I'll be honest -- I could bug Spring Hill about any of that and get them to send me new ones, but heck widdit. The squirrels and the weather ain't anybody's fault, and I'm willing to pay again to try again. The wintergreen (no pics for this entry, sorry) is doing okay, I've bought more of it that should show up somewhere the middle of April.

You know it'll either be snowing or an utter deluge when all the hundred or so bucks' worth of plants I've ordered show up, don't you? I mean, you really know this? Because I do. I'll be out in forty-five degree weather with a spade and some fertilizer. Bitching all the way.

But on to the things I already have photos for -- and it's early for that, no? This is the first year my hyacinths have looked good enough at bloom to actually document. I planted the ones in the pictures three or four years ago and every year since they've been snapped by slugs, frost or rabbits and looked diseased by the time the blossoms opened. For the first time, I actually have something worth documenting:

Yee ha!

Every year I worry a bit about my Snofozam weeping cherry out front. It's not a graft -- it's the whole enchilada from the roots up, own-root. This is the stuff they graft onto other ordinary cherry trees to get those big, fluffy weeping cherry trees other people have in their yards. Me, I just wanted the smaller jobbie to fit in a smallish space. That's what I got, and it's looked just like this every spring for about the past six years:

I planted some windswept anemones, which reputedly aren't necessarily hardy in the agricultural zone where I live, though ... a.) they're right next to the house in the big warm dirt hole and, b.) the NOAA has been toying with the idea of extending ag Zone 6 north of Dayton since it ain't seen 20 below since the eighties sometime. So technically, even if where I live isn't really Z6, the four feet of the flowerbed in front of my house probably is, by hook or by crook. Anyway, here's what I got for my anemone trouble:

They're not very tall. The poppy anemones (also not supposed to be hardy in my zone) are much taller. They're coming back up this year, as well, though they're a little slower than the windswepts. No, it's not the plants -- I didn't clear the dead leaves off soon enough, so they're getting a later start of it than they usually do.

And of course, what midwestern flowerbed would be complete without dozens of grape hyacinths? Not mine -- these little suckers are hardy, reliable and they naturalize and spread. Who can beat that when they also look like this:

Interestingly enough, my corkscrew hazelnut went absolutely hog wild once we took out the swamp maples a couple of years back. Not only did it start growing bigger, this is the first year it bore these things:

So that means it's in pretty good shape, right? Since it grew there for five years before it did this. I figured it became a completely different plant once the shade of the maples was out of the way.

Curious to see what happens to the Harrison cedar. I'll shoot you some shots once the brown needles fall off it -- it always browns up a little over the winter, but it looks really snappy this year other than that. I'm not the least sorry we bought it because it reminded us of Charlie Brown and planted it a zone out of range because we were convinced it would do okay.

PS -- my Cecile Brunner by the driveway is ailing. There are root sprouts this year, but all the old wood has mildewed. I think it had to do with the very wet feet it ended up with from the two snowstorms so close together, and all the driveway snow (and salt) getting heaped on it. I'm going to order another one, if the rose place in Austin has them this late, and plant in the back yard. The one in the small bed where the big swamp maple was is in pretty crappy shape -- it has one tiny little sprout on it and that's it.

Not incidentally, the Louise Odier I planted later last summer did A-OK over the winter, even though it still had blooms on it when the first hard freeze hit. It's sprouting new growth and looking stellar. The older one by the house that I think is probably a Blaze hybrid of some kind or other also is starting to green up. Happy me -- I used to make fun of 'rose people' but the old ones are fun, and they don't require nearly as much work as the cheesy neon-colored WalMartian roses most people buy now.

The little white 'magic carpet' rose, and four out of five of the shrub roses I planted last year also are starting to green. Yay -- I always expect to lose at least one. As pathetic as it is, even the Cecile by the driveway ain't dead yet, so this counts as only losing one of all of them. That ain't bad, I guess.

Eh. Hopefully I can keep my ass in line and post more when the plants come in and we get to set them in the ground. Spring is pretty well sprung, and my thumb only hurts once in a while, now -- must be getting warmer!

And here's how it looked by the end of Memorial Day weekend (we probably put in nearly 60 hours, altogether, two of the days which it was over 90 degrees most of the day):

Not a half bad job for two middle-aged, fairly sedentary Midwestern desk jockeys if I do say so myself.

And in case I needed any proof that, after twenty years of office work, my wrists are now composed of Silly Putty:

Tony thought I should have draped myself over the wheelbarrow for dramatic effect, but I wasn't walking all the way back out there so he could take another shot of it. It was hot, it was late in the day, and that wasn't happening.

Finally, here's my out front rosebush (I've never been satisfied that I know what it is), which went completely bonkers this year. I think this photo was just before the real peak of bloom, it was even heavier than this a week later:

I did notice, driving around the neighborhood, that there are at least a dozen houses within a mile of here that have the same rosebush. It must have been cheap at one of the garden centers about twenty years ago -- that's my estimate on its age. It looks like it might be a Blaze hybrid or something. Blooms once, then the inevitable black spot almost completely denudes it of leaves. It looks dead for six months, then the following may it blooms again.

And besides that, all I have seeds for are three kinds of peppers (not sure if we'll try the poblanos again this year or not, thought he jalapenos and chiles did really well last year) and a melange of dianthus. Not even sure if I'll try the dianthuses -- I didn't get a single start, last year, because they all got taken over by some fungus. It killed every stinkin' one.

On to the big shit -- notes on what we should be doing in the coming months, once things start to warm up.

First of all, we've discussed purchase of a new composter. The one we got from the City Of Kettering is nice, but I really think with as much stuff as we plant every year, we could probably justify one of the spinning composters. I'm thinking a medium-sized one would be good -- we could set it right beside the old composter, load it up from that, then keep the old one to hold stuff until the load is ready to use as mulch. That way, we have a storage bin and a composter, so the two or three weeks it takes the rolling composters to actually provide compost won't hold us back from stockpiling grass, leaves and kitchen waste.

Second on the "we're going to do this" list is figuring out where my new rosebush will go. I decided on the Louise Odier from Antique Rose Emporium. I wanted an old-style rose -- the Odier is a Bourbon -- that had big, rounded blooms. The photo at ARS doesn't do it justice -- it's a bright pink rose that starts out with big, rounded blooms that eventually flatten out almost like a centifolia rose. With all the cheesy, patented roses in my neighborhood, I actually quite like to throw some antique stock out there. Besides, though 'own root' roses are a little slower to establish, they're hardier and tend to live longer than the 'rose in a box' roses you buy at the garden centers or WalMart that are grafted to cheap rootstocks. Own-root roses establish and go on and on, according to most of the rose sources I've found. Additionally, I can select roses hardy beyond my zone and that are less susceptible to black spot and powdery mildew, both of which we're inclined to have to fight during a damp summer here.

Third, and falling over the line into 'things we might possibly do this summer, but will probably procrastinate and/or talk ourselves out of doing' is the scorched earth clearing and resodding of the back slope, behind the house. It's currently home to several diseased forsythia bushes, a honeysuckle shrub (different from the Asian honeysuckle vines that are considerably more invasive), what may be a witchhazel or other reasonably native shrub, a hundred miscellaneous golden raintree babies of varying ages, and weeds varied and glorious -- including Rose Of Sharon, which is pretty if it's in your neighbor's yard but a bitch if it's in yours. It's in ours, now. Our neighbors are a blight on the landscape anyway, with their camper trailer and abandoned dune buggy in the back yard.

S'anyway, I don't know if that will happen this year or not. Be nice, but I ain't holdin' my breath, eh?

Curious to see if my dwarf irises I planted out by Cecile v.2 come up or not. I ameliorated the earth out in the old swamp maple spot with at least 50% organic topsoil mixed with compost from the only somewhat effective composter, so who knows what will happen? Bought them cheap, too, at the same time I bought the lilac bush I mention farther down. They, at least, were planted at the right time -- whether that will prove to be the right place is another question entirely.

