more garden pics

The skin under my eyes is itching like crazy this morning. The only things I know I'm allergic to is Downy (makes the backs of my knees break out in a rash) and poison ivy (big time--didn't appear until I moved into this house--the start of my love/hate relationship with the place). So I don't know if I touched something I shouldn't have while I was in the yard yesterday and then rubbed under my eyes. Or I used a lotion with alpha hydroxy in it which I understand can make you more sensitive to the sun. I try to stay out of the sun--I'm pretty fair-skinned--but it seems strange that the problem would appear under my eyes, since I didn't put the lotion there. Or maybe that's why, since the lotion also has sunscreen. I don't know. Anyway, I'm able to wear my contacts (thank goodness!) and I'm trying not to touch where it itches. I've taken a Claritin (which I actually keep on hand for when Timber's allergies kick up) and it's helped the itching a little bit. But it's weird.

I got some violas yesterday--yellow and sky blue--and put them in an urn-shaped white pot. I thought I'd gotten enough blue ones, but I actually need to get another 3-pack of blue and take out one set of the yellows. But it's a pretty combination, very happy. I also got one pot of soft pink wave petunias and one of hot pink, and planted them next to each other so they'd mix together. They're in the raised bed by the driveway and I'm hoping they'll hang over the edge. I'm going to see if I can find some lime green creeping Jenny--the kind that looks like little coins strung together--and some dusty miller, and maybe some ageratum. That should take care of that raised bed.

I was at one of the oldest small nurseries in the area last week. They always had a nice selection of annuals for planters--they obviously kept up with the various trends--as well as a small but nice selection of perennials and herbs, at very reasonable prices. You could spend $30 and come away with riches. Unfortunately, the original propriator retired and sold the place a couple of years ago and I must say, I have rarely seen such a boring collection of annuals in my life as I saw there Friday. No perennials at all. Tomato plants, marigolds, red geraniums, an uninspired selection of pansies, coxcomb... My guess is that the place isn't long for this world unless they take a crash course in "Reading Your Customer Base" and study some upscale garden catalogs and magazines.

That leaves me with two grocery stores, a farm store, K-Mart, and Wal-mart to look for plants. There's a very nice nursery about 12 miles from where I live, but you know--I'm not so sure the van would get me there and back.

So I got online yesterday and found some on-line garden sales. I was looking for dwarf goatsbeard and Casablanca lilies, which I found on sale. I didn't find the white dwarf astilbe I was looking for, but maybe next year.

Here's a few garden pictures:

This is before I put the petunias in, but what you may not notice is that the giant pile of woodchips isn't there. I moved it around front to the potty spot. It's been sitting there on the driveway for--I forget exactly--2 or 3 years. It had partly broken down into sort of compost, but I figure that will still keep the weeds down and soak up the dog pee. Something had been living in it--I collapsed a few tunnels as I shoveled--but I was greatly relieved that there were no nests of creepy-crawly thingies in it.

I'm trying to decide what to do here. I love the wave of sweet woodruff flowing down between the planter box and the tree. :) There are asiatic lilies in the planter box, and this year for sure I'm taking out the whites and pale pinks and putting them somewhere else (I'm also searching online for a mixed collection of creams, yellows, golds, and oranges to freshen it up. Maybe I'll mix in some daylilies). At one point I had medium-sized green-and-gold hostas in front of the box with some gold sedges--it was a nice contrast of shapes and textures--but they've disappeared, and I'm not sure what to try there now. I'm thinking of planting a yellow climbing rose in front of the tree--I wanted one to go up the trellis there, but have had to face the reality that that space just doesn't get enough sun. You can also see some chartreuse hosta on the left and alchemilla on the right. The tree thing is actually a rose-of-sharon that I've pruned hard into a topiary, which it hasn't liked very much, but I've never liked it very much, which is why I keep it pruned. It needs its first haircut--it's supposed to have 3 round poufs on top. There are some yellow daylilies behind it, beside the planter box, and at its feet are two blue hostas, but there's something about this bed that hostas don't like, since they have about 4 3-inch-long leaves each, and they're supposed to be medium-sized plants. I'm thinking of digging them up and moving them again, which would set them back another year, but might be worth it if I could find a place they liked better.

I'd forgotten about this little patch of stonecrop. Nice, isn't it? Those tiny round leaves. And the ubiquitous ginger--it's a nice bit of coincidence that the two shapes echo each other, but that the size of the leaves provide a contrast to keep it interesting.

Catmint--nepeta--blooming. I'm thinking about moving a piece to the driveway bed, because I want a soft blue like that to separate the magenta spiderwort and red-and-yellow columbine from the neon red rose (this is the bed where I put things I didn't know what else to do with), and catmint blooms off and on all summer. But this year I may go with ageratum, which, being an annual, will bloom all summer; the columbine cuts out after June. I used to take pieces in to Annie--catmint is almost as good as catnip as far as cats are concerned. :)

This is one of those pictures that didn't quite come out, darn it. The columbine is darker, more blue and less lavender, and the sun shining through the heuchera leaves was something to see, but didn't photograph well.

The perennial nursery next door to the dying one had some of the new Dove columbines. I love them--they're incredibly elegant, tall, with long spurs, milk-white. This is, of course, supposed to be my green/white/silver garden, but somehow I wound up with these blue columbines in it. I almost bought some of the Dove columbines--they would look just fabulous here--but the blue has self-sown so enthusiastically that I know I wouldn't get it all out, and I've read that if you grow several columbines together they'll start cross-breeding and you wind up with stuff other than what you wanted. I might actually have tried it anyway, but this nursery's plants were really sick-looking--and I still might have tried nursing them back to health if they'd been, oh, half-price. I'll have to keep an eye out for an end-of-season sale.