Despite short funds, tight times, meals of "garbage can from the depths of
the freezer" (meals made with what I have horded in the freezer and that
isn't freezer burnt and edible) I still find myself walking past pots at
work that stick to my hands as I pass them, knowing they're reduced to
rediculous prices and at the end of my short days since they have cut hours,
I find myself needing a cart to carry my apron, my jug o' tea, my back
brace, and
whatever has stuck to my hands and has released only after I have paid for
it at the cash register..........

I have come to the realization that I buy plants for several reasons. The
first one is the obvious.........I want the largest, healthiest perennial
that comes in the back gate. I also want to try something different (if
there are different perennials) to see if they are reliable for me, my soil,
climate and crowding.

I buy plants because it's a madness, and being true to my name, I have long
realized that most of us who are truely smitten have come to terms that this
is an obsession. That I call it madness is true enough and anyone who saw
60 minutes Sunday the 10th will attest that any form of gardening on more
than the veggie scale teeters on
the brink of obsession and wasn't surprised that they featured people who
started out with just a couple of orchids and now have over 2700 of
them....... or was that 27,000??? (There was that ONE guy who moved from
New York and has a greenhouse.....)

Were I to list the different perennials tucked in and against each other on
these steep slopes would baffle and amaze even me, but the list of who has
died horribly BECAUSE I have tucked and crammed them against each other is
even larger.
That I long for more level land makes my soul ache sometimes. I want to
have a level patch of sunny land to have a little veggie garden for my okra,
tomato's, squash, beans, spinach, radishes, and berry patches. I have as
you all know a slope that one needs a short leg and a long leg to walk level
on, and I am grateful for that bit of land that I have to play with.

So here I am at work, grabbing up three pots of reduced white Angustifolia
daisy petaled zinnia's because they're 25c for the quart pot and they just
need to be
planted in a larger pot or ground. Well, ground is out, I have no GROUND
left.... a huge nursery pot is what came to mind because the next thing I
spotted were the red mums with the yellow eyes that look like fat petaled
daisies and I pictured the white
zinnia's planted amongst them all together in the pot and I thought.......
"hmmmmmmmm...... and next thing you know, I have three pots of these mums
too.

The two pots of vagigated phlox for $1 was too much to pass up last week,
and the 25c quart pots of moss rose for a pot for the scorching deck (where
my best sun is and where the lion's share of the cacti, sedums, potted
tomato's and assorted other madness sits crowding you out for standing
space).

But I purchase plants when I'm depressed and need to fill a spot in me that
needs to vent. I also buy plants when I'm ticked off at Squire......g it
could be worse, I could be buying food and be as big as a house, or
clothes........wait, I DO love comfy shirts and if I find something I REALLY
like I tend to buy two or three of them since they're gone if I go back to
get "an extra one in case I tear this one out in the garden". Those X-large
women's shirts go quicker it seems........ and that's Wally world, not like
I spend for one shirt what I spend on 5 of 'em.

But this madness will NEVER abate. Because today I got the new Dutch Gardens
catalog for fall planting.........................and I remembered that I
had some "no show's" in bulbs, which is really rare for even me, and on a
whim I called them to comfirm that they were still going to replace them
since they were fall bulbs too and I had to wait all this time for the
replacements. I had tried brodaea and they failed miserably. Well they
failed the huge nursery pot miserably. Mary Emma gave me the Lion's share
of the bulbs when they came, and she planted her's in the ground (she HAS a
yard to plant things in, on a scale that would satisfy ME for EVERYTHING,
garden, berries, fruit trees, perennials, flowering trees, flowering shrubs,
rock garden, sun garden, shade, boggy area.. she has it ALL..........but
sadly because of her failing health at her advancing age, the weeds are
taking more and more and I am unable to bring things here because they would
disappear over here in the constipated fairy beds I have at the moment.

Not to mention that her's is a gently sloping yard on a cul de sac, where
mine is a careening holler slope....