I think that's about it, other than choosing the spot for the Louise Odier and prepping the spot. The plant is due to ship from Austin a few weeks later then the Cecile Brunners did in 2005 -- I've planned for them to arrive sometime around a week and a half into May. By then, we should be past the 'frost window' and I should have time for the earth to thaw out enough that I can weed, till and prepare the soil for planting a rosebush. I'm thinking of dropping it in out front, on the right side (facing the FOH) of the picture window. The height predictions on the Odier are four to six feet, but I'm figuring in this zone -- about middling for the rose's climatic tolerance -- it's going to lean at the lower end of the height, not the higher. Of course, the first couple of years it won't be enormous anyhow.

That's about it, so far. No pictures, because frankly when it's been pretty out it's been colder than a postman's elbow, and when it's been warm it's been like walking through pea soup, including the lack of decent light. Most everything but the evergreens is dead-looking anyway.

Let's wager on how many of the cheap flowering almonds survives this winter, shall we? I'm guessing one will do well, a second will do moderately well, and a third will die. Even odds on the Sensation lilac, since I planted it fall instead of spring. It was cheap from Spring Hill in the fall, though. See, I wasn't sure if a lilac qualified as a perennial flowering plant or a shrub, so I thought I'd try it in the fall and see if it went okay. If it croaks, I can easily afford to try again in April or May.

Enow, for now. Not much I can actually do out there right now except stare out the windows and wonder what will survive (it hasn't been an especially hard winter, so most everything ought to do okay that was supposed to), and what will have to be replaced. Ideas will, of course, be deposited here as I come up with them. It works for me.

The book from Antique Rose Emporium says the old garden roses don't really need to be pruned heavily for anything but shape, so I'll leave them alone and see what comes next spring.

New plants -- I set out a dwarf iris bed next to the tree stump rosebush. I don't know if it'll come up or not -- there's an awful lot of fungal matter where the sawdust from the old maple tree is decaying, but I did dig up and boost it with organic topsoil mix -- I don't know for sure if they'll come up or not. They were on sale, so I bought half a dozen. I know irises tend to go hog-wild and take over everything, so I cut the bottom off an old cat pan and set it down in the spot, then planted them within its confines. Hopefully, that will keep them from marching all over the yard.

Here's a shot of that rose -- the picture's almost a month old, we were still having temps in the seventies in the middle of October, this year (Ohio, can't live with it, can't wipe it off the map with a neutron bomb):

What you can't see is the 'stink horn' fungi that have popped up around the edges of the spot. They're about four inches long, the size of an adult's index finger, and they smell like rotting meat. Makes gardening in that spot immensely pleasant. On the plus side, I think it's kept any critters away who might have messed with the rosebush or the lily corms.

Here's the flowering almond that was "dead" this spring. I cut it down to a couple of knuckles no more than a foot tall, assuming the impact it had taken from the tree that was dropped on it would kill it -- all the indications I could find were that this plant is fairly fragile, doesn't live more than a decade or so most of the time, and tends to die back or die completely when broken. It must like the weather or something:

The three smaller ones I bought didn't do nearly as well, though one of the ones nearer the sidewalk actually had a blossom on it the other day. I guess that's a good sign for next spring -- hopefully, they'll grow next year. If not, I didn't pay very much for them -- I think I got all three for not much more than $15 -- so mox nix.

This one is interesting -- I planted some seeds from two years ago, that my aunt in Las Cruces had sent my mother. I think they're Hopi cotton plants -- they grow them en masse in Las Cruces, they're one of the top three crops out there (green chile peppers and pecans being the other two). They didn't so so good here, especially with the late planting -- not sure if I'll get any seeds or not. The bolls matured so late, most of them will die before reaching maturity, and I doubt the seeds will sprout if they're not mature. As a proof of concept, though, it was pretty cool -- I wasn't sure they'd get enough sunshine, but it was a very hot and dry summer:

Too bad about the picture. I planted them too close to other things, there wasn't any good angle.

We got loads of peppers from the vegetable containers -- we've smoked a couple of batches of jalapenos, and Tony did some of the poblanos last weekend, too, though those didn't really thrive. They were small and very thin-fleshed, I think they probably didn't get enough sun. We did water everything a little more conscientiously this year, so that wasn't a problem. I bet we got five or six pounds of jalapenos, and the same of cayennes -- though the cayennes, which were planted from last year's seeds, were completely different from the cayenne plants we had last year. Those were shrubby -- these were tall, like sweet pepper plants. The peppers were huge, too, probably mostly two to four inches long. Probably had something to do with a hybridization, or else peppers cross-pollinate in some strange way I don't know about, and they were affected by the jalapenos or the poblanos.

The tomatoes? Fuggedaboudit. I probably would have had twenty pounds of tomatoes, if the squirrels hadn't plucked half of them off the vines, taken a bite or two and left them. I was finding them everywhere, for a while -- the driveway out front, just under the table where the pots were, the back slope, the cat run. Yes, I actually found half-eaten tomatoes in the cat run. Turds. I give up on tomatoes -- the one year they actually do well, and the squirrels massacred half of them.

As usual, they did at least give up on the peppers.

None of the plants I was worried about qualifies as "lost" -- the little azalea even seems to have survived, though it didn't bloom this year. The weeping Atlas cedar put on a spurt halfway through the summer and now looks like some kind of crazy amusement park ride. It's not really visible in this one -- I didn't get the shot until it was too shady to really get good articulation on the stuff in that garden, but oh, well -- you go to blog with the picture you have, not the picture you want:

You can also see, below, that delphinium that seems content to keep blooming until its balls get froze off.

It's probably too low-res to see the other thing of interest in that bed. A couple of years back, we put a tarragon plant in there, thinking it probably wouldn't thrive if it perennialized at all. It's bigger than those annoying artemisias, now -- I'd give it at least two and a half feet in diameter. It's climbed over the Russain sage, the artemisia and the two little ornamental thyme plants I had already planted out there.

Next year also will be rich with four o'clocks. I didn't bother to weed them out, so I predict there will be many, many of them next spring.

Need to get some mulch and mulch everything, I suppose.

One other thing -- no picture, because it looked like it was dead when it came in the package -- I don't know how well it will do, but I planted a lilac bush in place of the weeping pussy willow that went out with a bang somewhere in late June. It upped and died like Mr. Bojangles' dog, not even so much as an 'I had bugs! I had blight!' to tell me why. After a bit of back and forth with the garden center -- where it was sworn, to my face, they never had any weeping pussy willows this year right up to the day we took the receipt in to show where we bought the weeping pussy willow from them -- they refunded my money. Shame most of their plants looked like crap this year. I may sit on it until next spring -- the refund has no expiration date, but I can't imagine a $70 credit on account at a gardening center will last long around here.

That's about all I have time for tonight. I hope over the weekend to have time to at least sit down and ponder what I may do in the spring. The irises are the only new bulb plants I put in, this year. Curious to see if the tulips that did so well last spring come up equally well this spring.

Here's the first Cecile Brunner, in the side flowerbed. It has bloomed, and it's looking like serious additional blooming. It's quite healthy, at least by appearances. I'm spraying with Diazinon every couple of weeks, right now, because I've seen more aphids on everything this year than usual. Though I hate using the stuff, I didn't get going on the neem oil thing early enough to do much good. I'll probably get on it early next year, but if it doesn't cut the mustard, I'll use something else -- at least until the plants are established, and I can take 'acceptable losses' on them. I've seen what the nastly little shits do to the big rosebush, which is pretty much a one-bloom pony; once the thing blooms out, the aphids and the Japanese beetles pretty much defoliate it, if I don't spray it with anything.

