Dog Days of ... June?

It has been just scorchingly hot here for the last few weeks, as if I needed another hurdle to get out and garden! On the plus side, I have my new bed installed! Yay! Hoping that the plants I got from Plant Delights nursery turn out ok... it can be really hit and miss there, but I've had some real winners, and they do have a great selection of hard to find beauties. I planted a few tropical plants that i'm hoping will do well... Perennial Hidden Cone Ginger, 'Jack's Giant' Elephant Ear and what I think is an alocasia, but I can't seem to find the name, and my memory is failing me. Whoops! There's also some gladiolus, some calla lilies (wishful thinking there, no doubt), cannas and a flowering quince. And since I had no place else to put em, I planted my tomatoes and basil in the bed.



I'm finally getting blooms on this hydrangea and I just couldn't be more pleased. I lost the blooms off this plant for 2 years in a row, the first year, it was just not doing too well after I saved it from the clearance rack, I think I paid 2 dollars for it. Second year, the lawn crew weed whacked the one stem with buds on it!! This year, it is rewarding my patience with beautiful pearly buds that turn to a soft blue and open lovely magenta blooms. I just absolutely am over the moon about them!



My coneflowers are doing so much better than last year, when I got almost all yucky mutant flowers.



Lastly, I'm loving this combination of the geraniums, zebra grass and artemsia in 2 pots on my deck. I love these geranium colors, they are so bright and perky.

checklist!

So, it is a very, very dangerous thing to go to Lowes for a carpentry project on a spectacularly warm spring day. First of all, it will trick you into buying plants you know you are going to have to babysit constantly through the frosts for the next month or so. Second of all, you will wind up spending roughly 10 times what you were planning on, because of all the bulbs that mysteriously fall into your cart.

On the plus side, I have accomplished several things on my checklist! Yay me! I planted my MAC roses (yayyyyyyyy) AND the Miss Kim Lilacs I bought, oh, about a year ago. Haha. In fact, one has blooms on it already, just little buds. I have agonized for months on where to put these plants, but today I just had enough and plopped them down in a couple of spots in the yard. If I hate it, I can always move them, and now they are in the ground and getting healthy and bigger. Off the list, I also planted some new plants I picked up at the Lowes. A Nelly Moser Clematis, which I planted by the deck, some SUPER charming Amaryllis that is a candy pink with white stripes, which is going in the cottage garden. Sowed some Cosmos over there as well.

I bought Peegee Hydrangea which is super tiny, like 6 inches high, and I planted it by the garden shed. I'm worried it won't make it there.... in fact now that I'm typing this, I'm thinking maybe I should go move it to a better place. I want to put some shrubs and other plants in that area, because right now its just a bunch of pine trees. Any recommendations for some plants for the area are welcome! I bought some Christmas fern .. bulbs? They aren't bulbs, but I don't know what to call them. They can't be corms or anything else... rhizomes? Anyways those are also for near the garden shed, but they aren't in the ground yet.. which brings me to my next train of thought...

2 steps forward, 6 steps back, as I bought quite a few bulbs/corms/whathaveyou that need to be planted. Cannas, Caladiums, the aforementioned Christmas ferns. In addition to that, I foolishly bought some geraniums. Why did I do that?! I have a baby to ... well... baby! I can't be babying plants too! Oh well, We'll see how they do. They are quite pretty, I just couldn't resist.

mini update

So mini I shouldn't even consider posting it, but it beats keeping the seed packets on my computer desk for weeks on end. The following plants were 'winter' sowed, but really they were more like 'at the very end of January' sowed.

California Poppy 'Mikado' -- taking a closer look at this it looks like I may have sowed this at the wrong time. Oops.

Flax Blue Lewisii

Old Fashioned Garden Mix -- hollyhock, foxglove, calendula, pinks, stocks. This was an ancient seed packet that my stepfather gave me. Will it come up? Will any of this come up? Will I manage not to pull it up thinking they are weeds if they do actually come up? Only time will tell. Sorry for the lack of pictures with this post!

update: wow, Rock Rose put up a great post for a noob like me, pictures of all her sprouting winter sown plants! This is SO helpful, now maybe I won't pull up any future plants that sprout up... fingers crossed that I see some of these friends in my garden!

still alive!

Still alive, and hoping my plants will be able to say the same thing -- I'm worried about the borderline plants I planted -- the jasmine, angel trumpets, hardy ginger and the gardenias. Its been an unbelievably chilly winter, with the most snow I can remember in the 20 years I've lived here. Things have calmed down (for NOW) long enough for me to actually think about future plans for my garden.

To do:
1) plant daffodils. I might actually just go to box stores after a bit and see about getting any discounted plants that are no longer blooming. I really wanted to have this done last year, and didn't, because I was tooooo pregnant and then tooooo distracted with a baby!

2) plant the tulips that have been sitting in my fridge for the better part of a year.

3) come to think of it, plant all the other bulbs that I have sitting in the garage.

4) get the MAC roses in the ground!

5) Is it to late to winter sow seeds? I hope not. After the ice thaws, I'd like to do that.


Well I can think of a lot more I want to do, but I suppose I should be realistic and stick with a manageable list for now.