Need More plants

It's a fun puzzle, watching carefully to see where things I want will come up. Between the tree crushing things and pulling up soil all over from its enormous root system and changing light-and-shade patterns, to fence building, to dumping excess sub-soil from excavations, to simply big boots tromping through the garden, I really have no idea what has survived and what couldn't make it through. I bought and planted some stuff that I'm not clear about what went where. There are new, fenced in areas that were covered in ivy and weeds before that now are bare dirt with a thin layer of mulch, ripe fields for opportunistic weeds.

So I've been buying stuff. I have a long history of over-buying for the garden, and letting things die in their pots. I'm really struggling to avoid that - at least, things should die in the ground, not in their pots! I got an email that the absolute best nursery around, Behnkes, is closing after the spring season. So this weekend, I hit Behnkes, Lowes and Home Depot all. Here is what I got:

I find that if I want common things, and especially if I want lots of them, Lowes or Home Depot may work out fine. The trick is to stop in often, because it's best to buy things right off the truck from the nursery that grew them. The big box stores are very bad at taking care of them once they arrive. So I lucked into $4 daylilies, the exact variety I was looking for, to plant in a specific spot. It's fairly rare at the box stores to find exactly what I want. I got some stuff to make a pretty yellow pot, and a tropical vine that needs to wait on the covered porch for a while, but that I hope will be able to climb my new fence.

I got blueberries at Home Depot, three varieties, to cluster along the fence in the back. The fence on that side is at the top of a steep dropoff, and I need to plant things with good roots to make sure everything stays in place.

At Behnke's, I went specifically for a lilac, and then to see what was there. I have wanted a lilac planted outside my bedroom window forever - I want to smell it at night. So there I was, bending over the pots sniffing vigorously. The one I got smells good - hopefully it'll be strong enough to come in on its own.

I got a palm tree at Home Depot. I'll put it in a pot and bring it in for the winter, probably. I have a couple of other palms, but I'm anxious to branch out (he-he).

Next weekend is the big native plant sale. I'll need to set a budget. This weekend was about $250 in plants (not counting the tools and supplies). Last plant sale was $100 - and all of those are nicely in the ground already. I keep eyeing my catalogues, with some good ideas, but I think I'll hold off until after next Saturday and see what I was able to get locally.

Part of this is rationing for the work required to plant, to make sure the plants have a chance. I put in a couple of hours outside today (yesterday was sailing), got just four of the new plants in the ground. But, I also dug up and moved a couple of scrawny sprigs that want to be bushes, and pulled up a lot of weeds. Two hours was about all I had time for. Some of the new plants have to hang on the porch until the weather will stay reliably warm, another couple of weeks or a month. I knew when I delayed my retirement date that I would miss most of prime planting season.

Forty-eight days to go.