Anyhow, the Brunner has bloomed and ... it ain't the same as the one my granny had. But I like it, and I guess that's the biggest concern. It smells better than the one Mom has, too, so there are benefits to attempting to find those things you remember from childhood, even if you don't actually find the ones you were looking for, I guess.

Here's the volunteer viola. I now have seven or eight different ones besides this one -- they reseeded last year, apparently. There's at least one that looks different to these -- it may be a different kind of viola that the rabbits didn't eat all the blooms from, or it may be a lobelia or something else, but it doesn't look like a weed, so we'll see, I guess.

These pinks bloomed like mad after the last time I posted. There are some like this -- two or three I planted last year -- and some I seem to recall they called 'boutonniere' pinks, which are big and splashy looking. Every one of my pinks bloomed like mad this year, most likely due to the damp and sultry weather we had for a while in late May and early June. It's cooled off for the past week now, and been dry and sunny -- which, I'd have to venture, holds the blooms on for a while, as long as they're adequately watered.

I trimmed the boxwoods last weekend. Can you tell? They look like most of the boys I went to school with used to look at the beginning of summer, back in Hickville, when their dads would take the shears to their heads as soon as school was out.

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that I hadn't ever taken a decent picture of the back rosebush when it was in full bloom. This isn't full bloom, but it shows some of the blossoms on the rose out back. I actually found the pot from it when we were cleaning out the gardening shelves last weekend -- the tag said 'ivory blanket,' though I couldn't find anything online that was called that. I did find one called 'baby's blanket' that looked quite similar. It's supposed to be a ground cover rose, but I really think it's too sparse for that -- it makes a nice climbing rose, though, and I think I may look into adding some trellises and just letting it ramble. It's quite pretty, and when I trim it properly it blooms like crazy.

I don't particularly care for hostas of any kind, and wouldn't have planted these myself, but they were here and well established when we bought the house, and since they're healthy, I can't bring myself to just haul them out. I did yank one when I put the blanket rosebush in, but the others will probably remain -- though I'm cooking an idea about going 'scorched earth' on the back slope, sometime in the next couple of years, and dividing all my hostas and plantains out to plant back there. It's shady much of the day, and gets plenty of rain -- it would be a good thing to terrace it, plant hostas on the top half and just seed the lower half for grass. Of course, that's going to involve digging up and removing about five forsythia plants that have been back there for what looks like time eternal. I freakin' hate to kill anything off, I really do. I know how hard it is for plants to establish ... but I really don't like forsythia -- even more than I dont like hostas, about which I'm more ambivalent. They don't take over everything like forsythias do. They just don't catch my eye, for some reason.

Here's the 'I don't know what it is, some kind of double-blooming reddish American rose variety' one from out front that was here when we moved in. Interestingly, I had some kind of tiny burrowing wasp that I'd never seen before take out one of the canes on my new Cecile that I planted in the middle of the front yard, where the maple tree came out last winter ... now, I'm seeing holes in the canes on this one, that I pruned back in the spring, before last frost. There are several varieties of tiny wasps and bees who do this -- the best advice I found online to prevent this says you should seal over the ends of bare canes, when you prune, with Elmer's glue or wood glue. I had to cut back a cane on the Cecile v.2 and I put Elmer's on all the open canes I could see that were big enough for critters to burrow into. In the future, I'll be sure to seal the canes on all the ones that have enough diameter the little turds can get in. I wondered about some of the new growth on old canes on the older rosebush, out front -- I suspect it was the same little bugs. I'd never heard of burrowing wasps getting into rosebushes, but there are borers for everything woody -- it shouldn't have surprised me, I guess.

The hazelnut clearly is doing quite well this year. One thing that benefits it is the new garden hose we bought -- it's a vacuum-based hose reel system that uses back-pressure from the water feed to reel the hose back in. The backflow pumps out wherever you put the hose. We put it near the hazelnut. It seems quite happy about it.

Here's my 'dead' azalea. It looked like croakersville until after everybody else's azaleas bloomed this year, and then all of a sudden it snapped back and got leaves on it. Tony may be right -- it may simply have been suffering adjustment problems from the additional sun. The weeping cherry, likewise, doesn't look too happy yet. I'm hoping it's just adapting and will do better next year, though they're predictably hincty plants, and the silly thing may just croak and give me room to sock something else in there.

All these shots are from last weekend -- if I get motivated to take more pictures this weekend, I'll post them in the next few days. I'm sure it's going to prove useful for comparisons, from year to year, if I can manage to keep my ass on this, and do entries every week or so.

Just a few notes -- no pics yet -- we have a tomato the size of a golf ball on one of the tomato plants, and there's a jalapeno the size of a lima bean on one of the pepper plants. Almost all the jalapeno plants have blossoms now, and some of the cayennes. The poblanos look healthy enough, and I'm starting to see what look like blooms developing on them -- we'll see how they turn out. I know from experience what to expect from the cayennes and jalapenos, they look like they're on course to do quite well this year (as long as we don't get tangled up in other things and forget to water them come July, of course). Pretty good for stuff started in the basement, everything but the jalapenos. The others look as good as those. Maybe we'll just have to save seeds again this year, and try doing all the peppers as sprouts in the basement next spring -- the most successful starts I had were peppers.

Hasta ...

I planted a dozen lobelias and a delphinium -- none of the ones I started are really doing all that well -- split between the flowerbed by the driveway and the one next to the house. I may take some pictures tomorrow, if we don't get the deluge they were predicting for the weekend that hasn't even come close to happening yet (we put off early morning watering two days in a row because it was supposed to rain, but it cleared up yesterday and never really rained again, and it's been clear as a bell all day today).

Yesterday, I put in a good five hours cleaning up schmutz (sticks, dead leaves, maple propellers) and pulling weeds, then dropped a 1/2" to 1" layer of organic topsoil down in the bed next to the house, and finished doing the one by the driveway that I'd started last weekend.

Spent the morning at the animal shelter's annual dog walk. Got up real early, went and took lots of pictures of dogs with the digital camera, stood around a lot. Eh -- most of the pictures were for the couple who are doing an annual calendar for SICSA, they have an advertising company and are donating the work on the calendar. Some of the shots may go on the critter blog, in which case I'll put a link here.

Anyway, got home and collapsed for all of about half an hour, then went back out and bought the flowers mentioned above, planted them, and ate dinner. Likely, we'll go play trivia tonight, so there's really just not enough time and energy here to get pictures today.

Notes -- in the fall, I really need to separate out and divide a few of the bulb plants. The big peony bed needs to be reduced a little, again. I have been thinking about putting some along the side of the animal run, just down the side from the tulips. Also need to divide and/or relocate the hostas in the front flowerbed, next to the big red rosebush -- have thought about sticking some on the back slope, since there are plenty of shady spots, and I don't care if they divide and spread like mad, back there. Anything that keeps the bank of soil out of the yard can't be a bad thing, I guess. I could move all the ones along the back of the house, too, I suppose. I don't know -- that seems like a lot of work for plants I don't even really like all that much.

Both of my new rosebushes have blooms starting on them, now. The one in the front yard is a little slower to go than the other one, but then it gets somewhat less sun.

We've talked about doing a complete scorched earth on the slope back there -- either tearing everything out and terracing it for hostas and stuff, or just taking out all the forsythias and unidentifiable shrubbery and planting grass where there's nothing else growing. Either way, it'll be a big job -- it ain't going to get done this summer, that's for sure.

Having plans -- even big, easily procrastinated plans -- is considerably less depressing than not having any, of course. Why else would you garden at all in a place like this, otherwise?

Here are the container plants -- the peppers and tomatoes:

Everything's looking pretty good. Tony put some more topsoil in the containers, now that it's settled a bit from watering and rain. Of course, now we just wait -- try to keep up with the growth, keep them staked up, keep them watered. I mean to hit them with Miracle Gro at least once a week until they start bearing -- it seems to help, especially with the peppers.

