Progress has been made

I feel a little better, now that I've compiled a list of all of my plants

I've got:

In the large circular bed in the front yard:

Pink allium
Pink & white daffodils
White grape hyacinths
Pink & white striped creeping phlox
White foxglove
Pink bellflowers
A shepherd's hook with two baskets of pink flowered ivy geraniums

In the bed along the front walk:
White lamium
Pink, purple and white gladiolus
1 Josephine clematis
2 Black Knight butterfly bushes

In the bed against the front of the house:
4 pink azaleas
5 white lamium
3 lamb's ears
1 Crystal Fountain clematis
10 Dusty Miller

In the bed along the driveway:
Hidcote, Munstead & Lavender Lady lavender
5 baby lilac trees
Grape hyacinths
1 Black Knight butterfly bush

In the bed next to the street:
White gladiolus
1 baby Buckeye tree
3 baby Witch Hazel trees
1 Pam's Choice foxglove
Hanging planter with geranium, purple & pink petunias and silvery helichrysum

In pots:

1 Early Girl tomato
2 Big Beef tomato
1 huge spider plant
5 or 6 mock orange plants
4 sweet basil
1 English Ivy
1 burgundy Oxalis
2 green Oxalis
2 cyclamen
Lots of geraniums
2 jade plants
1 aloe plant

In the bed next to the turnaround and leading to the garage:

2 dill
1 Sweet Woodruff
2 Ajuga
1 white creeping phlox
8 Casablanca lilies
1 Josephine clematis
3 pink lamium

Along the back wall of the house:
Purple gladiolus
Bluebells
Morning glories
1 mock orange vine

In the bed in the middle of the back yard:
80 white gladiolus
18 blue & purple gladiolus
1 lavender tall phlox
1 Blue Light clematis
Daffodils
9 blue creeping phlox
1 iris
3 white butterfly bushes
1 Blue Muffin viburnum
1 Blue Billow hydrangea
1 pussywillow, standard
1 pussywillow with pink catkins
28 Dusty Miller
Daffodils
2 PeeGee hydrangea
2 dinner plate hibiscus in pink & white

In the bed in the way back:
Daffodils
7 lilies-of-the-valley
8 astilbe
English Ivy

In the bed on the side of the garage:
2 giant hostas
1 heuchera
1 japonica
1 Annabelle hydrangea

*whew*

I think I got everything listed! Bolded items are new this year. Dinner is going to be fresh mozzarella & grape tomatoes, wrapped up in giant basil leaves just picked from my plants.

I'm also feeling good because tonight I had a close look at a newly-fledged baby robin, trying to hide from me because he can't quite fly yet. Pictures soon.

*sigh*

Even though I used up fifty-four bags of mulch this month, I didn't get everything done that I wanted to. I didn't buy enough pea gravel, for one thing. Twenty-five fourteen pound bags sounds like a great deal, but it only covered one small area--I didn't get any of the pathways I wanted to create done. Three of my new lavender plants either didn't like my soil or just didn't like me and they've died. Stormy keeps piddling on one of the new lamium in the back, and it's not going to live much longer with that kind of treatment. The house is disgusting because I've spent all of my free time outside, and I'm roasting right now because I have a pact with myself not to turn the air-conditioning on until June.

Perhaps on a better day I will feel as if I accomplished a lot this weekend. Right now, I am just tired and sad about all that I didn't get done.

Bird brain

Robins have nested in the weeping cherry tree at the front of my house. It's a perfect nesting spot, as I've not trimmed the tree and you can't see inside it at all.

However, the male keeps seeing his reflection in the living room picture window and throwing himself at the glass to attack "the other robin." I spend my mornings listening to bonking noises as he hits the glass, falls to the ground and launches himself up to do it again.

You can see why "bird brain" isn't a compliment.

Moar mulch plz

I don't often speak in KSL, particularly not here, but that was the sentence that came to mind as I worked this morning. Of the forty bags of mulch I bought two weeks ago, I have used twenty-three, and have plans for another forty-two.

It's nice to look at the back yard and have a plan for what I want to do, and it's equally nice to be sure I am going to live long enough to do it. Some of it I should even have done this year, hopefully in time for JammiesFest. If I don't have all the plants I want, I will at least have the beds laid out for them.

