After a rough night of little sleep I decided to treat myself to a plant binge yesterday in compensation. The spoils:

* Three pots of Munstead lavender (as per previous shopping list ruminations)

* Penstemon "Dark Towers", which is drought tolerant and likes full sun - therefore a good candidate for the front yard, I think! Plus it has the nice purple foliage I am so charmed by, in addition to pink flowers.



* Creeping speedwell, which has nice silvery foliage and promises to be quite striking when in bloom.



* Gas plants (aka Dittany), one pink and one white, which I've been reading about forever in garden magazines as this beautiful classic cottage garden plant but was never able to find.



* "Jade Frost" sea holly, since I'm not sure if the bareroot ones I planted managed to survive, and since it has funky variegated foliage to boot.



* "Ozawa" chives (to plant with some of the roses) which bloom nowish, for a bonus.

So the Rideau Woodland Ramble previously mentioned? Gorgeous, inspiring, and all-around delightful. I agree with the garden magazines, it is definitely worth the drive. Must go back in the spring - they have rhododendrons taller than me! I hope mine manage to achieve that stature eventually.

Aaaaaand, to make this trip EVEN MORE AWESOME, they had a sale on! So, the spoils:

* two gigantor phlox ("Natascha" - pinky-purple striped and mildew-resistant)
* a rheum palmatum "atrosanguineum" - not totally sure where I'll put it yet, maybe it will replace the beans? I couldn't resist!
* a pink new england aster, which claims to stay shorter than my sprawling purple one, but has weirdly bare leggy stems, so have to find something low-lying yet bushy to plant it behind
* a bush clematis - who knew clematis comes in bush form?? - called china purple. It doesn't climb, but has lovely lime-green leaves and purple late-summer flowers and funky seedpods. AND it's apparently highly fragrant when in bloom. It gets to be about 3' x 3' so again not totally sure where I'll put it, but it was too cool to pass up.

I was sorely tempted by a beautiful rose with bronzy foliage and orange-fading-to-yellow blossoms, too, but it was a floribunda, which means my lazy-ass approach to winter protection would probably spell its doom.

Purchased today at the Ottawa Horticultural Society's plant sale:

* veronica - red and pink, since I have some blue already
* white globeflower - the yellow one was so lovely and long-lasting that I figured this was probably a good bet
* a massive pink astilbe, since the price was right
* centaurea, which I had passed over in the spring and then regretted not buying because it was so pretty in other people's gardens

Overheard at said plant sale:

"I can't wait for spring!"

OMG ME TOO. And I don't feel quite so dorky about it knowing I'm not the only one.

So here's the effect of the renovations so far:



Newly planted Black Lace elder!



I debated between this and a Wine & Roses weigela, which is a similar colour but a little smaller, but went with this one in the end because the nursery people tell me it's tougher. Given my crappy soil and the dry-as-dust conditions in this bed, it'll need to be pretty tough.

While there I was unable to resist the purchase of some asparagus, as burbled about previously, and some globe thistle, which I keep hearing about. It looks much cooler than it sounds, as a handy google image will demonstrate:




A few more pictures from the back, while I'm at it:



Bee balm and rose campion. What a lovely combination. Too bad I picked such a stupid location for them.






Lily patch, continuing in gloriousness. Although I spied one single, solitary beetle today. No rest from shit-bugs for the wicked.

This weekend has been the beginning of a ferocious heat wave that promises to continue all week, so I turned on the sprinklers this evening. The result, unfortunately, was that a few tall plants flopped over and broke. Lesson learned: SIX foot stakes for the delphiniums next year, and a "cat's cradle" arrangement with stakes and twine for the lilies.

As a silver lining, though, I got a nice bouquet out of it.

Oh, Canadian Tire, how I ♥ you around this time of the season. $1.49 is about the most awesome price for perennials evar (well, aside from "here, I'm dividing this, have some!")

Spoils:

* Jacob's ladder, a variety with funky brown-purple leaves and purple flowers
* Monster digitalis - my evil scheme is to surround it with the shorter-but-more-colourful variety
* Turtlehead, which I keep hearing about in garden magazines
* Somewhat ratty-looking artemisias: one Powis Castle (the same variety as the ginormous one out front), and one Silver Mound (the size I was expecting Powis Castle to be when I bought the one out front)
* Tansy
* Sweet William
* Pink and blue salvia

Excepting the artemisias and salvia, lots of shady stuff in this list, so I will add it either to the corner bed or the shade bed. Naptime tomorrow is the plan!