Here's the long shot of the yard, from the bottom of the driveway:

The grass is actually starting to fill in -- and those pinks have gone into serious overdrive, this year. More sun, I guess -- and we put a flexible drain on the downspout, it drains water right there on them any time it rains enough to fill the eave troughs. I have some more on order, I'll probably put most of them next to the house, since they seem to perennialize best there. I planted some hardy carnations (which is what I'm ordering) in the driveway bed, but they didn't come back up the second year. I think they just got too much exposure to cold. The dirt stays warmer in the bed next to the house, I've had few things die from exposure in those beds. One thing we definitely need to do there, though, is throw down some more topsoil. The dirt there tends to drain out over the sidewalk.

Next big outdoor project (in the 23rd century, probably)? A brick sidewalk out front. Might not be a bad idea to put brick edging instead of that pressed concrete stuff, too -- maybe I'll figure out somewhere else to use it, I don't know.

Here's the corner. The big red rosebush ain't looking so good, this year. It's not like the blooms are ever exceptionally great -- the aphids go to town on the thing, and by the time they open, they have holes in them. I hate to use a lot of pesticide because it's bad for the birds if it washes down into a puddle, but I've been spraying the new rosebushes anyway -- I may be able to be more cavalier about it, once they are established, but at this point I'm going to be eco-evil for the summer and get those plants big and healthy. I have some Neem oil spray, and I'd love to be able to use it, but you have to mix it by the gallon and I'm not sure it's really any lower impact on the local fauna than the Diazinon liquids.

Here are some shots of the pinks. I've put up pictures on previous dates of these, but they hadn't really started blooming yet. I've never seen anything like this -- they're really over the top, this year. I need to deadhead them when the blooms start falling off, keep the seeds and replant in that same spot so I have a whole corner full of them. These even have just a wee bit of fragrance -- if I stand downwind, I can just barely smell them.

This is the peony that I shaved off the one on the other side of the house (the one that had gone batshit and grown all over the place over there, and that needs to be trimmed down yet again this fall -- maybe I'll put some along the side of the cat run, just down from the tulips). It's looking really good, now that it gets more sun.

This is the lily-of-the-valley bed that I started out back three or four years ago. I had about a dozen corms that I dug up at my mother's, she's had a bed of the stuff there for probably close to half a century -- certainly as long as I can remember. They just barely came up and survived that first summer -- they got no sun at all where they were at first, and very little water -- so I moved it to the end of the carport. The bed gets shade part of the day now, because of the container shelves, and it -- like the pinks and the rosebush out front -- is right at the bottom of a drainpipe. I think I'm going to have to divide them at some point, though -- they're growing too far out into the yard. Not sure where I want to put them, yet, they need partial shade. I'll have to give that one some thought, I guess.

Here's the big flowerbed. I spent most of what was left of the daylight Sunday and a good bit of the morning Monday weeding all the sheep sorrel and millet grass out of it. When it clouded up, I started spreading the organic topsoil. I don't know if it's 'good practice' or not, putting topsoil down early in the summer, but if you look at the stuff in the bed, it certainly does no harm -- and it really punches up the color of the blooms.

All the pink flowers in the photo are various dianthus varieties -- there's a bright red one at the very top, under the sweep of the weeping Atlas cedar; the 'neon pinks' I bought a couple of years ago are blooming nicely this year; a little mound of pinks I can't find a name for (and bad gardener that I am, I forgot to save the stave from the original pot). They may be an arvarnensis hybrid, I've also seen them called 'Czech pinks' and other names. They're a mounding semi-double pink that's more like ground cover than the cheddar pinks I have near the house. The low-growing pink flowers are on an ornamental thyme plant; the tall pinks are sweet William that's defying the sales pitch and coming up for a third year (they were supposed to be a two-year pink). The tall purple spears are on a decorative sage plant that's gradually having the living crap beat out of it by a tarragon plant I was convinced was dead when I planted the sage last fall. And so it goes.

I now have three reseeded (volunteer) viola plants from the huge batch of the things I planted last year. They hardly got to bloom, last year -- it rained about every third day all summer and fall, and the rabbits ate every stinking bloom down to the stalk. Maybe they've shat those seeds back into the garden, I don't know. Regardless, they're 'volunteering' like crazy. One of them is backed snugly into the thyme plant; there's the one in the crack between the bricks and the driveway, and there's at least one more with a bloom on it on the outside of the bed.

Here's the little bird poo volunteer from the back yard, under the oak tree. From looking at it, I think it's probably a creeping juniper of some sort or other. Frankly, I think the birds ate some seeds at the Kettering Post Office and came over here to shit them out, because there's something that looks a lot like this stuff over there. I wouldn't mind having a little of it in that corner of the flower bed, as long as I can at least marginally control the growth.

We bought this statue from the Winterthur Gifts mail-order catalog a couple of weeks ago. It's about the only piece of garden statuary I've seen that isn't obnoxious -- animals, especially, seem to get the glurge treatment. I thought about putting a Buddha out there, but the neighbors already know we're freaks -- I don't need the FBI showing up at the door because my dirty-necked hick neighbors don't know the difference between Buddhism and Islam.

Here's the first-planted of the two Cecile Brunners. It's been over a month, so I'm starting to water them weekly with Miracle Gro Rose Food -- I'll probably start experimenting wtih Gardens Alive stuff once I run out of the Scott's, but I still have a lot of Miracle Gro regular plant food, and at least half a bag of the rose stuff, so I'll use it until it's getting low before I order any more.

Note, if you can see it, that this transplanted rosebush already has a bloom on it, on the tall new cane. I'm thrilled -- I really didn't think either of them would bloom until next year, because they're so small.

This is the other Cecile, it's the one in the middle of the front yard. It's got a lot of new growth on it, though nothing like the other one. Still, it seems to like being there in the old tree stump -- lots of mulch all around for it to set roots in, and it gets watered when the lawn gets watered, and that's a high spot that drains well. I noticed, though I'm not sure it's visible in this photo, that the anemones I dropped in at the same time are starting to break through the dirt, too. I'd about given up on them -- the ones I have up near the house had come up within a month. There's hope yet -- they may dwarf the rosebush this year.

Here's the other (bigger) juniper volunteer from the back yard. I won't have to watch it so closely, there's nothing there but the driveway for it to overtake for several feet either way. I tried to do a pink bed there, but it was nigh impossible to keep it watered and keep the soap out of it when I washed the car. I think that's what finally killed off the couple of skeevy ones that had come up there a couple of years ago. I transplanted what I could over to the other bed, next to the house, that's blooming like a fierce bastard this year -- that seems to be the sweet spot for dianthus. Gotta get more topsoil in there, so they keep going.

I decided the corkscrew hazelnut was doing okay, and it seems to be growing a little faster now that it gets more hours of sun a day, so I'm trying to train it up a bit. They can be trained a little more upright, and since this one seems determined to be a creeper, I'm going to have to spend a few years gradually pulling some of the branches up. It looks bitchin' in the winter, when the leaves fall off.

That's about it for this week. I have half a dozen hardy carnations and half a dozen black violas on order. I've decided if the bloody goddamn rabbits leave me any seeds on the violas this year, I'll try to harvest them and reseed the beds either after the first frost or first thing next spring, just after the frost. I know that works with most of the pinks I have, because I've done it -- we've joked, before, about staking Max out front in the flowerbed to scare the rabbits off, but we haven't done it. I wish I thought it would work -- they won't leave the stuff alone, and I hate to use anything that hurts them, since this is (technically) their home and I only live in it. I don't mind them being here, I just wish to hell they'd stop eating all the flowers. Seriously. Why don't they eat sheep sorrel? I'd love them if they'd do that!

A bit of a digression (though related). When we moved into the house in 2000, in June, it was too late to really attempt to plant anything other than a few flowers, so that's all that got done that summer. The next year, however, we decided to try to till up a square about four by eight out back and plant some things. We tried tomatoes, lettuce and a couple of different kinds of sweet peppers.

