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...

Oooooooh, look, an online coupon for a free perennial from the Richmond Nursery! Just a little perennial, and you have to go before October 5, but still: I am SO THERE. The Zoodle and I needed something to do this afternoon anyway, and with all the garden centers taken down it's been ages since I did some nice plant browsing.

Also, my online credit card statement had a silver lining when I checked it: Breck's has charged my card, which means my bulbs should be enroute! Of course it's now cold and rainy and generally kind of lousy gardening weather. Well, at least it won't be buggy, right?

Edit: ...and when I stepped out the door to grab the mail, guess what package was waiting for me? Squee!!

So I'm toying with schemes for the front yard. Not that I will be implementing these anytime soon, since I still have two beds barely started and one bed not even begun in the back. But still.



The red dotted line indicates the property line between me and my neighbour. The red arrow indicates a possible location for one of those gorgeous low-lying 6'-wide junipers, although this is more a whim than true inspiration at this point.

The front corner is a breeeelliant idea I snitched from a garden magazine. I'd go back to those lovely people in Montague and buy some old fence rails (which they were selling in addition to the rocks) and make a little decorative corner, which would get planted round with cleome and cosmos and possibly morning glories around the posts, with other lower plants in front. Around the magnolia, meanwhile, I'd start with a half-circle bed in front of the tree (brown) and then add another half-circle (red) when the rest of the space fills up.

Any plants in these locations would have to be mad drought tolerant and hardy, though, since the soil out front is particularly sandy and sun-drenched; also, it is more subject to wind than the very sheltered backyard.

A whole bunch of daisy-looking things would work (shasta daisies, asters, echinacea, gaillardia, rudbeckia) and conveniently I have all of those scattered around already - so by the time I get around to making these beds I can just transplant a bunch of pre-existing stuff and it should be fine there. Sedums and sempervivens, of course; I don't have sedums yet but sempervivens should be divisible by then. Coreopsis also, apparently; personally I prefer the big tall ones. I've been seeing that stuff everywhere this summer and admiring it. Russian sage would also be a good pick, although that gets monstrously huge. Oooooo, and apparently buddleias are also in this category. Awesome, those are gorgeous:



Apparently anything silver and/or fuzzy is apt to be drought tolerant, too. So artemisias and oriental poppies are on the list, also lambs' ears (although I hear those get pretty ratty-looking by late summer).

Ornamental grasses, too, or similar-shaped plants. Here's a yucca, for instance, which is lovely:


Another pretty plant called euphorbia - maroon-coloured foliage:

In lawn news, when I finally dragged the lawnmower out of its hiding place the other day, I discovered that the lawn's shagginess was not grass (ha! Imagine! GRASS, in MY LAWN? Surely you jest!) but some sort of feathery weed. I had noticed the feathery foliage before, but it was a pain in the ass to attack with my trusty weeder so I'd given up on it.

Now that it was about to bloom, it was conveniently much easier to spot and also much easier to get a grip on and yank. So I grubbed all of it out before mowing.

And good job I did, because come to find out, the stuff goes by the name of RAGWEED.

Time for a picture post!

The sun bed, with the cosmos looking particularly wild and woolly.


The wall bed, with the golden oregano going berserk (compare with the freshly planted stuff among the pictures here). Now THAT's groundcover. The delphinium has withered to a bare stick, but the internets assure me that this happens sometimes when it gets hot and that it will be back in force next year.


The corner bed, with bleeding heart moved, rhododendron and sedge grass planted, and weeds beaten back. Again, compare. Looking at least slightly more civilized, eh? I just have to wreak further havoc and devastation on the celandine that's raging along the fence.


Now blooming:

The gypsophila has gotten a second wind and is blooming all over the place.


Surprise! It turns out I did actually manage to plant some cupid's dart. They looked very much like the bachelors' buttons as seedlings, so I planted them all together. I'd been wondering why these weren't getting as tall as the other ones.


One of the heleniums shriveled up and died - we'll see if it comes back - but this one's doing fine.


And here are the asters. They start out white and then get gradually more purple as the flowers open more.

Continuing thesis and baby related insanity on the home front means not much in the way of garden news, alas. Hopefully I will get a chance to snap some pictures in the next few days. Meanwhile I am unwinding with schemes and ruminations.

To Do in the Next Couple Months
* As mentioned, move bleeding heart and plant remaining unplanted plants
* Plant bulbs when they arrive
* Move the pampas grass, which will end up hiding the maple if it gets as tall as promised in its current location
* Cover magnolia and maple when it gets cold out
* Attempt to weed the back lawn a bit
* Possibly dig up the last bed in my patio arrangement and let it sit under mulch over the winter; I may not get around to doing anything with it next year but at least I won't have to worry about it multiplying weeds on me

Things I Will Do Next Year
* Either find another location for the cosmos or don't bother with it. As much as I love the stuff, it is too tall for its current location; it hides the climbing rose almost completely. The cleome can stay put, although I might scatter it around a little more.
* Need to use taller stakes on the delphiniums, provided they come back.
* Don't bother with the geraniums, but plant lots of begonias of many colours in the shade.
* Gird up my loins like a man and pick-n-squish all the nasty goddamn lily beetles, since they don't seem to respond to anything else short of chemical assassination.
* Chop back the invading grape vines and anonymous climbing stuff coming over the west fence.
* Mow the lawn once in a while; take Ed Lawrence's advice about raking the hell out of the creeping charlie early in the spring.
* As stated many times before: MULCH.
* Focus on filling up the shadier beds in my mad spring plant-buying.

Not a whole lot going on out there these days; this is due in part to preoccupation with other projects, but it doesn't help that it's just that time of year. Although this year, despite the seasonal rattiness of the ferns, things are still looking pretty good, so that's progress over my last garden. The climbing rose has buds like whoa - not sure if it just blooms late or if it just took this long to get established. The maple is, well, much the same, but it's not dead, so that counts as victory, right?

I mustered out briefly today to do some poking around and weeding. Pulled a whole mess of celandine out of the corner bed. I also, regretfully, dug out the dogwood, although I imagine it will be back. It's just too big and leggy for that spot, which makes the whole bed look like a mess, and I don't have anywhere else to put it right now. The bleeding heart is having a similarly wild and woolly effect on its surroundings by sprawling all over everything, so my evil plan for a week or two hence is to dig it up and move it further out into the bed. The rhododendron I snapped up on sale, meanwhile, should make a tidier replacement.

To my surprise, there's also an azalea still alive back there, and it actually looks pretty happy. I think it got chewed on in the spring - I suspect the neighbourhood groundhog, which has also snacked on my parsley and canterbury bells; must lay down some blood meal at some point - but it actually managed to flower a little while ago, and is growing busily. Once I get the bleeding heart out of the way it may even be visible.

In my crashing around I startled what I thought at first was a cricket, but it turned out to be a toad - a teeeeeeny tiny toad, about half the length of my thumb. How cool! I hope this means that the big toad I met once or twice has had babies somewhere. By the time I came back with my camera, alas, it had disappeared.