And I am NOT plugging in another sun loving perennial no matter how much I
love and adore them until I redo the front beds. And I can hear you all
saying in the background "sure, you've said THAT one before!!" but I now
have a pest of a digging puppy that does this crap behind my back......like
those two holes in the black cherry shade bed where the "taters" (woods
hyacinths) that Beverly sent me from Virginia were planted. I only hope she
didn't eat them, or if she did, they weren't poisonous. But finding holes
that even I admire has convinced me that Sugar needs to be taught she can
NOT dig in mama's flower beds or she will discover she doesn't have the
freedom she loves that I allow her to have up here on the ridge. Gods I
need a front yard for the dawgs to cavort in! sigh..........

So I called to inquire about the bulbs I lost and discover that Mary Emma
has ordered me two sets of twice blooming irises and they're coming in
September and I spoiled the surprise......and yes, they're replacing the Eye
of the Tiger iris bulbs in October, but the Brodaea aren't available anymore
this year, so they're going to credit me with the $27.95. And of the three
Schubertii allium, one bloomed so they will send me two replacements. And
one can ALWAYS find a place for bulbs.........but as badly as I would love
to purchase new narcissus, I am resisting until I can excavate some of the
western bed and sort the many bulbs that are remaining in there.

The most I might allow myself is to use the credit for a couple of choice
bulbs that I can't get anywhere. And resist urges later on to purchase bulbs
that come to the greenhouse this late summer..........

I will say that working around the annuals again has inspired me to play
with pots even more. I find myself thinking about putting a pot of Little
Bunny
ornamental grass in a pot with a clump of blue clumping fescue and maybe a
varigated lirope. Not that I particularly like lirope, but the varigated IS
kinda neat, it's tough as nails and it even blooms. Little Bunny is a small
grass, with fuzzy seed heads, and the blue fescue is whacky looking. I
found a pot with one lone, unhappy clump of Japanese bloodgrass that escaped
my eye (I didn't even KNOW we had gotten ANY bloodgrass in or believe me,
I'd purchased a good, fat pot of it) that when I reached into the middle of
the other pots, it lifted out of the soil and seemed to plead for me to take
it home. I got it for a quarter and as I picked up the pot with the soil
still in it that it had lifted out of, I saw that it must have been sitting
next to
a tri-colored sedum at one time, because there was a huge clump of it
growing out of a crack hidden by the other pots of grasses.

Plucked that outa the crack, stuck it into a plastic bag because I knew it
wasn't a weed, and I brought the two of them home and planted them in some
good lean soil together and hopefully they have enough time to recover from
the transplanting. The sedum will survive, the bloodgrass is debatable.

So the mums and white daisy zinnia's are in a tall, thick nursery pot that a
bush came in, and it sits in front of the 3/4 whacked and mattocked
forsythia I have started to pick on. I am determined to rid myself of at
least ONE of these bushes, if I have to whack away at it until it tires of
me whacking it with the mattock and dies outa self defense. It would go
faster if I had a tractor with a chain to just pull the thing outa the soft
gravelly soil. But persistant whacking with the broad end of the mattock
has pounded and severed quite a few of the larger stubs. I still have the
backside to whack away. And the pruners are coming out and I am retrimming
the other one back again. I haven't decided if I even WANT these bushes
anymore. They take up huge space in the only front and sunny portion of my
yard and with the trumpet vine as a gateway with the zebra grass and crape
myrtles on the left near
the fence, you see the fig bed and the small line of plants at the edge of
the bed at the corners. As nice as the forsythia's are, I no longer have
the room for them, not as large as they get.

If I keep one it wouldn't be able to be a perfect bush anymore because I
placed the fig bed too closely to it when I started my mad planting on this
ridge 7 1/2 years ago.

Tucked between the two forsythia's I planted a rather healthy Lennei
Magnolia a couple of days ago that I got for $5 (that's where the thick,
tall nursery pot came from I planted the mums and zinnia's into). Someday I
will laugh my butt off as I realize I was totally insane when I planted this
tree in this spot. But it will be the main focal point once you get past the
gate. One day that tree will gain a height and girth of 25 foot and it
makes me laugh to think about this tree one day being mature. I might not
see it to it's full potential, and things will change I'm sure with a few
things.