The slugs and snails ate all but the bitterest of the lettuce, from which I think we got one thin salad (and even through dedicated cleaning and washing, wound up almost eating at least one slug). We planted radishes, too -- they came out looking like fat, white eyelashes with big, green leaves.

We fenced the plot with plastic fencing and metal doweling. The rabbits must have learned to fly -- they got into it and ate the pepper plants off to the ground. The birds and the squirrels (and perhaps even the chipmunks) knocked over or bit into every single tomato.

We tried a different location the next year, with similar results.

By the third year in the house, we knew it was shit or get off the pot -- we had to find some other way to grow those things or else give up and find a good local farm market. The decision was we'd buy some window-box rectangular planters, set them on the concrete pad just outside the carport wall, and see how that went.

It went, in fact, remarkably well. We had lots of peppers and tomatoes, at least. Those are the things we find it most practicable and purposeful to grow in containers. For a couple of years, we did pretty well with them in the containers -- we had four containers we lined up there, and they did quite well (though we never really got enough sweet peppers to make it worthwhile and eventually gave up).

Finally, two years and a half ago, we decided to do something a little more permanent toward making the container plantings worthwhile. We drew up and planned a set of shelves to install along the carport wall, and since we weren't sure it would be the ideal place or provide the ideal conditions, we bought treated plywood and painted it white, hinged it and inserted hooks, and used porch swing chain to support it on the side of the carport.

Again, it was successful, so last spring we bought plastic pegboard materials and PVC pipe and replaced the plywood. Last year wasn't the greatest for us timewise, so we didn't water as often or keep up with pulling the fruit, so we didn't get the yield we'd gotten the year before (and some of the planters we used for some of the peppers proved astoundingly ill-designed for outdoor plants, leading us to conclude to be used as-is, they weren't meant for that). After several rounds of modifications, we worked out a support method that worked pretty well.

This year we've added some containers and moved some more out to the back patio. With the maple tree gone on that side, we now can expect sufficient sun on the plants on the patio that they might actually fruit (the last time we tried it, only a few jalapenos and lots of volunteer catnip resulted from anything put on the patio).

Here are the rest of the container vegetable shots:

We had some trouble keeping the tomatoes from flopping all over everything, when they were planted in the same containers with the peppers. Generally, though some peppers get tall and bushy, they're self-supporting with minimal application of velcro tape and even when fruiting don't fall over and try to drag in the grass. The tomatoes were another story entirely. This way, we figure it will be easier to figure something out for supporting the tomato plants when they get tall and want to hang over. If nothing else, we can put some fencing or something along the edge of the table and tie up from there.

I've used Gardens Alive's tomato planting mix this year. Last year, we had lots of tomatoes -- but we'd reused some soil, and I found out later you shouldn't do that because tomatoes deplete calcium in topsoil preparations. The blossom/end rot was so bad we hardly were able to use any of them last year. I'll plan to use the stuff every year, if it helps with the tomatoes this year.

We have three kinds of peppers in the containers right now. There were eight healthy-looking plants we thought were poblanos (started from seed, and one looked a little ragged by the time we were able to get them planted), nine we thought were cayennes, and nine jalapeno plants that we bought. All the peppers are hot peppers, and all can be frozen if all the plants survive and fruit heavily. The jalapenos get tall but not shaggy, and the cayennes don't even get tall. These are, by the way, the cayennes we started in the basement from salvaged seeds. We decided those are the only things that really are worth starting in the basement -- the forget-me-nots are the only flowers that survived the early growing period (the pinks succumbed to some fungus, and everything else pretty much gave up the ghost not long after that, perhaps also due to fungus). I had one lobelia that still doesn't look like much, I think I'll just rely on buying them from the nurseries from now on. I haven't seen myosotis (forget-me-nots) at the nurseries, or I wouldn't have bothered to try starting them, either. My guess is now that I went to all that trouble, they'll be all over the place next spring.

That's the first one I put out in the pot, a couple of weeks ago. It's still surviving, so maybe the dozen or so others that were roughly the same size will survive, too, I don't know. They're planted in various places -- a couple of different spots in the flower bed, and in pots out front. There's also one Texas bluebell and a couple of delphiniums that look pretty crappy, I put them in the pots, too. Figured they'd croak, but if the forget-me-nots did well, I wouldn't care too much.

Here's Tony's herb spot, around by the peony bed:

They always do well there, they get lots of sun early in the morning, and that seems to be the side of the house that gets plenty of water when it rains. Incidentally, I don't think we planted either the oregano or the catnip over there -- the catnip was in the bed where the wild-ass mint is now, and I had some oregano planted out front, by one of the trees that was removed, but neither was planted in what had always been intended to be a basil bed. Some things are remarkably persistent, however -- my mother has some oregano that comes up in her back yard every year that was started from a few slips my late father got from a fellow Cincinnati Post employee in the seventies. She's tried a few times to reduce the size of the bed, but it comes back just as big every year. It's now growing between the slabs in the back sidewalk.

The last time we planted any catnip was over four years ago -- it has not been reseeded since, and we've torn out every bit of it at least twice since then. Only the Mitchum 'scorched earth' mint seems to be strong enough to drive it out.

Just to show what hardcore O/C nuts we are, this is a little volunteer evergreen of some kind or other that we found around back. We presume it got dropped in some bird shit at some point -- it showed its face late last summer, and we decided it was a bad time to replant it then. We did that yesterday, too -- there were three of them, altogether, this was the biggest. Next time I go around the front yard, I'll take some shots of them, if they haven't croaked yet. I'm afraid we didn't get enough of the roots -- they were wrapped around the axle of the oak tree, so we may have injured them too much for them to take hold out front I don't know. Time will tell.

These are the tulips I was so worried about back around Easter, because it was supposed to get so cold. The taller ones hadn't bloomed yet, at that point, but they've been sitting out there for almost three weeks now looking like this. Well, they're getting a little blowsy now, but after three weeks, it's about what you'd expect. The lighter purple ones out front look about the same, except none of them is as tall as the tallest of these:

Finally, some of the veterans:

The peony in the original bed on the side. The others aren't ready to go, yet. They'll probably open up next weekend, while we're out of town, and look like dirty toilet paper by the time we get home. Ah, well.

And my pinks, which I sort of leave alone to re-seed themselves each year:

They're all cheddar pinks of one variety or another, though the tallish ones with the lacy edges I've only seen as seeds, I've never seen them at the garden stores as slips. They seem to be thriving out there where they are -- the sun must please them, because they're blooming at about twice the density this year that they did before. I don't think any of the ones I've planted out there in that spot died off right away, they've managed to get by for at least two or three years at a time. I'm really surprised the slug damage seems to be pretty limited, since the slugs usually hit early and hard and eat everything in their paths for weeks on end.

I figure when we get back into town next weekend, I'll order my black violas from Spring Hill. They should be able to get them here in a few days, which would do me exactly no good this week (going to Pittsburgh next weekend; don't ask). If they're going to sit somewhere unplanted it might as well be in a greenhouse. I'll just order them next weekend and plan on getting them in the ground the weekend after. I don't usually see flats of just the black ones at the garden centers around here, so ordering them is about my only option. Violas are okay, but I really like these because they're black. There's something entertainingly creepy about black flowers, not to mention they're attractive.

Maybe I should go ahead and order some of the dark blue lobelias, too, though I actually see those around here at the garden stores all the time. Might have a look at the ones at Siebenthaler first, and I won't be ordering them from Spring Hill, since Spring Hill doesn't carry edging lobelias at all.

Anyway, I'll shoot some more pictures of the front yard stuff when I have time, it may not be until week after next, since we're going out of town next weekend. Hopefully nothing catastrophic will hit while we're gone, though that's usually around the time the big windstorm hits and blows everything a block and a half down the street. We'll see what happens.

