striptease planted, nursery bed built

We got 1 1/2" of rain on Friday night, so the ground was still too wet to dig on Saturday. I ended up going to Asheville for the day and visiting two nurseries up there. Didn't find anything I had to have, and their prices were higher than Greenville, especially one nursery that was A LOT higher than the more expensive nurseries here. I ended up getting stuck in the parking garage downtown when the machine wouldn't take my 20. A guy in line behind me ended up paying for me so I could get out. After that, I headed for home, but stopped at Earth Fare on my way. I did have a nice lunch at Laughing Seed so that was good and it gave me something to do for the day.

After I got back to Greenville, I worked on trying to get the supplies to build a nursery bed. I figured it would be pretty easy: buy some lumber, get it cut, buy some sort of braces to make the corners, buy some nails, take the whole thing home and build it. Well, had some trouble getting waited on at my local Home Depot, the saw was broken at the local Lowes, so I ended at another Home Depot, where I got the lumber, got it cut, got some metal braces and got the nails they suggested, which I don't think will work, so I ended up going BACK out later to get different nails. This came to more than I expected, running about $25 for the supplies.

Earlier in the day I had seen the register covers I've been wanting a Lowes. Last time I looked at them, the "antique" color ones were marked at $19, while the white were essentially $13. This time the antique and white were priced the same, so I bought 3 of the antique for the living room and dining room.

This morning I got up not quite as early as I had hoped. I was going to spray the mosquito stuff, as it was only 58 (wow cold!) this morning, but then I worried about all the chemicals and didn't do it. Later in the day as I was getting bitten by mosquitos I would wish I had... I did a bit of weeding back where the laundry post was, spread a little more grass seed, covered it with straw and watered it in. I am hoping I can really get the grass growing in this area. Due to the rain, I didn't have much watering to do in the back, just watered a few of the pots.

My major AM project was building the frame for the raised nursery bed, with my mom's help. After I finished the first corner, I realized that the only flat surface at my house large enough for this project was the front porch and we moved out there. I also discovered that one of the boards was somewhat warped, which ticks me off as the guy at Home Depot actually picked up and loaded the wood, would have thought he might check for somethign like that, but guess not... All in all, the frame did not go together quite as well as I would have hoped, though I did like the metal braces I used as they really helped in getting it all lined up. True this is my first attempt at a project like this, but I had hoped it would be a little better than it actually is. The good news is that once it was on the ground, you couldn't really see what was wrong with it. I put the box next to the end of the camellia bed, then put down a layer of newspaper. I added a layer of straw on top of that and hope that the newspaper will help keep weeds out of the bed.

Once the box was built, it was off to Lowes (since I'm ticked at Home Depot) for dirt. Should have gone to Home Depot as Lowe's topsoil is basically twice the price. Again, buying the dirt came to more than I expected. I bought 4 1 cu ft bags of toil soil, a big bag of soil conditioner and a 2 cu ft bag of flower soil (Lowes also does not have "garden soil" except for really expensive Miracle Grow...). I mixed about 1/4 of a bag of the soil conditioner with each bag of toil soil and am hoping that the soil conditioner will make it okay for use. The four bags of topsoil mixed with soil conditioner went on top of the straw inside the bed. I then put the 1 bag of flower soil on top of that, but realized I needed a second bag. So, it was off to Lowes again where I not only got another bag of the flower soil, but also another bag of pine mulch and while standing the checkout line spotted a big pot of mums marked down to $5 (the pot alone would be $5) which had not been there an hour before and added that to my cart. The 2nd bag did the trick with some leftover.



I planted the 5 tiara hostas and the Tortilla Chip on the right hand side of the nursery bed. The idea is for them to grow some more this fall, then overwinter in the bed while I try to decide where to plant them next spring. I plan to use the left hand side to overwinter hydrangea cuttings, if I get any that make it that far. Eventually I will move the frame to a new location once the shack is torn down, so that I can expand the camellia bed, a good reason to build a raised bed. I may also plant some irises back in the bed when I divide the irises along the side of the house, because again, I am not quite sure where I want to go with them...



I was very tired out by the end of the day, may have been carrying all the heavy bags of soil. The mosquitos were quite bad down at the nursery bed. I am just going to have to bite the bullet on Wednesday AM and spray the yard.