Josh is going to kill me for making it impossible for him to do the back yard in straight lines, though. *impish grin*

Josh and the groundhog

The Queen's most recent blog entry reminded me of my friend Amy's husband Josh, he who cuts my grass. The first time I told Josh & Amy I had a resident groundhog, Josh told a story about one that was doing immense amounts of damage to his grandfather's plantings & plumbing. Josh apparently shot & killed the groundhog for his grandfather (NOT a course of action I will ever take, and Rooter is just fine).

The first time Josh told the story, the groundhog was twenty-five pounds, which is on the hefty side, but not totally unbelievable. Through successive re-tellings of the story, the groundhog grew to 40 pounds, then sixty, and two weeks ago, the groundhog was EIGHTY-FIVE pounds. Bigfoot, a malamute/German shepherd mix, is eighty-two pounds.

So yeah, I don't believe Josh's estimates much anymore. *grin*

Happy Saturday

My neighbors got the fallen tree chopped up & removed, I cleaned out the birdbath, planted two lamium, eight lavender, ten Dusty Miller, two dill, four sweet basil and one sweet woodruff and got the old wood off the Annabel hydrangea. Josh came over and did the lawn, and now it is raining softly, which all of my new plants needed.

Now that the tree is gone, I've no excuse to avoid getting mulch back into the farthest corner of the yard and creating the bed I've planned for back there. Most of the lilies-of-the-valley have come up, and I need to clean out all the weeds and get the mulch down. I keep telling myself that if I could use up fourteen bags of mulch and still make it to Mom's for lunch last Sunday, six bags of mulch and making it out there for dinner should be easy-peasy.

Dad's cousin and his wife are in town, and I love getting the chance to talk to them. Larry works for Associated Press and Ann for the Committee to Protect Journalists, and conversations with them range all over the place. They're both extremely bright, up on current events, and funny as all get out. Unfortunately, I don't get to see them more than once a year. I'm going to make sure everything I need to do here is done so that I can stay as late as possible.

Lucky me!

On Wednesday, I went out to take some pics of my lamium, just to make The Queen jealous. What I got was instant karma for being smug about my plants. One of my neighbor's trees had come crashing down into my yard and was resting on the corner of the garage.













I'm lucky because the tree didn't do any damage to the garage and because my neighbor is being very nice about the whole thing. He's coming over tomorrow morning with a friend and a chainsaw and they're going to get the tree out of my way. I might have lost a japonica bush, but I won't know until the tree is gone. It could have been much worse.

I did take some pictures of the lamium and some other garden pics:

I'm Carrot.

You scored as Carrot Ironfounderson.

You are Captain Carrot Ironfounderson of the City Watch in the greatest city on the Disc, Ankh-Morpork! A truly good natured, honest guy, who knows everyone, and is liked by all. Technically a dwarf, but only by adoption. You'd rather not be reminded that you are the true heir to the throne, but that does explain why people naturally follow your orders¦

Gytha (Nanny) Ogg 75%
Carrot Ironfounderson 75%
Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax 63%
Lord Havelock Vetinari 56%
Cohen The Barbarian 50%
Commander Samuel Vimes 50%
The Librarian 31%
Greebo 31%
Death 31%
Rincewind 19%


Which Discworld Character Are You?

Happy Mother's Day!

After two hours in the garden this morning, I got cleaned up and went out to my parents' house. For Mother's Day, my mom cooked me lunch and gave me flowers.

Of course, I also took her a present--a pretty little metal flowerpot painted white and filled with Skindecent Blackberry Freesia goodies. I also took her a little hot pink azalea I'd rescued from the bargain basket at Marc's for twenty-five cents. She lost several plants to last winter's big storm, so I knew she was looking for azaleas, and I felt terrible for this little one where it had been left with no water at Eastertime. I got it on the road to recovery, and told it that it was going to azalea heaven, where Mom will take really good care of it. Hopefully, it will get all big and strong and survive next winter.

As I mentioned, Mom made lunch, and while we were all eating our quiche, I told Dad the story of last week's epic buying spree. Being my father, he had to make a comment about how putting the mulch (in bags, mind you) in the garage wasn't a good idea because it can attract rats. Eep. Hopefully, I'll use it up much too quickly for that to happen. I used four bags yesterday refreshing two of the beds in the front and fourteen in the middle back today. Yesterday, I planted three spotted lamium with pale pink flowers and two bugleweeds, then trucked all of the mulch for this morning out to the back. I believe I can use the rest up next weekend, before any rats find their way into the garage.

