After work today, we went out (finally!) to start to dig up those trillium. I still haven’t quite figured out how we are going to ship them, but we found many, many plants. I filled up all the random pots I had in the basement, sometimes putting two or three small plants per pot. They were really hard to dig up, for the record. Very delicate, easy to break the stem off the bulblet thingie, and not easy to get a good rootball. Because this was so recently a very wooded area, many of them were growing between tree roots, making it almost impossible to dig out.
Frank found this gorgeous painted trillium just beyond the area where we have cut. He was looking for an area to perhaps transplant these guys, or maybe put them in a holding bed? They clearly grow on the edge of the woods, because where we are cutting now has them like weeds. We also found many Jacks in the Pulpit and Solomon’s Seal as well.
After we filled up the trailer with the pots and called it a night, it still hadn’t started raining again, and the grass was sort of dry, so I went ahead and mowed it on the highest level. Frank attached the grass catcher so that we didn’t have the wet clippings all matted down. It didn’t work very well, though. It didn’t attach properly or something, so there weren’t many clippings.
He added what I had to the new compost bin, which now has a new front to it, which he built out of scrap lumber that he had in the basement. I think it looks quite lovely, especially when you consider that the whole thing cost nothing at all. We are turning into Yankees, frugal as can be.
In the old compost bins, the report from the thermometer is that they are heading back down, under 100 degrees now, so Frank wants to turn them this weekend if we get anything resembling decent weather. We are hoping to get two full bins to spread in the fall. We need it! We are actually considering buying some to get us through the season, but I don’t know if we will break down and do that or not. It sure feels like cheating.
The pond is becoming a regular frog bar these days. I chased away another wading bird of some sort, and Frank caught this adorable shot of two frogs on a rock in the middle of the pond. The noise they make at night is pretty amazing. I’ve been sleeping with my door open, and have had to shut it because they are so loud!
The black flies were so incredibly thick, it was like a fog out there. Even with the bug suits on, we eventually got driven in because it was just miserable to work in that. I’ve got bites all over my ankles because I guess my pants weren’t tight enough down there. I can’t wait until these guys finish, which should be any day now. When it’s just mosquitoes, I’m hoping the mosquito magnet will do the trick and I can have my garden back.