The process of digging and moving, relocating plants into a new enviornment continues. This time they have been traveling much greater distances than around the corner of the house or across the yard. I should have charged them mileage, or at least had them chip in for gas money.
When I got home from Publix on Sunday afternoon, the only remaining shovel was put into service. Digging up forsythia: do you want any? If I cannot give it away, I will probably start spraying it with Round-up when I get after the creeping, invasive ivy again next week. Plus a number of spring-blooming daisy plants, and lots of little 'starts' of spreading, but comparatively mild-mannered ajuga plants to take to Decatur and get in the ground.
Then there was the box of daffodil bulbs I had purchased at Callaway. The gardening/landscaping team there had dug up hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of spring bloomers, put them in crates to sell along with the hundreds and etc., of pots of annuals and perrenials that had been growing in the greenhouses awaiting the annual plant sale. Those huge bulbs (most with family members attached, having gotten big enough to multiply, in need of division) were twenty cents apiece - and I came home with $5 worth... which, by the time, you consider all the babies that were clumped together, probably came to nearly 100 when separated. This means digging at least fifty holes to keep all the family members in proximity so they will bloom in profusion next spring.
Which I did: digging and digging and digging to make all those bulbs happy... but by the time I got all that digging done, I was too bushed to plant all those happy-ing little families in the holes. I hope some one else can get out there today and get them back in the dark, dank, welcoming earth so they can get a good start toward being glorious in 2013. Before the backyard canines enjoy using them as fetch toys, since the bulbs look remarkably like any number of dirty tennis balls, casually left strewn across the mulch.
We got all the freshly dug forsythia plants put back in the ground. And re-planted the perennial daisies that will spread and provide smiling faces every spring in the flower bed in the front, where passers-by will be greeted as they bloom. And lots of little sprigs of ajuga went into holes I chopped into the hard, indifferent clay, so hopefully might take root and begin to provide some cover for the bare earth. I loosened, enriched the earth around the ajuga with potting soil and osmocote, to give it a good start, and think all those little runners that were desperate to peg down and reproduce will be successful.
Wanted to get out of town before all those other two million folks left work headed for the 'burbs, so I left it all to someone else to keep watered, with loving care and optimism.
Did some more planting and re-arranging when I got home - putting out some ground cover that I hope will survive and spread in the future. And digging up some perennial salvia to put in pots, to generously feed, with the thought that it will rapidly grow and be replanted in that bed across the front of the house. The goal is to make it look good/attractive in photos. So when the time comes, it will be eye-candy for potential movers-in when we can get to the point of putting out a 'for sale' sign...and begin to travel, living like turtles, wearing our only change of clothing... and probably moving at that speed as well!
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