulching and even better, the edging, done by the worthy young landscapers-- 8 hours, 3 guys, but it looks great. The cinnamon buns seemed to go over well.  As my husband pointed out, now I can do the fun stuff and not be tensely eyeing a giant pile of mulch all season.

My bulbs are lovely, although some of them look like something I wouldn't order-- orangey, and I don't do orange.  Hmm.

This spring I bought so far: tiny catmints, some waterperry blue veronica, a Beauty of Moscow lilac, three Hicksi yew, three Yuki Cherry Blossom deutzia, and I just got my mail order geranium Rozanne and Sweet Drift, Alnwick, and Quietness roses.

The apple tree is blooming and the lilac is blooming well under it, making an idyllic combination for my dining room windows.  What I need is nicer furniture in there, but who wants to buy furniture when there are so many wonderful plants?

The Encore Autumn Twist azaleas still look like hell.  They've been kind of a bust in these cold winters.

Spring is so far advanced from my last set of pictures I'm going to wait and get new ones.

Happy spring!

It's WARM!!!

It's also RAINING.  But that's okay.  Somehow I miraculously managed to get out between showers and pig out at the nursery:

I then mucked off the porch-- old branches, Christmas lantern, fake tree knocked down by the wind, empty pots, etc. I washed out and filled the doorway containers with Green Mountain boxwood (which I hope to keep in there) and some sweet violets.

I also did some bed cleanup for the first time this year-- yes, April 3, but it has been so, so cold I didn't want to touch it.  I'm still waiting for things like hosta to start coming up.  Forsythia still haven't bloomed around here. My roses are pushing buds, and I plan to start pruning and I'll fertilize with my usual wide-scatter Osmocote when I get the dead leaves and fallen stalks out.

In HAPPY NEWS, I arranged for edging, mulching, and dead shrub removal, hopefully in the next week or so.  Around $1500 for the above with about 15 yards of mulch.  It's a business I've worked with before and the guy seems really pleasant and knowledgeable, so I'm hoping it will turn out well. It's a lot of clams but with my working full time, I just don't have the time or the oomf.

Here's one of my containers:

And here's the nemisia and violets I added on the left, which never matches the right for some reason-- the crocuses are much later, 3 feet away:

And the still sleeping, still not cleaned up side garden, with the crooked dogwood and the Otto Luykens laurel I plan to replace and baby like anything with burlap in the winter:

Pure potential, right?  

With me you get your earthy, grungy, realistic photo, complete with hoses and plastic pots and everything. I think "keeping it real" is valued these days and Gosh, I'm good at that.

PS I saw my first worm of spring today!

It's Still Snowing

It is, you know.

I am amused by my last post (March 5th) because I can't remember writing it at all.  That's why I blog.  'Cause I FORGET STUFF.

I have decided to add headings.  I'm taking an online class with a Kindle textbook and I have decided blatant labeling is the merciful way to reference stuff. So:

PLANT CHOICE-- PORCH

I retract the fothergilla, by the way.  It's going to be Ruby Spice Clethra, which I suspect will be less finicky and will have (we hope) a wonderful scent we're eating lunch or dinner out there in the summer. $29 for a 3 gallon plant at Highland Gardens.

WINTER DAMAGE

Took a brief tour of the battlefield when it was 70 degrees last week. (It's now 28, and did I mention, snowing?)  The Encore Autumn Twist Azaleas look dead, but the scratch test suggests they aren't.  The compacta hollies in the south bed gave up the ghost, all three.  The magnolias (big Edith Bogue, spindly Sweetbay) seem to have come through pretty well. Confirmed to go are the hollies, the lamented Otto Luykens laurel which has looked awful since last winter, and the fire-blighted Golden Raindrops crab (sniff). I am also taking out the kerria, which is a pain in the ass and not a good choice for the high visibility spot it is occupying.  I am not sure the little deutzia I bought ever took.  They look awfully dead.

REMEMBER THIS IN FALL

FYI my witchhazels bloomed the first or second week in March-- late.  They smell DIVINE.  I need to strip off the old, hanging leaves, because they bloom/look much better on the branches I stripped.

PAYING FOR HELP

I am getting estimates on help with mulching, removing dead stuff, and edging.  My first quote came in at over $2K, which is more than I want to spend on something I feel I should have the moral fiber to do myself. They estimated 20 yards of mulch-- yoiks.  My kind husband pointed out, wouldn't it be nicer to do the fun stuff versus the heavy work of edging and mulching? (I'm also thinking he wouldn't mind getting out of mulching. Also, my daughter broke up, and usually we have a boyfriend in the spring to help.  I'll tell her we're having to hire it out this year.  No, I won't tell her that.)

