Recent highlights:

* Plant-shopping outing to Galetta with my mom. We visited Galetta Nurseries of hardy rose fame, of course, and also an iris garden. Mom bought a frahillion irises of all different colours, of which I will someday get divisions, and I bought more roses than I had strictly meant to, namely
- John Davis (purpose of the expedition)
- Seafoam (to replace the Fairy - nursery guy says that the Fairy is not really hardy here, which explains a lot)
- Quadra (to replace Blaze, which was not climbing the way I wanted it to)
- Marie Victorin
- Morden Blush
- Emily Carr (because I am a sucker for a really red rose)
Emily Carr lost the couple of blooms it was promising to transplant shock and/or not enough water, but all the rest are cheerfully bursting into flower. Awesome. Pictures to follow.

* Operation Sudden Lily Beetle Death continues to take astonishingly little effort on my part this year. When I mentioned this to the Galetta Nursery guy he figured that they were just biding their time on me till July. And it's true that I did find a quantity of larvae in the last couple days. But they were isolated to a few leaves and easily disposed of. They're surprisingly visible, actually, once you know what you're looking for; they skeletonize spots on the leaves in a very distinctive way, and when you turn the leaf over, tadaaa! I am (somewhat warily) optimistic that this trend will continue.

* Have to do some more digging in the front yard, since the city has recently informed me that my current setup messes with the roadside swale (which didn't drain anyway, as witnessed by the annual winter lake at the foot of our driveway, but now that I've messed with it I have to fix it...) The inspector I dealt with was actually incredibly helpful and came out to chat over the site with me, and we have tentatively arranged that me and the Brute Squad will dig a bit of a trench at the front of the yard to make sure the water goes where it's supposed to. If this works it won't actually involve messing with more than a few plants. It actually plays into my evil schemes rather nicely, in the end, because (a) it means getting rid of that last strip of grass at the front, and (b) if I follow a neighbour's inspired example and line the trench with semi-decorative stones (river rocks? pea gravel?) it will actually provide a very nice front border for the yard. So here's hoping this doesn't somehow end up turning into a more protracted headache.