$20 of annuals

I can't seem to control myself.

I went to the evil Home Despot as I had a gift card and bought the aforementioned $20 of annuals. The neat-o thing (who says "neat-o" anymore?) thing was I was able to guess the color scheme my husband had planned for the area I bought them for. Those who know him can also guess his color scheme - blue and white. But in the natural world blue is most purple, so I got mostly white with some purple.

I got white snapdragons, purple stock, white dianthus (also known as "pinks" but "white pinks" just sounds silly so I went with their Latin name), Dusty Miller (a white foliage plant), white petunias, white lantana, and hot pink celosia. Okay, the last one was just for me. Some of the stock might be something other than purple as the entire 4-pack wasn't in bloom but that'll be okay.

When I got home the wind was really howling, so I dug up the beds along the stone walls he built last fall which line the cement sidewalk up to the studio. They were full of bindweed, ragweed, and pepperweed. They had been driving me crazy for a couple of weeks now as I watched the weeds take over more and more ground. So digging them out was really pleasing. Then I went in and fed my wonderful dogs and worked a bit on the cotton towels I am very slooowly weaving.

As the dusk came close to falling, the wind died down and I got the plants bedded in. They are somewhat random but there is the usual method of the taller plants at the back, etc. I also dug up some of the vast amount of blue fescue that has overtaken the old beds near the kitchen during my long gardening absence. I love this grass. It's very hardy and easy to transplant. For all that I have a lot of it, considering it's taken 8 years to contemplate world domination, it's a well behaved plant. And being blue-ish, it works well in the color scheme. I also dug up a volunteer cat mint, a deeper purple blue and put in near the start of the path. I'm going to dig up some pasture sage and transplant in in as well. It's an artemiesia and all of them do well here. The Dusty Miller is also in that family, it's just higher bred.

I also got some perennials - a broom with dramatic burgundy and yellow flowers, a huge tickweed, and a smaller blanket flower. The 3 look great together. Just not so good with the rather restrained blue and white flowers along the studio walkway. I am pondering where to put them. They are all good drought tolerant plants so I have a wealth of places to put them.

Henry is doing great. Thanks to everyone for the warm welcome for him. He's starting to do the "sit!" thing without having to ponder the meaning of the word. He's doing good on "lay down" and "no bother" when I want to pet Boudy. He likes to chew on her while I'm petting her. He'd chew on her face and neck and then when I'd push him away and say "no bother!" he'd go chew on her back legs. Which would really bug Boudy, it was too funny watching her reactions to that!

He loves to run and fetch toys, but is not so much with the bringing them back. He has a stash where his toys live. He's also been carrying football sized rocks to stack up along with his toys. So after I go get the toy and throw it for him, he runs around the yard with it in his mouth, then runs and drops it in the stash pile. Then he comes running up to me like "eject another toy, monkey! That was fun!"

He's still painfully thin. His backbone stick up and I can feel his ribs. I feed him twice a day all that he will eat, he has yet to clean up his bowl. He's also still adjusting to his new food so it runs through him pretty quickly. I've got to get a well-puppy visit scheduled with our vet soon, it was part of the adoption contract.

It sure has been a pretty spring. We got a lot of rain after a painfully dry winter and the flowers have put on quite the show. It's been in the upper 80's the past few days so I've been watering sometimes twice a day because everything is tiny and most are either bitty seedlings or transplants. Those guys have no tolerance for dry. It's important to water deeply when you water to encourage deep roots. So I water for at least an hour in the morning, then handwater anything that's dry in the evening. It adds an hour onto my morning chores now but I'm still having a lot of trouble sleeping so I'm usually up anyway.

Hope you are getting something planted. Even just a container of basil is a blessing!

Comments

tandama said…
just harvested all my indoor basil and made pesto out of it. But I did also put a new crop in. Love reading about your color scheme. I always have such high hopes when I do that but then end up with multi colors because I can't resist!

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