Long Weekend & Vacation Day 1 Accomplishments

* added to east bed:

Cardinal flower


Golden loosestrife (no relation to the evil purple loosestrife, don't worry)


German catchfly


Lady's mantle


* found a nice and affordable obelisk chez Ritchie's Feed & Seed - damn that place is awesome - and set the prairie joy rose climbing up it. Noticed in the process that the rose has several buds. FTW!

* emptied my "wasteland of pots", as a friend so aptly described it, and schlepped them all to Loblaws for recycling

* snapped up two gigantic, gorgeous peonies while at Loblaws, since they were on special for $10, and added them to the sunny part of the shade bed

* beat the ferns back as far as the rhubarb, at least. Discovered that the ferns were thoroughly underplanted with not only creeping jenny but evil creeping campanulas (the proper name for the long purples I battled at Jamieson). Not sure what to do about this; they're all mixed up in the fringes of the lawn, too, which dense mat of roots makes them a real bitch to pull out. I suppose I could try digging up all the soil around there, sifting out what I can, and then mulching the hell out of the whole area.

So yesterday when we were on our way to the grocery store, Corey gallantly pointed out some hand-lettered signs indicating a plant sale off in a nearby suburb. It turned out to be a fundraising event for an African women's charity. I snapped up an impressively large red-flowering peony for $10 (sahWEET), some phlox, and some brown-eyed susans, as well as a substantial pile of ten-year-old gardening magazines.

Inspired by a couple of said magazines I have added the following to my shopping list:

* Seafoam rose. Apparently a super-floriferous "ground cover" rose that gets to be a couple feet high and sprawls several feet wide; canes will actually root where they touch the ground. How cool! I'm thinking this might be nice in the wall bed, which is sadly empty at the moment and I'm at a loss as to what to fill it with, although in the pie-in-the-sky department I'd still like to put one of those fountains there. The ever-helpful Galetta Nurseries apparently has these in stock, so maybe I'll make a road trip during my week off.
* Oooh, looking at the Galetta website, "The Fairy" is actually pretty gorgeous too. This would have the advantage of adding some colour to that bed, which is set against the white-flowering spirea and hydrangeas. Hmmmm! Although I already have a pink rose in the sun bed...
* Zephirine Drouhin rose. I've heard this name a few times and it sounds pretty spectacular - climbing, fragrant, shade-tolerant. But Galetta doesn't have them, nor does Vesey's. Hmmm. Some phone calls are in order, I guess.

So in my puttering around over the course of the weekend, I managed to fix the irrigation system in the back, install an irrigation system out front, do a bit of weeding, and plant 3/4 of my recent purchases. Now that the irrigation system is back in business I am optimistic that I may actually get blooms out of at least one of the rhododendrons. I was baffled as to its failure to open any of its promising-looking buds, but apparently this April was the second driest on record or something, and the intarwebs tell me that drought can delay flowering or abort it entirely, but watering can help if you catch it in time. And now that I've given everything back there a thorough soaking, there is a bit of pink starting to show on the buds. FTW!

Also the "shade" bed is rather sunnier than I thought, except at the very back. It's at least as sunny as the other side of the yard. So that gives me a few more options as to what I do with it, at least!

Ohhhhhh Experimental Farm plant sale, how I ♥ you.

Spoils:
* variegated yucca


* baptisia


* coreopsis zagreb


* coreopsis red shift


* pulmonaria raspberry splash (this is the $20 pulmonaria I was looking at in my Veseys catalogue...except I got it for $4! Ha!)


* japanese forest grass


* red hot pokers (kniphofia)


* houttuynia cordata chameleon - funky technicolour foliage plant, which I am warned to be patient with because it is very slow to reappear in the spring ... oh crap, also everything I am reading about it on the intarwebs says it's mad invasive. Dammit. Well, maybe I can put it in a planter or something.


* verbascum


* two little bitty things that I snapped up for $3 and $4 because the pictures associated with them showed lovely flowers, but whose names I cannot remember!!