But if I were to move, I'd love to hear the people wonder just what I was
thinking about when I planted this beautiful tree in the side yard. If I am
settled here for the duration (I actually hope so, I am so tired of moving
about, and my settles have become longer and longer thru these last years)
then I will have to deal with my total disregard for who is where.....I
don't always think out what these things will do when they're mature. There
is the fig tree just a mere five feet away for one..................and BOTH
of these trees is planted not feet from the well. At least when we bought
this house I cut down the small leafed willow. That would have spelled
disaster with the well......

So now I sit here trying to come to a finish on this musing of mine. I tend
to jump tangients, but at least it's all about gardening! g The madness
will abate when I can no longer comprehend it. When I no longer am able to
see the beauty in the flowers, trees and things around me. Even if I were no
longer able to GARDEN, I would find a way to smell damp earth, to put my
hands in it, even if it were just a potted houseplant. When I get to the
point where I can't do that, and my mind is wiped of all love for all this I
so much care for that gives me such wonder and happiness, then I will not be
here. And even that makes me smile in my strange way, because even then I
will be food for the flowers..............to make someone else smile at
their complex beauty.

Thank you for the time. I appreciate that I have my gardening friends out
there that know where I am when I ramble on about this stuff. There's no
one else I can just talk about gardening like this with.

madgardener. Up on the ridge, back in fairy holler, overlooking English
Mountain where my perennials are flopping about unfettered and free in
Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

I know, I know, but what I've been doing in lieu of the fact that I have
approximately 350 species in my garden that, I will make many more plants from
the ones I have. I'm starting to get excited by the idea of large stands of
things, instead of onesie twosie.

Many of my native plants self-sow, and I've found a garden center who will
barter with me for compost or plants or anything else. I bartered with them a
week or so ago. I brought them a flat of Palo Verde, botanically called Retama
something...there are two...anyway, I got half yard of compost for it.

This fall I plan on gathering as many pods from red yucca as I can find (they're
everywhere at banks, post office, etc) and grow them in the greenhouse. I am
doing the same with some native grasses by division and trying my hand at
rooting cuttings of even more rare native species.

Then, I feed my addiction in several ways. I get to be dirty all year long in
the garden or greenhouse, and at the same time get plants or compost or whatever
else I can barter for, for FREE!

For now, I have blinders on and that's that. When the fruit trees come in the
garden centers, I'm planting a Mexican plum (mostly ornamental) and another
peach tree.

To save money, I will make lists of plants I have to trade, and list plants I
would like to trade for. I know postage is an issue with cost, but there are
ways to do it. Join a garden club and invent plant swaps everywhere you go!

Till then, I also realize bills are not paid with plants and I have had to slow
down and will have to stay that way. So, divide, trade and seeds will have to
be my new M.O..

v


On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:23:03 -0400, "madgardener" wrote:

Despite short funds, tight times, meals of "garbage can from the depths of
the freezer" (meals made with what I have horded in the freezer and that
isn't freezer burnt and edible) I still find myself walking past pots at
work that stick to my hands as I pass them, knowing they're reduced to
rediculous prices and at the end of my short days since they have cut hours,
I find myself needing a cart to carry my apron, my jug o' tea, my back
brace, and
whatever has stuck to my hands and has released only after I have paid for
it at the cash register..........

I have come to the realization that I buy plants for several reasons. The
first one is the obvious.........I want the largest, healthiest perennial
that comes in the back gate. I also want to try something different (if
there are different perennials) to see if they are reliable for me, my soil,
climate and crowding.

I buy plants because it's a madness, and being true to my name, I have long
realized that most of us who are truely smitten have come to terms that this
is an obsession. That I call it madness is true enough and anyone who saw
60 minutes Sunday the 10th will attest that any form of gardening on more
than the veggie scale teeters on
the brink of obsession and wasn't surprised that they featured people who
started out with just a couple of orchids and now have over 2700 of
them....... or was that 27,000??? (There was that ONE guy who moved from
New York and has a greenhouse.....)

