Finally, a day when it’s not actually raining. Well, not very hard, anyway. There was light drizzle on and off and the sun didn’t actually come out, but we got quite a bit done out there today.
The town had their annual plant swap in the morning. I took down some obedient plant, a couple coneflowers, and some hollyhocks, seven things in total. In exchange, I got a curling chives, an evening primrose, two late summer fuchsia colored flowers which I don’t remember the name of (edited to add that they are campions, a golden globe, chocolate mint, a something else. I kept the labels, but they are out in the garden and I want to try to remember to record them.
I also boxed up all those trillium to mail away for swapped plants. That was a huge task. These plants are so delicate, and I’m just not sure how well they are going to ship. Plus, I didn’t want to send them bareroot because they were so delicate, so I ended up spending $120 on shipping, which I just can’t afford to keep doing. I need to find some local people who want these guys, or Frank thinks we might try a nursery bed in the woods ourselves. There are probably still a hundred plants that need saving.
I got all of my new plants planted, and sort of went around scatter brained trying to weed where I planted things. The clover in the lawn is creeping madly into the plant beds, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. What I did looks really good, but we need to figure out a permanent edging for those beds. I want something that we can mow over, I think, or we’ll have to use the string trimmer every time we mow, which would suck.
We pulled out one of the Medallion roses from Arena that we bought last year — it’s dead, unfortunately. I think I put the globe flower in it’s place.
The creeping phlox is in prime form right now, and most of it is creeping right along. The purple has been blooming for a week or so, but the white just seemed to pop out over night. The pink is a bit scraggly. I think I want to split the purple and spread it out a bit more, but I have to figure out the best time to do that.
The potato plants are all popping up nicely. We were worried that Frank had planted them too deep, but it looks like they are okay. We think the reason we didn’t get much yield last year was lack of rain, so at least that won’t be a problem this year.
I spread the worm castings that we harvested last night into all of the new planting holes. I still have quite a bit yet, and tomorrow, I need to plant the glads and dahlias, so I should have enough for that.
Frank’s huge accomplishment today was turning all three compost piles. The one he turned two weeks ago or so was starting to cool off, so that one got turned from the middle to the far right bin. Then he turned the far left bin, which had warmed up to about a hundred and was also starting to cool off into the middle bin.
Then he took as much as he could fit from the pile outside the bin into the far left bin. (about 3/4 of it went in) As it settles, he will add more, and hopefully it will all fit. That pile looked awful, so it’s great to get it into the bin itself.
In the fall, we hope to have both the middle and the right bin ready to spread.
When he was done with that, he came along behind where I’d weeded with mulch, and it sure looks all nice and neat now. We work well together.
The bugs remain horrid, just for the record. I wore shorts underneath the full bug baffler, but I’ve got blackfly bites all over my ankles anyway. It was very funny to see everyone at the plant swap, all dressed in the same bug suits. It was hard to tell who was who!