GARDEN PLANNING-- FRONT

Other than asking them to cut an additional 10"-1' edge to widen the beds, planting my usual little cluster of sweet annuals at the front steps, and replacing the kerria with Ruby Spice, I don't anticipate doing much.

GARDEN PLANNING-- NORTH SIDE FRONT

This is kind of a glorious mess right now.  The poor Cherry Laurel has to come out.  Not sure what to replace it with.  Something evergreen and shade tolerant. Still mourning the Laurel, which I loved.  This bed needs to be simplified and reorganized but I'm not sure that's this spring's effort.  Of course I will put in the usual snaps and salvia.

GARDEN PLANNING-- STONE PATIO

This is going to be the really fun bit.  I have hesitated a bit on the back yard, since it is overlooked by the employee entrance of a nursing home (lovely, eh?), but we did build our rather marvelous bit of stone patio finally and I am eager to make it wonderful.  Besides, when the various evergreens grow up, it will be pretty private.  For the south side under the still-small zelkova, I want to do pools of deutzia interspersed with Sweet Drift roses. Could tuck some white bleeding heart near the as yet tiny tree canopy. As mentioned, I bought some little deutzias last year but they never got beyond pathetic.  I could try again this year with larger plants and better soil prep, though of course I don't want to run afoul of the tree.

On the north side, I need to plant some ground covers to be (a) beautiful and (b) hold the soil which tends to wash over on that side.  I also need to install some edging.  So many great things to choose from-- having trouble deciding :) I wonder if it would look best with some deutzia tucked on that side for balance, mixed in with say, Rozanne geranium or an evergreen type groundcover.  Need to tuck in some stepping stones so I can get to the hose.  And I do want to slide in a daphne for fragrance.

To wit:

And another note to self

Fothergilla Blue Shadow to replace the kerria.  I have spoken.

Garden planning day

Is really cool, and I'm dictating with my husband's headset and dictation program. This could get to be quite a lengthy post.  So we will dedicate today to identifying problem areas in  the garden.

Number one: the West bed. This is not big enough, I need to take out the dying hollies and move the catmint. I have visions of an evergreen backdrop fronted by flowering plants with some low evergreen and simple flowering things in front. There would be a stone pathway leading through this garden to this swath of lawn.  I would like to replace the red Drift roses next to the stone wall, and plant some more wonderful things on and around the wall.  I have to decide how I'm going to manage the color peach in the garden :-)

Number two: flanking the patio. I need to install the edging we bought on the north side, because dirt is leaching onto the patio on that side.  I also need to install some groundcovers there. I bought five geranium Rosanne, those could go there. I could buy some thyme, or consider some other groundcovers. On the south side of the patio, I ordered some sweet drift roses, which I think will be quite nice. I have some deutzia in there. I could try enriching the soil and replanting. I may be replacing them. They didn't do well last year.

Number three: I have to either move or really keep after those giant catmint, the Souvenir d'Andre Chaudron.  They are just too dang big for the space.  Pretty though.

Number four: I am about done with those kerria by the corner of the porch.  They look ratty and get loaded with bindweed every summer. The hosta desperately need dividing and they tend to burn in that spot.

Rose Order

I am home sick today with a nasty sore throat, so really all I am up to is ordering roses :)

The problem is:

I was going for this look:

which I still love, but it conflicts with this color:

As you can see in the following photo if you were psychic and had a miscroscope handy:

I could just take out the Red Drift, which I am not loving anyway, and put something else in that spot. The knockouts in Kit Island are getting rather subsumed by the vigorous catmints anyway-- if I need to take out that red one I can.  I just can't bear to sacrifice those lovely peachy colors, they're so meltingly yummy, especially cut and brought inside.

I will have putative room in front of the putative Dragon Lady Hollies (one is real, two projected) for maybe another David Austen-- so I could put The Alnwick Rose (above) there with my Mayflower Rose.

In the site left of the patio, I am planning Sweet Drift to go with the deutzia, even though the deutzia seem totally daunted and eventually the Green Vase Zelkova will put them in shade.  But that could be years, right? Right.

So I think today's order will be :Alnick rose because who could resist, Quietness ditto, also to go in West bed facing down the hollies, and three Sweet Drift for next to the patio. Done.

Quietness, a highly rated Griffith Buck rose

Do I need a Climbing Pinkie for the back fence there next to Magnolia, not crowding the Golden Celebration I planted last year? Or would an Abe Darby induced to climb be more luscious?