Were I to list the different perennials tucked in and against each other on
these steep slopes would baffle and amaze even me, but the list of who has
died horribly BECAUSE I have tucked and crammed them against each other is
even larger.
That I long for more level land makes my soul ache sometimes. I want to
have a level patch of sunny land to have a little veggie garden for my okra,
tomato's, squash, beans, spinach, radishes, and berry patches. I have as
you all know a slope that one needs a short leg and a long leg to walk level
on, and I am grateful for that bit of land that I have to play with.

So here I am at work, grabbing up three pots of reduced white Angustifolia
daisy petaled zinnia's because they're 25c for the quart pot and they just
need to be
planted in a larger pot or ground. Well, ground is out, I have no GROUND
left.... a huge nursery pot is what came to mind because the next thing I
spotted were the red mums with the yellow eyes that look like fat petaled
daisies and I pictured the white
zinnia's planted amongst them all together in the pot and I thought.......
"hmmmmmmmm...... and next thing you know, I have three pots of these mums
too.

The two pots of vagigated phlox for $1 was too much to pass up last week,
and the 25c quart pots of moss rose for a pot for the scorching deck (where
my best sun is and where the lion's share of the cacti, sedums, potted
tomato's and assorted other madness sits crowding you out for standing
space).

But I purchase plants when I'm depressed and need to fill a spot in me that
needs to vent. I also buy plants when I'm ticked off at Squire......g it
could be worse, I could be buying food and be as big as a house, or
clothes........wait, I DO love comfy shirts and if I find something I REALLY
like I tend to buy two or three of them since they're gone if I go back to
get "an extra one in case I tear this one out in the garden". Those X-large
women's shirts go quicker it seems........ and that's Wally world, not like
I spend for one shirt what I spend on 5 of 'em.

But this madness will NEVER abate. Because today I got the new Dutch Gardens
catalog for fall planting.........................and I remembered that I
had some "no show's" in bulbs, which is really rare for even me, and on a
whim I called them to comfirm that they were still going to replace them
since they were fall bulbs too and I had to wait all this time for the
replacements. I had tried brodaea and they failed miserably. Well they
failed the huge nursery pot miserably. Mary Emma gave me the Lion's share
of the bulbs when they came, and she planted her's in the ground (she HAS a
yard to plant things in, on a scale that would satisfy ME for EVERYTHING,
garden, berries, fruit trees, perennials, flowering trees, flowering shrubs,
rock garden, sun garden, shade, boggy area.. she has it ALL..........but
sadly because of her failing health at her advancing age, the weeds are
taking more and more and I am unable to bring things here because they would
disappear over here in the constipated fairy beds I have at the moment.

Not to mention that her's is a gently sloping yard on a cul de sac, where
mine is a careening holler slope....

And I am NOT plugging in another sun loving perennial no matter how much I
love and adore them until I redo the front beds. And I can hear you all
saying in the background "sure, you've said THAT one before!!" but I now
have a pest of a digging puppy that does this crap behind my back......like
those two holes in the black cherry shade bed where the "taters" (woods
hyacinths) that Beverly sent me from Virginia were planted. I only hope she
didn't eat them, or if she did, they weren't poisonous. But finding holes
that even I admire has convinced me that Sugar needs to be taught she can
NOT dig in mama's flower beds or she will discover she doesn't have the
freedom she loves that I allow her to have up here on the ridge. Gods I
need a front yard for the dawgs to cavort in! sigh..........

So I called to inquire about the bulbs I lost and discover that Mary Emma
has ordered me two sets of twice blooming irises and they're coming in
September and I spoiled the surprise......and yes, they're replacing the Eye
of the Tiger iris bulbs in October, but the Brodaea aren't available anymore
this year, so they're going to credit me with the $27.95. And of the three
Schubertii allium, one bloomed so they will send me two replacements. And
one can ALWAYS find a place for bulbs.........but as badly as I would love
to purchase new narcissus, I am resisting until I can excavate some of the
western bed and sort the many bulbs that are remaining in there.