Yeah, actually there is a problem with the camera, or at least there was -- the dog got his nose on it a couple of weeks ago, and we didn't clean the smudge off at that point because it didn't affect the pictures. A wet smudge usually doesn't. Anyway, it's been cleaned off, but I'm damned if I'm going back out there and take all the pictures again, especially since this is mostly for my own reference in the future (did they look that shitty when I put them in? Why is that growing there? the usual).

There are three of these -- they're the flowering almonds I ordered from Spring Hill. Like the rosebushes from Antique Rose Emporium, these were very well packed and not the least bit broken. They have started sprouting new leaves, so I think they're healthy enough. Now I'll know I can trust Spring Hill to send me potted plants, I'll probably order more next year. Breck's Bulbs, another branch of the Spring Hill bunch (there's also Gardens Alive, which carries low-impact fertilizers and lawn treatments), may get some money in the fall, too, if I can think of anything like that I want.

This is a baby golden raintree we dug up out back and stuck in the spot where one of the maples came out. Don't know if it'll survive or not, but hey -- it's free, right? We've got a golden raintree that's kind of at the end of its lifespan out back, it's spitting seeds like mad every year, and there are always baby trees out there, so if this one doesn't take, there are dozens of others.

Here's the weeping pussy willow we dithered so much about back in April. Looks like it's surviving the unpredictable weather conditions okay. I'm glad we went ahead and bought it, and I think it's in a good spot, there.

As you can see, the weeping Atlas cedar, after its flirtation with death, seems to be recovering well enough. The shape comes courtesy Tony, who jammed the support pole into the ground and hoisted the far end of the plant up there. It looks like it's supposed to, and I think you can see all the new needles (it had turned brown late in the winter, I was worried it might be more than just shock from the change in the weather and all).

Here's the other Cecile Brunner. You can see kind of in the upper-right part in the picture that there's a new cane sprouting, so as crappy as it looks, that's what's probably supposed to happen. Don't know if it'll bloom this year or not.

Closer shot of the new shoot on the Cecile Brunner.

Man, they weren't kidding when they called them 'neon' pinks, were they? Even on an overcast day with a digital camera (I've discovered the only way to get 'true color' on flowers that are a little out of spectrum, like these and the navy blue lobelias, is to take them with an analog camera and have them developed by a good lab).

There are pinks, artemisias and a couple of ornamental thyme plants (the ground cover and the one with the little pinkish-purple blooms), and there's an ornamental sage plant in there, too, in the process of being overwhelmed by the French tarragon that we didn't really think would grow very well (and that didn't, last year). It's supposed to be Zone 6 hardy, but I was skeptical. Looks like for once, I was wrong.

Closeup of the artemisia -- I trim it back to the base every winter, because if it got any bigger than it already does, I wouldn't be able to grow anything in the side yard.

Here's a viola that decided to just spring right the hell on up -- it's one like I planted last year (they're annuals), only it was actually in the flowerbed. As you can see, this one is between the brick edging and the driveway.

There's some funny looking stuff on the older rosebush out front. Mostly, though, I'm willing to attribute it to the repeated cold snaps, and not disease. One of the buds looks like it may already have powdery mildew -- usually that hits later in the season, but with the weather the way it is, I'm not surprised. I think I'm just paranoid about rose rosette now, since Mom lost a couple of roses to it. She says she's still having to dig up old roots to kill off the shoots that come off them. Apparently, that's not unusual -- it's weird, though.

Here are two shots of the dwarf rosebush that's at the back corner of the 'workshop' -- the one I was sure was going to die the second summer it was out there. Looks puny, don't it? It's the biggest rosebush I have, by a long shot. I suppose I could trim it way back every winter, but it's so impressive as is, it's hard to bring myself to do that.

Here's the rosebush foundering in the shadows at the corner of the house. It starts out like this every year -- though there are some chlorotic-looking leaves on it, this time, which is kind of new. I think it's just that the soil around the roots has receded and that side of the root ball isn't getting adequate nutrition anymore. When it doesn't get enough of anything, it's bound to look kind of lousy. I just can't bring myself to kill it off unless it's really diseased -- and it isn't.

Here's the wild-ass peony bed the previous inhabitants of our little bungalow left behind. It gets bigger every year -- a couple of years back, I shaved nearly six inches off either side of the corm bed underground and moved a few around to the end of the carport. It's as big as it was when I cut it back, now. Guess I'll have to find somewhere else in the yard I don't mind having peonies take the hell over everything. I don't remember either my mother or grandmother complaining about this -- what the heck kind of peonies are these, anyway?

This is the second bed. I think I moved eight corms over here two or three years ago. They looked pretty weedy the first spring, and pretty decent after that. This year, they've gone batshit, as you can see. Ah, well -- they're pretty and smell good, so at least this 'installation' of them is safe for a while, since there's nothing nearby for them to devour.

Here's something else we planted with all good intention (one plant, two summers ago). It's called 'Robert Mitchum mint.' Remember that name -- it's a freakin' mutant. It's going to end up having a pitched battle with the catnip, probably, although if I remember correctly there already was some volunteer catnip on that side of the peony bed. I don't see any catnip there this year, do you? I guess Bob won that round.

Here's what I'm fairly sure is some kind of serviceberry that we brought up from the MIL's house a couple of years ago. It shouldn't get any bigger than ten or twelve feet, according to the information I could find about them -- it's already about six feet tall. It's a shrub unless you trim it into a tree, which is what I've done.

I know, I know -- need to trim the boxwoods. Someday. Someday before they come to life and start walking around stepping on the other plants in the yard, especially.

Here's a shot of the one plant in the whole front yard that seems to have gotten by relatively unscathed from the tree removal and the microclimate issues that probably were what affected the other things.

Finally, here's what happens when you weed into a pot that already has soil in it:

I'm not even sure what it is, but it sure looks ... um, healthy, I guess.

Sheesh, wish it had been warm enough to work outside comfortably today. Obviously the sheep-sorrel and dandelions need to come out of the flowerbed by the driveway, and everything needs to be relieved of the load of maple spinners. I should have put gardening soil in the flower bed and the front garden spots next to the house today, but I wind up aching for days if I do that kind of stuff on damp, windy days when the temps aren't high enough. Next weekend is gonna be a killer, I can tell already -- if it ever actually decides to become spring here in Ohio, of course. Maybe it won't -- maybe it'll just stay sixty degrees until October, when it goes back down again.

Did I mention there are times I hate living in Ohio? Just checkin'.

Here are the Cecile Brunners:

I'm really gambling, here -- I want to know if putting them out into cold nights is harder than keeping them in the house too long, and I'll consider it experimentation. Marginally expensive experimentation, I admit ... but I don't have a choice, since the weather decided to go all punky here this week. I thought having them shipped to arrive around May 1 was safe. Proves having Bob Taft (upper-class twit of the week) as governor ain't the only thing that sucks about Ohio, I guess.

Here are the other starts -- progress report, I guess. They haven't totally croaked, and actually the things I expected to croak before planting time are doing better than the easy stuff. The pinks all got some fungus and croaked, and the lobelias seem to have bought the farm, as well. Some of the basil seems okay, and the myosotis (forget-me-nots) and most of the peppers -- including the ones we harvested seeds from last year -- are doing quite well:

I don't know -- I need to start hardening those again, now that the daytime temps are back above fifty, I guess. It's been kind of windy, though, during the day -- I don't want to screw them all up completely right off the bat. I may try planting some of the myosotis tomorrow, since I have so many of them and they have had at least some exposure outdoors. Worst case scenario, some of them die -- I have something like eight or ten of them that seem to be doing well enough. I can put one or two out tomorrow, then if they croak I can wait a while. Worst comes to worse, I can just order some from Spring Hill or Burpee, I guess. I want some, they smell great. I don't know how 'worth it' going through all the crap to start them indoors is, though.

