frantic planting

Cold night temps are on the way starting tomorrow, so today I worked frantically to get things in the ground. This AM before work (had to leave for work at 1 PM) I was able to get the dead nettle planted in the shade garden near where the possible one surviving bareroot bleeding heart is. It looks great and really does light up a kind of dark area.

After that it was off to the front yard side of the fence. I put the two potted bleeding hearts into the shade border along separated by a hosta. I also noticed that Jordan's family had cleared the weeds out of their little flowerbeds and had planted what looks like a few salvia and gerbena daisies. Good for them! While I planted the bleeding hearts, I also tried to do a little weeding, as the "grass" around the forsythia is basically weeds.

Next up, it was sun border time and in went the 3 stonecrops along the side of the house. First I pulled out all the weeds so the area looked a lot better. The dirt there was really nice and practically no tree roots so the whole thing went very quickly. I also worked to weed around the creeping phlox. Two of the native phloxes are almost touching. There is a little area between the stonecrop and the phlox where I have decided I will sow some of of the four o-clock seeds in a few weeks.

Once all that was done, it was pretty much time to get ready for work.

Since I didn't get to do anything yesterday due to the mess with the cars and all, I decided that maybe I would try to work in the yard tonight. I went to Target on my lunch hour and bought a battery operated lantern (also good for eating in the gazebo after dark) and some batteries.

WhenI got home from work, I decided to plant even though it was a bit colder than I had hoped (55 as I type this). I started by planting the flying dragon, because I think it is now too top heavy for its pot and I'm sick of always have to stand it back up and afraid it is going to get hurt. The whole for the dragon didn't take too long to dig (but apparently longer than I realized). While the water was sinking in from the part-way through watering, I looked over at the coral bells and noticed that the two that keep looking bad were looking bad again. So, I decided to plant these two coral bells while I was waiting for water to sink into the dragon. The main time consuming part here was just clearing the surface of the dirt in the area I wanted to plant. I had originally intended to try to plant all 6 coral bells tonight, but due to the dragon having fallen over again, it took priority. When I finally got done filling the dragon hole and had mom water it again, and got the two coral bells planted and came inside, it was 11:30 PM. YIKES!!

Tomorrow I should be okay with coming home from work and planting the remaining 4 coral bells. This will really reduce the number of little pots I have to move around. Once the coral bells are in, then it will be a matter of working on getting stuff covered with pine needles and moved into the house.

Today I planted:
1 dead nettle
1 old fashioned bleeding heart
1 native bleeding heart
3 stone crop
1 flying dragon hardy orange
2 Silver Scrolls coral bells