The most I might allow myself is to use the credit for a couple of choice
bulbs that I can't get anywhere. And resist urges later on to purchase bulbs
that come to the greenhouse this late summer..........

I will say that working around the annuals again has inspired me to play
with pots even more. I find myself thinking about putting a pot of Little
Bunny
ornamental grass in a pot with a clump of blue clumping fescue and maybe a
varigated lirope. Not that I particularly like lirope, but the varigated IS
kinda neat, it's tough as nails and it even blooms. Little Bunny is a small
grass, with fuzzy seed heads, and the blue fescue is whacky looking. I
found a pot with one lone, unhappy clump of Japanese bloodgrass that escaped
my eye (I didn't even KNOW we had gotten ANY bloodgrass in or believe me,
I'd purchased a good, fat pot of it) that when I reached into the middle of
the other pots, it lifted out of the soil and seemed to plead for me to take
it home. I got it for a quarter and as I picked up the pot with the soil
still in it that it had lifted out of, I saw that it must have been sitting
next to
a tri-colored sedum at one time, because there was a huge clump of it
growing out of a crack hidden by the other pots of grasses.

Plucked that outa the crack, stuck it into a plastic bag because I knew it
wasn't a weed, and I brought the two of them home and planted them in some
good lean soil together and hopefully they have enough time to recover from
the transplanting. The sedum will survive, the bloodgrass is debatable.

So the mums and white daisy zinnia's are in a tall, thick nursery pot that a
bush came in, and it sits in front of the 3/4 whacked and mattocked
forsythia I have started to pick on. I am determined to rid myself of at
least ONE of these bushes, if I have to whack away at it until it tires of
me whacking it with the mattock and dies outa self defense. It would go
faster if I had a tractor with a chain to just pull the thing outa the soft
gravelly soil. But persistant whacking with the broad end of the mattock
has pounded and severed quite a few of the larger stubs. I still have the
backside to whack away. And the pruners are coming out and I am retrimming
the other one back again. I haven't decided if I even WANT these bushes
anymore. They take up huge space in the only front and sunny portion of my
yard and with the trumpet vine as a gateway with the zebra grass and crape
myrtles on the left near
the fence, you see the fig bed and the small line of plants at the edge of
the bed at the corners. As nice as the forsythia's are, I no longer have
the room for them, not as large as they get.

If I keep one it wouldn't be able to be a perfect bush anymore because I
placed the fig bed too closely to it when I started my mad planting on this
ridge 7 1/2 years ago.

Tucked between the two forsythia's I planted a rather healthy Lennei
Magnolia a couple of days ago that I got for $5 (that's where the thick,
tall nursery pot came from I planted the mums and zinnia's into). Someday I
will laugh my butt off as I realize I was totally insane when I planted this
tree in this spot. But it will be the main focal point once you get past the
gate. One day that tree will gain a height and girth of 25 foot and it
makes me laugh to think about this tree one day being mature. I might not
see it to it's full potential, and things will change I'm sure with a few
things.

But if I were to move, I'd love to hear the people wonder just what I was
thinking about when I planted this beautiful tree in the side yard. If I am
settled here for the duration (I actually hope so, I am so tired of moving
about, and my settles have become longer and longer thru these last years)
then I will have to deal with my total disregard for who is where.....I
don't always think out what these things will do when they're mature. There
is the fig tree just a mere five feet away for one..................and BOTH
of these trees is planted not feet from the well. At least when we bought
this house I cut down the small leafed willow. That would have spelled
disaster with the well......

So now I sit here trying to come to a finish on this musing of mine. I tend
to jump tangients, but at least it's all about gardening! g The madness
will abate when I can no longer comprehend it. When I no longer am able to
see the beauty in the flowers, trees and things around me. Even if I were no
longer able to GARDEN, I would find a way to smell damp earth, to put my
hands in it, even if it were just a potted houseplant. When I get to the
point where I can't do that, and my mind is wiped of all love for all this I
so much care for that gives me such wonder and happiness, then I will not be
here. And even that makes me smile in my strange way, because even then I
will be food for the flowers..............to make someone else smile at
their complex beauty.