The bluebonnets died, all but one. I guess they can tell what I think of Texas and what it's given the country in recent years. Ah, well -- guess that's what plants get for listening when we talk to them.

It's springtime in Ohio, none of it surprises me.

It's fuzzy reality, apparently. Hell, like I think anybody in the big BJ up there in Washington has actually been arsed to garden any time in their pampered lives. I'm sure their families could afford to hire gardeners to handle all that inconvenient dirt anyway. Dirt is too real for folks like that, I'd wager. The Queen of England probably sees more of the weather than they do.

Anyhow, since the cold tonight likely will destroy all my tulips, I went out and cut several of them to bring in. They're really pretty -- deep maroon, almost purple. I think they were called 'black' tulips, and they're roughly the same color as the last ones I had that died when I tried to relocate them. These should be okay where they are, all of them, so I won't have to go through that crap again.

Anyway, I took some pictures of the tulips I cut, and I grabbed a couple of the blooms off the mockorange viburnum in the side yard just for kicks. We trimmed it back about a month ago, so there aren't as many blooms as there usually are by now -- but I'll sacrifice a few blooms to stave off the threats of the neighbor who hates anything that grows if it gets past the fence between our yards. I don't need to hear it.

Here they are:

And, of course, none of this would have been possible without the invaluable assistance of at least one of the staff:

That's Squeek. You can pretty much count on her to get right up your ass in the middle of anything you're doing that would better be done without her 'assistance.' Gord had been by earlier, but he'd determined that none of the flowers were food and bailed out. It isn't worth getting poked and shoved out of the way if it isn't for food, as far as he's concerned. Tink had helped me upstairs, while I was trimming them down to put in the vase -- like Gord, she was convinced they were food. Not knowing if tulips are poisonous to cats (most varieties of lilies and hyacinths, including the muscaria, are), I sprinkled water on her until she stopped trying to claw her way through my wrist to get at the leaves.

The dog, Max, and Doodle were, blessedly, absent from this project. It's not that they're any better or worse about it than the rest, it's just that the dog tends to want to get in my face when I have the camera, and Doodle trails a thin stream of chaos in her wake wherever she goes, whether she means to or not.

We've set up some 'hardware' to attempt to cover a couple of the plants outside for the night -- the new weeping pussy willow, which has finally leafed out this week, and the Atlas cedar, which has been looking more and more like it's recovering from whatever was bugging it over the winter -- there are green buds on most of the branches, and new needles growing. Figures we'd get a cold snap and some snow, I'm sure that's exactly what it needs (/sarcasm).

Feh -- at least my rosebushes and flowering almonds weren't scheduled to ship until Friday (yesterday). By the time they get here, it'll be sixty degrees again and hopefully I can get them in the ground next weekend.

This should be the last of the shitty weather for the year, so they ought to do okay once they go in. I don't know, though -- I've seen cold snaps exactly like this one as late as Mother's Day before. I put nothing past the weather in Ohio. It's about as realiable as one of Iacocca's little wonders from the late seventies. In fact, it reminds me very much of my '78 Plymouth Debacle, thanks very much.

I trimmed up the weeping pussy willow, just took off the obviously dead stuff. It's dropping the catkins already and getting leaves on it -- now, I guess, we'll get a better idea of what it's going to look like most of the year. It's still lashed to an old coat stand we had that lost one of its legs and wouldn't stand up anymore. Tony just removed the opposite leg, left the other two on it and jammed it down into the ground beside the root ball. I took off any branches that obviously were dead -- since the living ones have started budding leaves, it's pretty easy to pick out the deadwood. It looks pretty good, with that done.

Let me tell you -- the first four inches of the dig were the worst. It doesn't matter where in the front yard you dig, frankly. There were three silver maples out there in a triangle, none of the three sides of which was longer than perhaps twenty feet. Silver maples top-root like crazy, too. That whole part of the yard is a carpet of interwoven maple roots with a thin skin of soil and some pathetic grass stretched over the top. We'll probably have to either resod or have topsoil hauled in to make any difference in it. At least if we did it, now, it would be worthwhile -- it would get rain and sun, now.

The Atlas cedar seems to have some little nubs of new growth here and there. I hope that means whatever I did (or the weather did, or the tree guys did) to it, it's going to snap out of it.

Trimmed the big red rosebush out front. There's a lot of new root growth on it, though some of the canes I didn't cut off completely also look like they have a good bit of growth on them, too. I snipped off all the 'dead ends' on it, the canes that obviously were dead and not going to produce this season. I probably could cut it back a lot more after this growing season, though in truth I think it's a climbing rose and probably wouldn't appreciate being scorched-earth pruned every winter.

Also snipped off several big (relatively -- it's actually a smallish thing) dead branches on the corkscrew hazelnut. I'm seeing root sprouts as far as six or eight inches out from the main graft, now. Not sure what that means -- it may mean the poor thing took some serious impacts when the monkeys took down the maples, back in the winter, and though there are leaves on the rest of it, the shock may have jarred the rootstock (which would be regular, run-of-the-mill local hazelnut, I presume) into shooting up a few suckers at a distance. Still, it looks all right.

The blue boy and blue girl hollies look a little ... well, beige. I don't know what happened to them, either. They don't look terrible, just not as good as they could. I'm guessing the shrub fertilizer I put on them last winter wasn't good for them. I kind of wonder if that wasn't what got to the Atlas cedar, as well.

My bulb bed on the back slope has bloomed. The rabbits are hell on it, though -- those indigo-colored hyacinth flowers must taste really good, since they eat the shit out of them every stinkin' year. There are also several daffodils back there that I briefly considered taking out, but then I took the same tack with them that I have with lots of stuff here -- if they're healthy and I don't want to put anything else there, heck widdit, let 'em stay. They're not costing me anything.

The weeping cherry out front, of course, bloomed full the day before the only rain we've had here in two weeks. By the next morning, all the petals were on the ground. C'est la vie, I guess -- it's kind of a fragile looking plant to start with, it's what I found most appealing about it. The leaves, when they come, are pretty too -- I just wish the branching on it was a little denser. It's been there five years and hasn't grown much. Maybe having full sunlight most of the day will kick it in the ass, too.

The stub of the flowering almond that the tree guys mangled practically down to the ground has a couple of tiny sprouts on it. That's where I want to put one of the Cecile Brunners, when they come, so I'm going to have to do something with it. I suggested to Tony maybe we ought to dig it up and sock it in the ground on the slope out back. If it lives, it does -- if not, oh well.

I should get the other flowering almonds soon, here -- I had to call and correct my credit card number with Spring Hill (talk about a curt, almost rude CSR, especially since all I was doing was making sure she could get her money!), so it may have delayed the shipping of that part of the order. They also may have a 'ship to Zone 6' date that's later than I think. Possibly, they don't ship them until after bloom. That means, hopefully, I'll get them in time to plant this weekend.

The tulips I planted last year, both in the front flowerbed and back by the entrance to the animal run, are up and pushing blooms up. Not sure if I really think they'll survive the onslaught of rabbits -- I put some of that nicotine/naphthalene stuff around them over the weekend, though that doesn't always keep the rabbits out. I think they have little tiny rabbit-shaped nose plugs that they use, this time of the year. It's the breaks of living in a neighborhood like ours, I guess. It's perfect habitat for bunnies. I did notice the tulips out by the end of the cat run didn't look as nibbled as the ones out front -- the cats and their smell probably discourage the rabbits. If I could only get Gord to pee on the tulips, they probably wouldn't eat them at all. Of course, cat pee probably wouldn't do the tulips any good, but neither does nature's only non-hoofed ruminant.