Oh lord. In addition to that free perennial, Richmond Nurseries also had a "buy two, get one free" deal on both shrubs and perennials. That's way beyond my power to resist. Well, I saved $30 or $40, didn't I?? I suppose I had to get one more round of binge buying in before the season ends anyway...

The spoils!

Corkscrew hazel. I'm thinking maybe this can replace the prairie joy rose on the east side when I move it; the nursery staff seemed to think it would do OK with those light levels, as long as it gets enough water. With my kickass Lee Valley system in place I don't think that'll be an issue.


Dwarf burning bush. STUNNING fall colour. Not totally sure where this one's going to live yet, but it's supposed to be pretty adaptable, so I'm sure I can find somewhere to put it.


Cranberry cotoneaster. Loved the shape and texture of this one, to say nothing of the reddish fall foliage and bright berries. I'm thinking this can go in front of the wall, since it's fairly low-growing.


"Queen Charlotte" anemone. This jumped out at me, since my mother-in-law recently planted one and I was very taken with it.


Saxifrage. Isn't it cute?? I believe mine blooms red. Maybe I'll take my cue from this image and stick it in some wall crevices.


Orange oriental poppy, in case the ones to be transplanted don't survive. I can always use more of these.


Dwarf balloon flower. Another cutie, purchase of which was inspired by my mother-in-law.


Oh, and I got a big mossy hanging planter to house the giant spider plant my mom brought me from Chesterville.

DOOM. Good thing there's only a 30% chance of rain tomorrow, maybe I will actually manage to get everything planted...

Today I hit Ritchie's Feed & Seed out in the other end of town. I had plans to stop by Peter Knippel Nursery too, but as it turned out Ritchie's had more than enough stuff I couldn't resist. To make up for my binge buying I am once again imposing a two-week plant-buying freeze. No more plants for me until August 2!

Much like eating an entire box of chocolate chip cookies, however, it was SO worth it. The spoils:

* Lucifer crocosmia - YET ANOTHER sun plant, but I've actually had my eye on this one for a while. Besides, the foliage makes a nice contrast in the back of the sun bed.


* golden oregano - couldn't resist the combination of the bright chartreuse colour and the texture of the plant.


* Black Scallop ajuga - more funky ground cover.


* toad lilies - another one I've had my eye on for some time. They bloom late, for an added bonus.


* Blue Butterfly delphiniums - delicate foliage and luminous blue flowers.


* Black Knight delphinium - even floppier than the ones I already have, but the blue-purple colour was completely irresistable. The picture below doesn't do it justice, this plant just glows.


* Japanese Blood Grass - I found the forest grass I was looking for but it looked kind of ratty in person; this stuff was much cooler.


* Ice Dance sedge grass - also cooler than the forest grass.


* Drumstick primrose - have been keeping an eye out for this stuff, having read about it in magazines.

Plant spoils du jour, courtesy of Canadian Tire:

Rock Cress


Lantana


This last, it turns out, is a tropical plant, therefore an annual. Boo. HowEVer, Fine Gardening has a nice article about how to overwinter such persnickety creatures:

In late summer, I taper off the supplemental watering and fertilizing of shrubby plants with fleshy stems and foliage...to encourage them to slow their growth. Just before the first hard frost, I cut them back gently and haul them to the basement. That’s it. A few will eventually drop their leaves, which I clean up when I get the chance.

Apparently the trick is to store them somewhere the temperature is cold but still above freezing. I don't think my basement qualifies, unfortunately, but he mentions that an attic might do it. I could give that a shot, I guess, but would have to find some way to remind myself that it's up there.

My main adventure today has been spreading mulch. Six 3-cu-ft bags did a nice job of tidying up the front garden and also the area around the climbing rose and the irises in the back corner. I'll be interested to see how well it works; it certainly looks much nicer this way. I also knocked a few items off the maintenance list - chopped down a chunk of a weed tree overhanging from the neighbour's yard (with his kind permission); sprayed Ed Lawrence's sneaky soap and water mix on a few plants that were looking suspiciously puckery around the top leaves, suggesting aphids; set the David Austin rose against a nice cedar trellis I snapped up on my shopping trip.

