I've been planting very little this spring because Granny Artemis & I
sprang for the cost of pallets of flagstones & stacking stones, to build a
flagstone patio alongside a raised garden. The price of those stones ate
up all the garden funds, though on April 2 we'll show up at the
Rhododendron Species Foundation for some dwarf rhodies I want to get to
plant in front of some big shrubs, if all I get is those it shouldn't bust
the bank, though it will be painfully hard to bypass some of the odder
shadeplants that'll be available & in past years I've not been able to
control myself.

I'm still in the midst of shifting dirt & laying flagstones, it's already
looking great. There's plenty of new area for planting as a result, where
a previously sloped area of lawn is now a raised flat area for
perennials. I moved a ton of dirt from the slope bottom that's becoming
the patio, to behind the stacking-stone wall, but can't afford to plant
that area just now. I did transplant a few things to there so it isn't all
empty, like a black-flowering hellebore that was almost invisible in its
previous location dark flower in dark spot, & it is now in the new raised
garden showing itself to spectacular effect.

I planted some rugosa roses in a new streetside garden, but that new
garden is also going to look pretty empty for the time being, & most
that's in it now had been sitting around in containers for quite a while
cuz there's no funds for new plants. Someone I last year helped
re-landscape an old garden (which he believed to be too crowded with
shrubs for his taste) hired me back this month to do some more labor, &
I'm working for pretty cheap but get additional payment in hundreds of
dollars worth of big old rhodies & other shrubs that I'm removing from his
garden to mine. It is horrible labor to get those shrubs out of the
ground & down a stone stairway that seems like a mile, but at least when
I'm done busting my back the shrubs are MINE. This morning I was digging a
big hole for the next shrub to be brought over, it'll go next to a biggish
serviceberry also recently installed. One of the smaller rhodies I brought
home from last year's landscaping for this guy, I've no idea what it is,
it is very old but only four feet tall, a small-leaf evergreen & I didn't
see it in flower last year because it bloomed so early. That one right now
has buds beginning to burst, & it so far looks creamy white. What
small-leaf evergreen rhody has creamy white flowers? I hope I can figure
it out.

I brought home a five-foot twinberry shrub I can't for the life of me
figure out where it should go so it may end up a container plant for a
while. I've a big lovely & presently empty pottery planter, because a
Portuguese evergreen cherry that had been growing in it for a couple years
got put in the new rugosa garden, so maybe the twinberry will go in that
pot for a year or however long.

Tons of bulbs are gussying up the place. As the crocus season winds down
the kaufmannias burst upward in amazingly dense drifts of waterlily-like
blooms, & every day another variety of miniature daffodil is opening up,
plus a dozen kinds of muscaris, scillas, & bellevalia getting flowerier
each day. Two species of fritillary are already blooming too. I thought
I'd "lost" the snow-white Muscari pallens, but they popped up in a
roadside location where I now realize they accidentally got lifted along
with some old daffodils; they're too tiny for the roadside garden, so when
they begin to die back some weeks from now I'll get them back into the
main yard, probably along a ledge of the new patio-side raised garden. I
think of the beginning of the year as having three parts: the crocus
season, then the daffodil/muscari season, closing with the botanical
tulips season -- with obvious overlaps. Today also I noticed that
virtually every one of our corydalises have at least their first few
blooms opened, including the Dutchman's Britches which is so damned cute
with those white undies hanging there.

It's also nearly time to lift a bunch of autumn crocuses like Crocus
speciosus, to move them before their grass vanishes & I can't find them.
I'm pondering digging up another autumn crocus, C. kotschyanus, & just
giving them a good cleaning in order to EAT them, because they didn't
bloom last year, but i may let them go one more year before deciding
whether or not they become dinner.

Early-blooming rhodies & azaleas are looking great. In full flower are
Crater's Edge, Sesame, Milestone, & PJM Elite, some others showing color
in their buds, & the star magnolia bursting into bloom too. I'm going to
hit "post" then go back outside right now & noodle around the plants some
more!

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/