After lunch, Mom & I went out to her back yard and planted the azalea and dug up some lamium. I have lamium with purple flowers (Beacon Silver) in one spot in my yard, the new stuff with pink flowers (Pink Pewter) in another, but I have not been able to find the white-flowered plants anywhere. Fortunately, Mom's cranesbill hasn't quite forced out the lamium, so she dug up a bunch of healthy plants and I put them in the very front flowerbed as soon as I got home. After Mom had opened her present, we'd had lunch and dug up flowers, I admired everything in her garden and we actually sat down for ten minutes, as Mom said, "pretending we are ladies of leisure." The weather cooperated perfectly today, and it wound up being a wonderful Mother's Day.

If you listen...

you can hear the dainty hoofbeats as the Drama Llama makes his way around the internet.

It's not a full moon, so I'm a loss to explain The Drama that has arisen on not one but three message boards I frequent. One forum even has two separate dramas. People calling each other names, some apologizing, some not, people complaining about moderators doing or not doing their "jobs." Ack. Thank goodness I have my silly threads and my gardening and that I'm not floundering in drama llama poo.

Oof!

Today was a high-octane day. I had a 10% off coupon for Home Depot, so I made a list of everything I need for the summer season and headed off to the car with $300 and the coupon in my pocket. I bought 30 retaining wall stones, 5 bags of drainage rocks for the wet spots in the back yard, 25 bags of pea gravel for walkways, 2 ginormous bags of potting soil, mosquito dunkers, a white creeping phlox, 4 tomatoes, a concrete birdbath & pedestal, a light fixture for the kitchen and one for the hallway.

I had to make two trips in the car because the birdbath and the retaining wall stones were so heavy. I just pitched the stones into the front yard, unloaded the birdbath, light fixtures, plants and potting soil and went back for the pea gravel & drainage stones. After lunch, when I set the retaining stones around the bed in the front yard, I discovered I needed forty instead of thirty. The bed will look nice, but right now it looks unfinished.

Tonight, I was going to go out and use the little mower to get a couple of spots Josh keeps missing with the tractor, but I couldn't get the thing started. I don't know if it was all the work today or the fact that I haven't really exercised my upper arms since last summer, but I was pretty ticked at myself for not being able to start the thing.

Just as I had given up and retreated to the breezeway, Josh & Amy showed up. Apparently, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so Josh wanted to do the lawn tonight. While he cut the grass, Amy & I went to Marc's and I bought forty bags of mulch. We had to make two trips, and the guy who helped us load the car said I won the prize for the most mulch purchased in one trip. The cashier's eyes about bugged out when I said I wanted forty bags. *grin*

So Amy and I got the mulch in the garage, which will motivate me to use it up so I can park my car in there again. We talked a bit, I paid Josh for the lawn and Amy for the help with the mulch, gave Amy some bath stuff from Skindecent, and they left.

Tomorrow, I've got to hit the ground running to get the cleaning done before I have lunch with my dragon buddy, Dranoel. I'm also organizing a surprise box for someone on the Lush forum who was the victim of a hate crime, and I haven't checked my personal messages there in a while.

I'm not doing that tonight, though. I just had a marvelous strawberry lemonade bath, and while I've got lots of new bruises and I'm sure I will creak in the morning, today was absolutely worth all the bother.

Happy moment

The incomparable Marliss at Skindecent has not only added my scent combo to the list of available scents, she has named it after me!

BOTANICAL

Treefrog Jammies (NEW)

(Medium Intensity) A special blend of fresh green notes balanced by relaxing lavender

Six degrees

This morning, I realized I'd forgotten the Wikipedia link for Edwards AFB in my earlier post. Since Bosstopus is at a meeting, I get to spend my lunchtime playing on the interwebbinet, and I figured I'd just edit the entry and add the link.

Howevah, when I read the whole Wiki entry, I realized there's something in there that links me to Sherri (and to Scott and Severina, but they're probably less willing than Sherri to admit it).

To make a long story short, my birthplace is also the birthplace of "Murphy's Law."