Playing in the dirt

Yesterday I went home from work by way of the super, serious nursery. The one that's been in business for yoiks, probably employs a hundred or more people in peak season (probably including at least 3 or 4 just to keep everything watered & fed for all us gardeners, landscapers and wannabes), and has all the fancier things, in more varieties and colors than part-timers such as the hardware stores or bigbox retailers.

This early in the season, most of their plants are still indoors. Boy, did those geraniums, begonias, kitchen herbs and such smell wonderful! They did have a few early groundcovers out, though. I came home w/ 5 different colors of phlox subulata, which I'm hoping will do well on the one corner of our front yard that gets enough sun (I hope) for it. I got a red, a pink, a white, a bluish-purple, and a striped one. Only 2 of the plants have any flowers on them right now - gardening requires a lot of faith.

I planted them all this morning because, despite all the forecasts calling for rain, it was bright & sunny. If I could get 'em all in before the rain, I wouldn't have to water, and of course, the sooner you get bedding plants out of their rootbound little plastic pots, the more likely they are to survive.

I sure hope they do better than last year's plants - the drought killed off all my mazus reptans, vinca and pachysandra. Now I need to find another ground cover to go into the driveway and make sure that this one is at least drought-tolerant, if not drought-resistant! I like goldenstar (chrysogonum virginianum), but they do warn you that it is not very drought-tolerant.

I'm considering sedges (carex species) to go over the septic field out at the cabin. The deer got the lilies of the valley and most of the ferns and the drought killed the euonymus and the ferns the deer left; only the pachysandra survived, and even that is looking a bit sickly. Maybe the sedges will do better; it looks like most of them are drought-tolerant or -resistant, which is what we need out there.

The Chief has mentioned putting in a long, narrow raised bed along the fence on the north side of the house. When he asked if I'd mind, I jumped on it - maybe then, in a bed of dirt, not clay & rocks, I'd finally be able to grow lilies of the valley. I don't know that we'll do that this year, but it's fun to think about.

Another project, for this fall - I want to use the tiller to work some topsoil into either a curving line or several patches in the back yard and plant more crocuses and some snowdrops. The Chief may want to try to do the whole back yard (that'd mean spending a fortune on topsoil!) so he can put down either grass seed or sod once I've got my bulbs in. We'll see.

Oh yeah, we've got a bad case of spring fever!