Snow Day

Well, technically an ice day.  I have joined the ranks of full-time wage earners, but I work for the school system and I get snow days and summer off-- woot!  It is irresistable to steal an hour to think about gardens, like this:

1. Think about and look at plants and get all swoony contemplating the joys of baptisia, sedum, foxglove, geranium, iris, lavender, veronica, rose.

2. Remember that much of my ground is bare-ass unmulched, think of the three bags and small pile of unused mulch-- experience shame.

3. Remember I can't recall a lot of what I planted where.

4. Comfort myself that's okay.

5. Experience confidence that this spring, I will manage to execute an ORDERLY and CORRECTLY SPACED garden plan, which I have managed to pull off at least once.

6. Acknowledge it is difficult to do this when I won't know what I have in the appointed spot until spring.

7. Comfort myself that's ok (seeing a cycle here.)

8. Identify areas needing improvement, namely--

The west bed area, hot and dry, where I plan to pull out the struggling Bennett's Compacta Holly (don't think they like the heat) and put in two more infinitely more expensive Dragon Lady Hollies (order hollies), making, we hope, a nice wall of green for the David Austen rose, peony, abelia, and liatris already there.  Add rows of bearded iris on either side of the projected flagstone steps (order iris, buy flagstone). Add more abelia and fill in with some teucrium and some nice sun-tolerant annuals like angelonia or lantana. Use plenty of repetition.

The other area screamingly in need of improvement are the areas near the new flagstone patio (did I not report on the new flagstone patio?) The right side is leaching soil and needs some groundcovers to hold it.  I planted a hydrangea behind the butterfly bush-- O lord what was it called-- not Blue Chiffon, because the Blue Chiffon in person did not thrill me as expected-- I'll think of it.  Eventually.  And the left side under the Green Vase Zelkova, where the ground is nikkid.  I planted a few small probably root bound deutzia, thinking this was the ideal thing, but they have not thrived.  Will reevaluate in spring.

So I have my work nicely cut out for me :)

Summer

To do list... Reposition geranium Rozanne eaten by flourishing catmint, x 2.

Nellie Stevens Holly

I am the proud owner of three.  AND a pink velour crapemyrtle, which I hope will not turn out too violently pink, but it was a good price at the nursery and I thought it would be nice to get a season's growth on it even if the bloom color is a bit of a risk.  I live dangerously like that.

Kit Island is burgeoning.  It was planted last summer and the catmints are huge.  I misjudged how big they would get and have some veronica and geranium hanging on under their burgeoning selves.  Isn't the baptisia fab?  The color is awfully close to the catmint-- could use some contrast in there.  Jupiter's Beard wouldn't quite be in bloom yet.  The roses will pop soon, of course.

This was taken from the garage door.  You can start to see the layers I'm going for-- hoping someday for a birdy, bee-loud 60' x 90' well of wonderfulness.  And it is kind of well-like, with the berm and the nursing home behind it.  When life hands lemons, etc etc.

Last weekend we finally made it to Chanticleer.  It was divine.  I don't take good pictures, sorry, but I have a few I must share:  The espaliered tricolor beech.  Pretty cool, huh?

Peonies:

The parking lot.  There was this very cool screening island, Foster Hollies and Unnamed Evergreen underplanted with deutzia.  Inspirational.

 More deutzia underplanting, this one with white Bleeding Heart at Hershey Gardens from a year or so ago:

So the immediate task is the plant the crapemyrtle in the west bed with the stewartia and hollies, and to decide on how I want to arrange my screening situation in the 15' strip on the north side of the lot.  Then work out how I am going to pay for all this.

Rain

So I can stay in and write about gardens.

Activity for this week:

• Much mulching (it's slow)-- I'm using the free leaf compost from the township.  It breaks down to fluffy stuff in a year. 
• Some fertilizing-- I put down Osmocote and Hollytone, but some things were looking peaked, so I splashed around some dilute liquid fertilizer on the pale things.
• More planting-- the last of my Santa Rosa plants, annuals (lots of Angelonia, some verbena and annual salvia)
• More buying-- I have an Itea Little Henry waiting to go in once I moved the experimental hydrangea I put in that spot to God knows where.  I'll find a place.  
• Awaiting my exciting splurge early-birthday present, which is a self watering planter from Gardener's Supply which I will put on the back steps to grow the tomatoes and basil which got pushed out of the garden in favor of ornamentals.  To wit:  
• 
  
