planted limelight

I got off work early yesterday and my three day holiday weekend started today. I had not been feeling well earlier this week and I ended up sleeping in until 10 AM. This was not entirely in the plan. Before we could go anywhere, I had watering 911 as my front hanging basket was badly wilted and I wanted to get the veggies off to a good start for the day.

Yesterday we got a sasanqua camellia to put in the foundation bed and while looking at other things, I realized at Limelight hydrangea might be the perfect thing to go between the small beautyberry and the pieris. So, it was off to a few stores today, as well as Sams Club for 2 bags of potting soil.

When we got back home, I spent some more time on the neverending project of pulling plantain weeds. I was working near where I planned to plant Limelight, then weeded out the area between the two plants. I was pretty hot while I was digging and it really took a lot out of me today, but I got the hole dug and Limelight put in. I think it looks great! I may put something small on either side of it to sort of finish out the bed a bit more.



My dog did a number on my Double Pink hydrangea, knocking a whole branch off. I cut the end and am going to try to root it in watering. In rooted cutting news, I potted up the Blushing Bride and Merritt's Supreme cuttings and will start transitioning them to the outside world. My one biggish Ponderosa tomato seedling finally seems to be growing and it may make it after all. I am going to start moving it out to full sun with no roof overhead. The other tomato seedlings seem to be coming along very slowly.

I still need to do something about the poison ivy. When we were running errands today, I forgot that I wanted to get a big box to use as a screen in some of the areas I am going to have to spray.

hostas dug up- 2, hostas planted- 1

The forecast changed and we did not get any rain today. That was good as it allowed me to work in the yard, but due to the forecast for rain, I didn't really have any plans for the day.

My first task of the day was to finally dig up the one 'Julie Morss' hosta by the 'Generale' hydrangea that is looking pretty terrible. When I got it dug up, it was surrounded by other roots and some of its own roots were dead. This plant had been planted bare root straight into the ground, so I don't know if those roots were ever alive or if all the root competition killed them. I potted it up and will eventually give it to someone.

Despite thinking that I did not want to waste my day pulling plantain weeds, I got started on that again. This time I was working back closer to the camellias, trying to pull them in areas where there actually WAS grass, so that those would stay grassy areas, not get taken over. I probably spent over an hour doing that.

I called Bobbie just before noon to see if she wanted to get together. We went to lunch at Stax, then over to look at Mrs. Phillips' yard and have dessert. Bobbie was thrilled with the 'Ponderosa' tomato I gave her. I do hope it grows well for her. Mrs. Phillips' yard looks really nice. She also lost a lot of the old wood on her hydrangeas this year, she thinks the late freeze and the super cold night early in the year might have done it. So, its not just my plant, it was just a bad year for hydrangeas. She does have a HUGE hydrangea that is quite exposed and covered in buds, I might see if I can take a few cuttings off it later this year. She also gave me some tall irises, some are two shades of blue and others are two shades of brown. I have to figure out where to plant them now. I might plant a few along the house where I have the two daylilies now.

After I got home, I dug around in the area where I had dug up the hosta and got rid of as many roots as I could. I then planted the 'Abiqua Drinking Gourd' hosta there. I'm not sure if this will be a good place for that hosta, but for the time being, I'm giving it a try. I dug up the 'Elegens' that was crowding the carex. I'm going to give Bobbie and Mrs. Phillips each an 'Elegens'. I don't think either of them has a blue hosta. My final task of the day was to get the water sprouts cut off the bottom of the Bradford Pear. It no longer looks like it is wearing a skirt and now looks like a tree again.

planting under the pecan tree

Yesterday was my day to go in late to work, so I was out in the yard early trying to get some things done. I got the whole place watered first, then set to work on a little planting. I planted hosta 'Orange Marmalade' back under the pecan tree between the Teller Red hydrangea and the astilbe. Then I planted the golden spiderwort kind of between the hosta and the hydrangea, but set back a little. The hope is that the spiderwort will spread out and fill in that area, kind of making a (20" tall) ground cover in this area. It has little blue/purple blooms and is supposed to bloom all summer.


I cut back some of the junk privet near where the 'Orange Dream' Japanese Maple is so that it shows up a lot better. It is still a tad close to the hydrangea, but until I can get the shack repaired/torn down/whatever I want to leave the junk privet in place to block the view of the falling down shack. Speaking of privet, several of the largest privets are in bloom right now. While it is pretty, blooms mean seeds and seeds mean more of that garbage in my yard. It is never ending...

Once the planting tasks were complete, I felt compelled to tackle the grass a bit more. My yard is being taken over by plantain weeds. I picked an area in the shady part near the fence and pulled as many plantain weeds as I could for about 2 hours. My fingers are still red and sore from this. Then, I spread Black Cow (my bag is sort of waterlogged, so I need a new bag) over the newly seeded area, spread shade grass seed and watered well. I really wanted to get this done yesterday as the forcast was for several days of rain and I figured that would help get the grass seed off to a good start. My *latest* plan for the grass is to pick fairly small area each month and weed it and seed it in the same fashion. I'm hoping by sticking to a pretty small area, I can maybe get it watered well enough with the hose while I'm doing my other watering and will be able to get grass to grow. I'm going to get some of the sod and seed soil to spread over the bare areas before seeding, as that seemed to work well in the two area where I used it last year.

Today (Thursday) it was supposed to rain all day, but was just cloudy until late afternoon, when it finally did rain for a few hours.


Hydrangea 'Together'