MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

You may recall from a few days ago that a major gardening undertaking was in progress at our house.  The next day, Monday, we had delivered 10 cubic yards of a mixture of mulch, fertilizer and compost guaranteed to grow anything that had roots.  I, of course, being the doomsayer, immediately thought of weeds.  But at least they'll be super easy to pull out of this mixture.  My workers came back after their regular jobs Monday evening and loaded all this into the flower bed.  In the end, it was almost one foot deep, but with the rain coming that night and next day, and settling in general, it was going to be about 6" deep in a month or so.  And turn into rich soil by next year.

I went out to one of the local nurseries to buy some colorful spring flowering plants.  Here are my choices:

You will also see a huge roll of batting on the right side of my SUV.  Doesn't everyone carry one of these, just in case she has a quilting attack?  No?  Well, I have been carrying this baby around for two weeks and showing up at all my guild functions so that people can get the batting they need to finish their quilts.  This is part of my job as Outreach Chairperson for the guild.  However, I'm done for now.  I have some things I have to do over the next two weeks, so the batting has been safely restored to its resting place in my studio.

The red flowers are petunias.  There's a fuschia colored azalea in there, several ageratum (blue feathery tufts), blue fescue (blue-green grassy plant), golden orangey iris, and a luscious light and dark purple streaked day lily.  There's also a spreading bushy plant that's blue, which I think is called a delphinium, but I lost the tag, so I'm not sure.  I wanted phlox, which have been sold out for awhile I'm discovering, but I found a wild patch along the road out here in the countryside, and I plan to sneak up on it when it's least expecting me and dig some of it up!

Although this looks a little sparse right now, as the season wears on, the plants will spread out a little and fill their spaces.  And I can always add some pansies, which bloom forever.  The last thing I'm going to add is a white dogwood in this garden, and two whites and one red in the garden near the entrance to the driveway.

Tomorrow the workers are supposed to come back to dig up some VERY prolific spreading tea roses from a more defined garden, which they overran last year and had to be cut back severely, and plant them along the steep bank on one side of my driveway.  They bloom into the fall -- I think the last time I saw any blooms last year was in November! -- and will be both lovely to look at and useful as soil stabilizers on that bank.

SPRING IS IN THE AIR

I love blooming things, and I have always wanted to know the names of them, much like learning the names of the various fish and corals when I started scuba diving.  I believe that this pink flowering shrub growing in front of my garage is an Abelia of some sort, but I won't mind a bit if you can identify it as something else and let me know.

FLASH!  I have just been informed by the man who owns the nursery from which I bought these plants two years ago that they are called Loropetalum.  They come in two varieties:  white and pink.  And you know the rest.

Once things start flowering, I get all antsy to put more flowers in the soil.  This year I overdid it a little.  I decided that I needed a true flower bed in front of the house.  Even though the stone and brick is beautiful, the all gravel HUGE parking area in front of the house makes it look kinda industrial in nature.  This sort of appearance appeals only to one sex, and it's NOT female.

So I said to myself, "Self, you need something to soften the harsh nature of the parking area.  You need flowers.  But before you can plant flowers, you need a flower bed."  So DH had a friend who knew someone, etc/etc/etc. and we spent the day with three of the most industrious workers we had ever hired!  At the end of the day, they had removed the top 6" of gravel from the parking area near the stone wall and had built another wall about 6 feet out from the previous one, making quite a large garden space.  The bed of this new garden is nice and flat, and tomorrow one of the local nurseries will be delivering many cubic yards of soil with fertilizer and peat mixed in.

Once the soil is in place, I will happily go out to find the prettiest phlox in the area and plant it all along the new wall.  I will also put in at least one azalea, although the local lore is that you're only providing delicacies for the local deer if you do that.  Maybe I can fashion some sort of fence around and over the poor thing while it is trying to take root in a new place.

One thing that loves to grow here and seems immune to the deer is vinca.  Someone told me that this plant is periwinkle.  Of course, this happens to be one plant that I actually do know the name of, so right away I was ready for battle.  However, age has impressed on me that there are times when I am quite sure I'm right and God or fate decides to teach me a lesson, so I went to the internet to get the answer.  Turns out that periwinkle is just another name for vinca.  Good thing.  I don't relish correcting a friend, but neither do I enjoy losing a bet/argument.  It's a lose/lose situation, so it was especially nice that we were both right.  This volunteer plant is one of several that have decided to populate the steep bank that curves around and slopes down from my driveway.  I hope it invites lots of its friends to come and live here, too.

Tomorrow is a quilting day.  It's supposed to be 81 degrees down here in EBF, VA, so the pull will be to be outdoors planting things once the soil arrives.  I will have to be extra diligent in the morning so I can play in the afternoon in my new garden.

I'll leave you with a picture of Sarah W's magnificent bargello quilt.  We haven't found out who won any of the ribbons from the show at the library yet, but this one certainly deserves to win first place.  It's stunning!