To add to the shopping list:

Threadleaf bluestar (amsonia hubrichtii). Cloud of feathery foliage, little blue flowers, and turns a lovely bright yellow in fall. And they like dry soil, for a bonus.




Miscanthus 'Kleine Fontaine', because I saw a stunning picture of it growing in someone's Montreal garden. Fancy feathery maiden grass, which I already love and have resolved to acquire, only even better because it blooms RED.




I don't think I got around to mentioning, either, that I've managed to identify the prickly thing invading from the neighbour's yard. The neighbour didn't know what it was called, just that it produced bright orange berries if you had both a male and a female plant - and one of my garden magazines had a feature on such a thing. It's a bittersweet vine.

Yep, that looks pretty familiar.

I think it must also be the semi-civilized kind, since it hasn't suckered too egregiously. Helpfully a google image search also turns up a bunch of interesting crafty uses for cut branches of the stuff. Hmmm!

Ooooo. Pretty dwarf conifer that does well in shade: tsuga canadensis "Gentsch White".





4' x 4' and a slow grower. Must keep an eye out for a spot for such a thing. In the shadier part of the front yard, maybe? Depends what else I'm going to plant around it, since it would look best with some dark colours around it to contrast.

Living willow fence

How cool is this??



Maybe this is what I will do with the cuttings I plan to prune off the dappled willow. Apparently if you put willow whips straight up and down in the ground, they will grow at the top, but if you put them in diagonally, they will grow lots of bushy little side-shoots.

I have been googling around for roses for the front yard. Originally I had planned on just planting one, but I don't know how I could possibly narrow down my list that far. My criteria: hardy, unfinicky, and as long a blooming season as possible, because I cannot tell you how charmed I am by the blooms on the Fairy rose that are STILL GOING at the end of October. And fragrant is a plus, too.

The finalists:

JOHN DAVIS - Explorer rose



A large shrub or small climber that tops out at 8-10'. Galetta Nurseries tells me that it has a "light fragrance" and that it "blooms profusely from June until frost". Eeeeexcellent.


ALCHYMIST - hardy rose



Also largeish at 5-6' tall and wide. Only blooms the once, but it's apparently deliciously smelly. I've also read about this brilliant idea of sending a clematis to grow up the canes of a climbing rose, so that as the rose is finishing the clematis is just starting up.


SEAFOAM - groundcover rose



As posted about before - similar to the Fairy, I gather, only white instead; Canadian Gardening had all kinds of good things to say about it.


MORDEN BLUSH - Canadian Parkland rose



More compact than most of the others, 2-3' tall and wide; but Galetta says it's another profuse and continuous bloomer, and that it tolerates heat and drought very well, which would definitely be a plus in the spots I have in mind for it.


CHAMPLAIN - Explorer rose



Also in the 3' range and a continuous bloomer. I am a sucker for a really red rose.

Note to self: need more lime-green, silver, white-flowering, or otherwise bright plants in the east bed, especially things that are in good form at this time of year. It's quite dark and dreary over there as it stands. Possibilities:

* heucheras
* bright-coloured hostas
* ghost ferns
* annuals, i.e. begonias
* more silvery brunnera, e.g. looking glass
* hakonechloa

For more colour, since the turtlehead is the only thing blooming on that side at the moment, and the chocolate boneset will bloom white:

* monkshood (3', blue flowers)
* hardy cyclamen
* more anemones (or possibly moving the one I have, it's not looking so good this year and isn't flowering - too much shade??)
* kirengeshoma palmata, aka yellow waxbells

Arrrrgh, curse you, american garden magazines!! Paging through Fine Gardening's delicious Autumn Garden publication, I spied the most gorgeous hardy mums:

Emperor of China - 3 to 4 feet tall


Pacific chrysanthemum - cute groundcover


J. C. Weigelan and Mei-kyo are also lovely. WE WANTS SOME, PRECIOUSSSS. But I can't find them anywhere! Checked all my catalogues, checked the online catalogues of a couple of local garden centres, phoned another one. I'm not 100% sure these are even actually hardy here...the pacific ones would be OK, since the flowers are sort of secondary to the cool foliage anyway, but Emperor of China apparently doesn't bloom until late October, and then dies with the first heavy frost...which would be pushing it here, I think. Sniff!

While stranded in Carleton Place on Saturday (to make a long story short, our car is a craptastic bucket of bolts) I was intrigued to discover that hey, Canadian Tire in Carleton Place has different plants than my local one! I am tempted to run back there next weekend and snap up a couple of items:

* some asclepias (butterfly plant - I always thought this just meant milkweed, but no, it's much fancier, and likes part-shade to boot)



* a nice variegated green foliage plant, which turned out to be an artemisia called Limelight



...and some sedum, since everything is on deep discount.

As I think I've remarked before, Canadian Tire's garden section is surprisingly awesome. Loblaws is pretty good too. I've seen both places carrying the same plants from the same growers as one of the nurseries I like. (I wonder how badly nurseries are affected by the big-box places being half-decent. God knows they still end up with an embarrassing chunk of MY money...)

Home Despot, however, is pretty crappy and usually worth no more than a cursory look around. Wal-mart, that den of iniquity, is about as crappy as you'd expect for perennials, but is occasionally handy for things like cheapass 6' bamboo stakes.

I'm also trying to think of a possible use for a Globe Blue Spruce, which first caught my eye at the nursery, and then again on sale for $40 at Loblaws. I love blue evergreens, and this one is enticingly bushy and interestingly shaped, and mad drought tolerant to boot. Trouble is that although it's a very slow grower, it does eventually top out at around 8'. As adorable as it is, I don't think I have a spot for it. Bah.



Oh, and note to self: must remember to take a picture of the crocosmia, which is finally - and stunningly - blooming.

Well, after a week of 35-degree weather, the annuals in the front bed are looking pretty fried, despite my efforts to keep them watered. I think cleome must be a water hog of a plant, given the contrast between last year's 4' tall specimens and this year's shrimpy, shrivelled ones. The front lawn is also fried, but whatever, it's just the lawn.

Out back, things are doing better, but the Fairy rose is still looking pretty fried, despite its very pretty tiny pink flowers. Damn, that thing is a lot more persnickety than my other roses. I suppose I could try fertilizing it again.

To Do whenever it becomes bearable to set foot outdoors again:

* give grape vines a haircut, since they are attempting to grab the japanese maple. I fear this was a stupid location for said maple, since I will have to hack the grape vines away from it every single year.
* finish weeding and mulching the foundation bed.
* prune dead wood out of the remaining anonymous shrub in the foundation bed; I may or may not keep this one. Will think about it till the fall, since I'm told you're best to transplant hydrangeas when they've gone dormant anyway.

Plant Du Jour that I have my eye on: Sea Holly, aka Eryngeum. Specifically the stunning Sapphire Blue featured in the latest Canadian Gardening magazine. It likes full sun and poor, dry soil. Hmmmm, I think I can provide that!