rainy, nasty day

Another full weekend off from work and still not making near the progress I would have liked to have made. I still have one camellia that needs to be planted.

Yesterday was one of those days when finding the things you need to get the tasks you want accomplished seems to take up most of your time. I went out to Home Depot in the AM to get some more mulch, some garden soil and some composted manure. My local Home Depot was out of my mulch, but ended up getting Scott's Garden soil and some sort of compost with manure in it. Well, both of those purchases turned out to be total disappointments. Both are a sort of greyish color and the Scott's soil has a slight odor to it. I don't it NEARLY as well as I like the Miracle Grow garden soil, so it will be back to using that for me in the future. Ended up going to another Home Depot to get my mulch.

One major project for yesterday was running an additional piece of fence from the shack out to the exisiting fenceline. This needed to be done as there is a small area beside the shack where the fence is partially down, I thought I pretty much had access to that area blocked off but after having one dog escape three times this week... Of course, this task required a trip out as I needed to buy some wire cutters to cut the fencing. Did get the fence cut and also managed to scratch my face when the fencing sprang out at me. Just what everyone wants, a big scratch on their cheek from a rusty fence...

Working with the fencing has given me some more confidence and I think that in the next month or so I will just buy a few additional post and a 50' roll of the narrower holed field fencing and work at repairing the damaged fenceline between my house and my neighbor's house. This should eliminate the need for the need for the fences between the shack and the exisiting fence and clear the way for me to have the shack torn down (whenever I have a spare few hundred dollars...).

I also priced driveway gates and the gates are $67 at Home Depot, so I think I could probably get the driveway fencing done for less than $200, I hope. So maybe that is something that could get done next month.

As far as yard work yesterday, I did manage to get the large holly straightened up and staked so it will remain straight. It does look a lot better. I also took the small holly that appeared dead out of the ground and called it dead. Finally I did get the creeping phlox I had recently purchased planted by the gas meter. I did ammend the ground around it a little bit and would love to get something else planted in there before it is taken over with chickweed.

My major surprise in the yard is that the native creeping phlox I planted last year is starting to bloom. This plant has definitely done well in my yard so far. All three have increased in size and now I am getting my first blooms. I weeded around them some more to give them an easier time as they grow. I will need to contiune to weed out this area and might actually get it looking pretty good.

Today I only succeeded in moving the rhodie. It was getting sunburned where I originally planted it and I finally decided it was time to move it. I recently moved the azalea from the shrub border into the woodland garden as it was getting run over by the dogs fence fighting. I decided to move the rhodie into the woodland garden over by the azalea. Currently the shack and the nut tree provide pretty constant shade for that location. I ended up burying it in a volcano made out of the Scott's garden soil, some other commerical topsoil I have (that I have also decided I'm not wild about and will use the remainder just to partially fill containers) and the compost with manure. The resulting mixture was pretty greyish and seemed kind of wet and heavy to me. I was really wishing I had the Miracle Grow soil. I did see small bags of peat moss somewhere, so I think I will buy one of those and some of the Miracle Grow soil and mix that to fill in around the azalea and the rhodie. Maybe I will get to that this week.

I did get one bag of mulch spread by the three Toms. I need to spread the rest of the mulch at some point but that can wait until I plant the remaining camellia.

I hoping to get the Margaret Davis camellia planted on Wednesday AM, guess I can use the compost and the Scott's soil and ammendments and it should work okay for the camellia.

Bare root perennials and spring bulbs are starting to appear in the stores. I don't think I can plant any of these things until after March 15th, so not sure when to buy them as I don't want them to get ruined in the house. Saw some good stuff as Sams today, 100 glads for $14 and 50 caladiums at the same price, also bare root hostas and bleeding hearts. I would like to get all of them. The hostas aren't too exciting but for about $1 per plant I can plant them under the yucky trees on the street side of the fence in my side yard. If they thrive that will be great and help keep down the weeds, if not I won't be out a ton of money.

Did measure several of my plants today so I can maybe tell if they grow this spring and summer:
Mountain Fire Pieris- 2' 5"
Valley Rose Pieris- 1'
tea olive- 2'