Plant spoils du jour:

* the COOLEST sempervivens I've ever seen - I saw some sending up pink blooms on stalks 3-4" tall. I had no idea these actually flowered.
* alpine phlox, which is a pokey creeping evergreen sort of thing
* gypsophila paniculata, aka baby's breath. I always thought this was stupidly hard to grow, but lo and behold there is a hardy version, so I am trying it.
* gaura pinks, with funky red foliage:

Loblaws, you bastards, I SWEAR you are taunting me. In addition to the gorgeous $300 weeping maples, they now have $20 itsy bitsy ones. I AM GRAVELY, SORELY TEMPTED. Need to muster out into the sun bed and see if I have room for another 5' spreading plant. In the corner, maybe?

I did snap up a few border plants - hens & chicks, sea thrift, and stonecrop. I also got some heleniums, because they looked like fun.

I went to a nursery this morning. Just to browse.

Schya. Browse. Right.

I came away with:

* a Lemon Lights azalea - couldn't resist its beautiful peachy-salmon colour.


* a dappled willow - I tried to grow one of these from a twig Vesey's sent me and was disappointed when it died; I saw some at Loblaws but they were kind of twiggy and scorched-looking; so I couldn't resist when I saw much bushier healthy-looking specimens this morning.


* a Hillside Black Beauty bugbane, aka Black Snakeroot - been meaning to pick one of these up for a while, actually.


* some pink thrift to go with the white thrift I bought yesterday.


I hereby declare a two-week freeze on plant-buying. No more plants for me until June 19!

I found some cleome at Canadian Tire!! An annual, alas, but so gorgeous!



They also had my creeping thyme. Only in biggish pots, alas, but the internets tell me I can chop these larger plants up into smaller pieces and they will be undaunted. Hopefully tomorrow's promised miserable weather will yield an hour somewhere between showers for me to mess with them.

Is it completely weird for me to want a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in my garden? I have only the very remotest and embattled connection to catholicism. Once upon a time I was baptized because it was important to my father's parents, but when my sister's turn came, an idiot priest angered my dad into digging in his heels and walking away from it. Once upon a time my mother's parents got so much flak for their catholic/protestant "interfaith" marriage that it drove them almost completely away from either church - my impression is that although they continued to attend a protestant church of some kind (in that time and place, socially you had no choice but to go to church) the suspicion and cynicism generated by that experience has basically formed the family stance on organized religion ever since, even unto my generation.

Still, I find those garden statues of him more evocative of peace and harmony than the currently trendy buddha-heads. Some nice things I read about him on an online catholic encyclopedia:

There was about Francis, moreover, a chivalry and a poetry which gave to his other-worldliness a quite romantic charm and beauty. Other saints have seemed entirely dead to the world around them, but Francis was ever thoroughly in touch with the spirit of the age. He delighted in the songs of Provence, rejoiced in the new-born freedom of his native city, and cherished what Dante calls the pleasant sound of his dear land. And this exquisite human element in Francis's character was the key to that far-reaching, all-embracing sympathy, which may be almost called his characteristic gift. In his heart, as an old chronicler puts it, the whole world found refuge, the poor, the sick and the fallen being the objects of his solicitude in a more special manner...

The very animals found in Francis a tender friend and protector; thus we find him pleading with the people of Gubbio to feed the fierce wolf that had ravished their flocks, because through hunger "Brother Wolf" had done this wrong. And the early legends have left us many an idyllic picture of how beasts and birds alike susceptible to the charm of Francis's gentle ways, entered into loving companionship with him; how the hunted leveret sought to attract his notice; how the half-frozen bees crawled towards him in the winter to be fed; how the wild falcon fluttered around him; how the nightingale sang with him in sweetest content in the ilex grove at the Carceri, and how his "little brethren the birds" listened so devoutly to his sermon by the roadside near Bevagna that Francis chided himself for not having thought of preaching to them before. Francis's love of nature also stands out in bold relief in the world he moved in. He delighted to commune with the wild flowers, the crystal spring, and the friendly fire, and to greet the sun as it rose upon the fair Umbrian vale. In this respect, indeed, St. Francis's "gift of sympathy" seems to have been wider even than St. Paul's, for we find no evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals.

I'm trying to remember what novel it was that (very engagingly) described Francis' preaching to the birds as an ironic, political act. Does anyone else remember this?