Thank you for the time. I appreciate that I have my gardening friends out
there that know where I am when I ramble on about this stuff. There's no
one else I can just talk about gardening like this with.

madgardener. Up on the ridge, back in fairy holler, overlooking English
Mountain where my perennials are flopping about unfettered and free in
Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36

Great imput Victoria. And I think that I am doing the same in my own way (I
will send you a pic if you don't mind of the fairy masses). Speaking of
wildflowers.....I have one called Swamp sunflower, that actually looks like
a coreopsis on steroids with "marijuana like leaves" and in the rich raised
soil I have (despite all the leeching of rains and such) it's well over 5
foot tall and this year it's EVERYWHERE. Do you want some seeds? The birds
adore it in the fall. I think it's a native of Texas as we have some in
common wildflowers to a small extent. But only small since I remember my
friend Michelle having two TOMES of books on Texas wildflowers that I always
wish I'd gotten when she passed away..... I never did get to go thru those
two books and they were huge. I literally live on a slope with little
direct sunlight until I cut down some trees and doing all this alone is
starting to wear on me. Especially when I work like I have to. But somehow
it will gradually get done. I have gotten better at ? housework? thru the
years, maybe I will be better at gardening like I should. lets hope!
maddie

Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and others can be grown in pots. We have
cucumbers growing up a not-so-sturdy wire fence.

Janine

Janine I have grown tomato's in pots now for going on 25 years. Even when I
had real land to have a veggie garden in Nashville, I still grew tomato's
and peppers and strawberries in pots. When we moved to Colorado and always
rented somewhere I had buckets on the balcony on the third floor with tomato
plants in them. At the house that had nothing but gravel for the back yard
which was frustrating having two sons and a dog, I scrounged buckets and had
okra, tomato's, peppers, and potato's. The potato's were a hoot. No one had
ever seen potato's grown in a bushel basket. I got the basket at the
farmer's market one day and bought soil and cut up potato's from King
Sooper's and by the fall I had about 50 pounds of my own...........Not to
slight what you said, I am the container queen sometimes! g I want next
year to grow cukes on the deck, and am thinking of just setting up a couple
of planter boxes at the edges of the deck where the sun is direct and just
do my cukes, peppers and 'maters. This year's tomato's got a late start and
aren't doing so well. And I need better soil to do this. Next year's
compost pile is going to be sacrificed for the tomato's. And I might even
grow okra again in pots just to see if I can..........
thanks for the imput though honey, I appreciate it~((hug))
maddie

You may be talking about Maxmillion sunflower, which I already have! When Mark
and I go anyplace there are plants, or watch any show on television, the
standard is, "I have that, that, yeah that, oh and that..."

The best book on Texas native plants is by Jill Nokes. One of these days I'll
buy it, but the library has it so I take it out all the time.

V


On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:44:39 -0400, "madgardener" wrote:

Great imput Victoria. And I think that I am doing the same in my own way (I
will send you a pic if you don't mind of the fairy masses). Speaking of
wildflowers.....I have one called Swamp sunflower, that actually looks like
a coreopsis on steroids with "marijuana like leaves" and in the rich raised
soil I have (despite all the leeching of rains and such) it's well over 5
foot tall and this year it's EVERYWHERE. Do you want some seeds? The birds
adore it in the fall. I think it's a native of Texas as we have some in
common wildflowers to a small extent. But only small since I remember my
friend Michelle having two TOMES of books on Texas wildflowers that I always
wish I'd gotten when she passed away..... I never did get to go thru those
two books and they were huge. I literally live on a slope with little
direct sunlight until I cut down some trees and doing all this alone is
starting to wear on me. Especially when I work like I have to. But somehow
it will gradually get done. I have gotten better at ? housework? thru the
years, maybe I will be better at gardening like I should. lets hope!
maddie