  
• Weeding-- Who isn't?  'Nuff said.
• Watching and feeling anxious-- The Green Giants planted between us and the nursing home employee entrance on a tiny strip between pavement and a steep slope have unsurprisingly all died over the winter. We'll see what the nursing home's response will be.  Also feeling tender and guilty over nonthriving plants at home-- the Charlie Brown-style sweetbay magnolia, three bare root mail-order roses I thought were dead but seem to be showing very tentative shrunken signs of life.  Slight guilt over sticking in threes and fives of all kinds of perennials and knowing this is perhaps not the ideal way to approach design.
• Rejoicing-- last year's catmints, white vinca minor, Neon Flash spirea, baptisia, etc are all thriving.  Two out of three bargain Hummingbird clethra are not actually dead.  The Hoogendorne Holly did great over the winter and are now on the recommended list (knock wood). Verbena Homestead Purple is a rather fetching addition to the south foundation.
• Cutting-- I have put together recital and sick-friend bouquets out of What's Blooming, which at the moment is allium (yay allium!), Summer Snowflake Viburnum, baptisia, and catmint.
• Admiring-- my blooms, my green things, and my worms.  Awesome worm count this year.  And the baptisia Purple Smoke, which I know for some has been a weirdy, in-between color, is really gorg in my garden.

Happy Spring :)

Spring

It's still cold, but it's lovely. Don't you think this front bed needs to be widened a bit?  I bought a Stewartia "Sky Rocket" at Highland Gardens today.  I think I'm going to plant it at the far end of the rock wall in back. Today is my mother's yarhzeit (I'm not Jewish, but the idea of keeping the anniversary of a death in remembrance has meaning for me).  I will plant the tree for her. Twenty three years and I still can't really think about her much because I miss her so.  I'm lucky to have been blessed with such a warm, smart, loving mother, and more blessed still to have so many people to love-- my father, my brother, and my best friend, three uniquely charming, affectionate, and awesome children, and a husband who is pretty much flesh of my flesh at this point.  His flesh is much better looking than mine, but you get the idea.

Happy Spring, people!

Ilex crenata "Bennett's Compacta"

The solution to the three-shrubs-West-border problem.  There are drawbacks to this shrub, but none that outweigh its general handsomeness and the key fact that they were only $15 each at Costco.  Problem solved.

I measured more or less carefully for flagstone, and ran into another Limit.  The Best of Men and I are going to spring for 3 pallets, or 300 sf, at about $1200 delivered, once we dig out three inches of ground, spread with two inches of sand, sacrifice a rooster, etc.  This is about 1 pallet short of what we probably really need but my thought is:  I can't afford four pallets.  Et voila.

Tomorrow I hope to obtain a Crape Myrtle, probably a Pink Velour, so here's hoping I don't hate the color once it does its thing.  I could wait until they bloom but who wants to leave a giant, weed-inducing spot in the border?  Not I.  

I also want:

a daphne by the steps to waft fragrance when I release the Kracken, aka the dog
dwarf deutzias to cluster gracefully around the ankle(s?) of the Zelkova I planted
calycanthus in the back corner of the yard, more fragrance
another clethra or two to augment the ones that may not all be entirely dead
caryopteris to flower wonderfully in the West border and distract from all those briiiight pinks
a New Jersey tea because I just do
maybe an abelia because people seem to get excited about them?

I got my wonderful, wonderful Santa Rosa plants-- little pots carefully packaged in netting and paper.  Stuff arrived in great shape.  I gave them a day's rest, as advised, and planted them lovingly, even though I had to walk around carrying the Agastache Black Adder thinking, But there was room on Kit Island, really there was. (Not once I planted the verbena boniarensis I grew from seed).

I'll learn how to take real pictures eventually.  It's much prettier in person.

Ooh! Ooh! Mr Kotter!

Showing my age.  Never did watch that show, but everybody saw that part.

I was looking at a picture of last summer's front border, and thinking:  alchemilla mollis between the hosta and the kerria.  Obviously.

Just didn't want to forget that.

Also, two attempts at West Bed design-- from left to right, that tiny thing left would be a New Jersey Tea, followed by a Pink Velour crapemyrtle, then three nice foliage-intensive shrubs that I cannot possibly make up my mind on, then the Dragonlady Holly, and tree on the left is the closest approximation I could find to the Sweetbay Magnolia actually planted there.

The one below is a doctored winter shot.  Confusing, huh?

The important elements are the crapemyrtle and the three shrubs to be named.  The other stuff just has to be nice perennials that won't make me crazy.