Tuesday, April 24, 2012

finishing up - but not really...

I think I have pretty much finished re-arranging all the plants in the bed that got started over a year ago across the front of the house. Yesterday was a digging day. Put in two different types of red-blooming perennial salvia: one is the delicious smelling pineapple variety that has been growing in pots for several months awaiting re-location from the north side of the house. The other is a long blooming smaller one called  'hot lips' that repeatedly surprises with a return from 'the great beyond' every spring. These two will both get a medium height, and are located in a space between short stuff along the front edge (daisies and low growing ground cover). In the back closer to the wall are purple blooming butterfly bush and a couple of azaleas that were growing elsewhere: a hot pink color that will look good  when they bloom next spring, strageically placed against the washed out grey of the house. I hope to dig some medium height buck-eyes that have bright red spikey blooms in spring to go in the in-between space of short vs tall - but maybe not.

With spreading out the bales of pinestraw that have been sitting out in the yard for months, it is mostly done. There will be a soaker hose that will coil around through it all (poor man's version of customized irrigation!) and cover with a layer of straw to mulch. Hopefully meandering out to turn on the soaker hose for a couple of hours every few days will keep it all alive.

I will find some gerbera daisies to put in the little square planter to the right of the front door, and still pondering what to put in the larger L-shaped one that backs up in the corner and is mostly shady. It gets blistering  summer sun in early afternoons. How to figure out what goes there is a quandry: heavy shade from the roof overhang, but hot, hot, hot until mid-afternoon.

My goal is to get everything I can out of pots and in the ground: next is japanese holly ferns, hostas, some stuff that came from the Callaway Gardens sale in a moment of weakness: Solomon's Seal that will do well with either of those things that like shade.

Still trying to give away ('Free to a good home' on Craig's List) hugely overgrown azaleas and forsythia, that I am getting closer and closer to spraying with the brush killer. And doing some bushwhacking to add to the huge pile of shrubs that sits up by the driveway awaiting city trash truck pick-up. I have a teenager from church who came Monday afternoon (making money to go on summer retreat to beach), and is coming back today after school to help - but 'help' is debatable. I gave her loppers and a jar of full strength brush killer to eliminate an unwanted overgrown azalea yesterday. But not sure that she actually painted the stumps as she cut, so think that project only marginally successful. She came to do hard yard work in flip-flops. I told her to come in digging shoes today. If she does a sorry job, I fear I am still obligated to pay for her time....?

As I drag with my shovel around the yard, I continue to dig up clumps of spider lily bulbs. Got an order in the mail yesterday from a man up in Dahlonega from the advertisement in the Market Bulletin. Want some bulbs?

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