Spring Hill did send me the couple of bags of anemone corms that, basically, were free when I ordered the flowering almonds (I had a $25 coupon from the catalog to use, but I had to bump the order up to $50 to make it worthwhile using it). I don't know what to do with them, yet -- these are supposed to do okay in full sun, unlike the older ones I planted here. I think those prefer at least partial shade, they don't do so great once the weather gets good and hot.

Back when something happens.

It's a weeping pussy willow. I've been thinking about doing this for a couple of years, since the first one I saw in a gardening catalog, but until we took the silver maples out, there wasn't anywhere to put any other high-sun plants. I may as well make the best of it, right?

Also, my three flowering almonds have shipped from Spring Hill, so I should get those via UPS or FedEx sometime later in the week. Presumably, they will come in pots and I can wait until next weekend to drop them in the ground.

We bought the pussy willow last Sunday, actually, at Siebenthaler. They'd just started hauling out their potted small trees for the season last week, we walked in five minutes to close and asked if they had any. They had one. And then they didn't -- it was the exact price I'd said I'd be willing to pay to buy one locally, you see. I could have ordered a smaller, younger one from Spring Hill for about two-thirds what I paid for the one at Siebenthaler, but ... and it's a big 'but' ... I'd have had to pay $25 to have it shipped from some warehouse down around Lawrenceburg, Indiana. That kind of put me off ordering it, you see. I actually got a bigger tree for the same price, this way, since it's an older speciment plant to begin with and shipping consisted of cramming the poor bastard into the RAV4 and driving a couple of miles.

I don't have any pictures of the sprouts, right now, and I'm not too optimistic about their health. It seems some kind of fuzzy mold -- whether from the pots and peat pellets themselves or the laundry room, I don't know -- has been sapping and killing a good many of them. The bluebonnets have all died but one, and it ain't lookin' too good either. I moved all the cayennes out into peat pots, though, and they look okay; the poblano peppers I seeded a couple of weeks late also have sprouted, so hopefully I can at least manage to nurse a few plants of each kind through the next couple of weeks, until I can set up cold frames and harden them to go in the containers.

I'm having a sort of health issue right now, though, and I'm afraid it might wind up with surgery and recuperation time, so this all could be moot anyway. Stay tuned! Until I know more, here's an 'arty shot' of the pussy willow:

I disconnected the heating pads last night, since 80% of the stuff is up now. The pinks shot up within three days. Not too surprising, actually -- they always sprout. They just haven't always done well once I transplanted them. I never 'hardened' them properly before, though. Not sure when I should go out with the duct tape and plastic to set up the cold frames -- probably not before April first, I'm guessing.

The bluebonnets are doing a Godzirra, at this point. The only saving grace, judging from the jump they took off the blocks, is that no matter how insanely aggressive they are, they won't perennialize here in Zone 6 -- first ten degree day next winter will do them in completely. If they live and bloom well once they've been planted in the yard this year, though, I'll definitely have to keep an eye on them and deadhead for seeds -- they sprout pretty well; whether they grow or not is another thing entirely.

I'm determined that, barring injury or illness (mine or anyone else's), that I'll keep up with the gardening this year, once I can start it. The sorry state of the world has driven me to things about which I can at least fool myself I have a little more control, and the limited difficulty and at least marginally more controllable variables of gardening appeal to me for, doubtless, the same reasons they appealed to my grandmother (who very likely developed her abiding interest in it during the Great Depression, when about all the recreation that made sense had to cost little or nothing). You're not gambling with immense amounts of money with gardening (though the effort can be expensive in other, mostly physical, ways), but the return on ivnestment for those of us who are "into that sort of thing" is much greater than the average gambler's average return (which is, most of the time, less than nothing).

The "green stuff" I'm "into" doesn't fold into a wallet, and I'm willing to work a little harder or buy small and wait, to keep the folding green stuff that is involved in gardening from becoming an insurmountable issue.

And even if I get a floody summer, or a late frost that dooms it all this year -- the most expensive year for the garden/yard since 2002 (when we bought the ailing Atlas cedar and the now-defunct flowering almond), standing at about $150 between ordered plants, the starter beds (whcih will amortize themselves, if they work this year), and peat pots, seeds and potting soil I bought -- I still won't have lost more than I put into it. I'll have gotten something out of it, even if it's only the experience of messing it all up again.

There's yet another plant I want to buy and put in, if I can figure out a good place for it, but I'm going to wait and look around at the few local nurseries left me before I pony up $50 and another $25 for shipping to get a weeping pussy willow up from Cinci. In a pig's eye, no? The Spring Hill warehouse is apparently either on the border down where I-275 meets 'even fewer teeth per capita' land (Indiana), or else it's in Tipp City (which is only twenty miles up the road from me). Either way, I deeply resent the fact that since Spring Hill doesn't have a brick-and-boards store, I'll be reduced to paying something like a buck a mile to get a plant delivered to my door that I could drive and pick up in the RAV for the UCR .23 a mile that vehicle would cost to make the trip. And it wouldn't take more than an hour, either direction.

Meh. I'm still shirty over Groby's closing, is it too obvious? SOBs. Not Groby's -- I understand 'we just can't afford to keep at it anymore' -- the people who didn't go there to buy stuff. The shitheads who preferred Big Box retailers to local gardening centers, who will have the nerve to wonder, twenty years down the road, why all the plants they can get kinda' look the same, have a very limited range of colors, and are fake-looking.

It pisses me off, you see, because local garden centers usually make the unusual affordable to the casual gardener -- the person who's not independently wealthy, who still wants a garden that doesn't look like everybody else's. That would be me. I don't mind putting a bit more back into it, but I'm not going to bleed money into the dirt over it. Here's an interesting side note -- most of the seeds for American plants (including the Texas bluebonnets) I bought to start in the warm beds were not propagated and packaged in the U.S. They were from Ferry-Morse. Ferry-Morse is a British company. This is what I'm grousing about -- American nurseries don't even bother with the stuff anymore. They have three colors of viola, three colors of petunia, and screw you if you want anything else -- you can pay the premium to buy British seeds, or settle for the conformist crap they sell cheaply.

It will be because they traded local genetic diversity for marginal savings by abandoning the local and regional nurseries that propagated plants for reasons other than popularity, which is all the big corporate nurseries bother with.

I'll bet when this finally has happened, they'll find a way to blame somebody but themselves or CorpoBigBoxMart, too.

They will be wrong.

It will be their fault that they can only get three colors of one kind of viola, instead of the bitchin' spectrum their grannies used to grow out beside the house.

It will be their fault that all the affordable rosebushes from CorpoBigBoxMart look like plastic and flower within a narrow range of colors from saffron to bright red, and the only way to get anything different or, dare I say, distinctive will be to pay out the ass and order from Canada or overseas, or from specialty houses here in the U.S. I already had to do this to get the Cecile Brunners I ordered this year -- a specialty rose house in Austin will be providing rosebushes for me, which are hardy here where I live and which used to be fairly popular and common. But they're not showy and not every bloom is perfect, and they're pale-colored, small blossoms -- they don't look like Ronald McRosebush, in other words.

They will have starved local retail diversity and its motivation to cultivate to local or regional taste just to save a few bucks on some puny, endlessly recopied annuals (anybody seen enough freakin' petunias to make 'em yak yet? That's the latest craze, apparently...), or ugly, over-engineered McRosebushes.

They will not be offered fries with that.

They will whine.

But I will be magnanimous.

I will offer them some cheese to go with it.

Anyway, we're thinking about it. It would cost nearly $100 to have it shipped, so we'll probably rent a pickup truck from U-Haul. That costs $20 plus mileage for a day. Damned sight cheaper than having somebody else ship it, that's for sure.

While I'm willing to pay someone else to do something we really can't do ourselves, I don't think this qualifies.

Weather was nice enough over the weekend to make the shit that's coming more depressing. It's dropping into the teens for several nights, apparently, with daytime highs at or below freezing. Because it's March, and we live in Ohio, that's why.