I’ve been so busy doing stuff in the garden that by the time I get in and get cleaned up I am too pooped to post. Saturday I went to Eric’s. The weather called for some rain in the morning so I finally put my rain barrels out. We didn’t end up getting any rain that day. It didn’t rain much at Eric’s either but it was nice and cool to work. He bestowed upon me 7 clumps of maiden grass, a bunch of iris, a generous start of Celestial rose and two recycle bins of rose campion. He was doing some spring clean up and moving and I jumped at the chance to take his cast offs. We stopped by Lowes and I picked up some fern leaf dill, parsley, catnip, a yellow carpet rose, and what is labelled as a female arctic kiwi. I say ‘labeled as’ because there were a number of plants mislabeled. Well… they were mislabeled unless we started calling kiwis figs, figs blueberries and I am guessing blueberries kiwis but I didn’t look at them. I found the kiwi I ended up buying on the clearance rack for $4.99. I figured at that price I would take my chances. I know its a kiwi and worst case it is a male. If that happens I still end up with a very pretty ornamental and if it is a female that means more fruit in a couple of years. Win, win as I see it.
I made it back home in time to get the maiden grass in before it started raining. I went to the faucet to try to get washed up hook up a hose to water what I had planted and broke the darn thing trying to get an old ring off that had broken on there last year. I tried pliers and it was too much for the old pipe. So much for washing up and watering. Break out the 5 gallon buckets.
Sunday was filled with rain all around us. I picked up 1/3 of a barrel of water in the busy barrel. I tried getting the broken 12″ pipe out back to the valve in the basement but it is rusted on pretty good. I’ll try some WD40 as soon as I think to pick some up at the store. That should hopefully do the trick. Until then I am left carrying water out from the bathtub in 5 gallon buckets once the rain barrel water is used up.
During lunch today Eric and I went to a nursery and another Lowes. I didn’t pick up anything at Lowes though they did have a red carpet rose I would love to have had I not just picked up a Pixwell gooseberry at the nursery along with 2 cayenne peppers and a grape tomato plant. After work yesterday I was able to get the Celestial rose as well as the gooseberry planted and some weeding done in the herb bed.
Today I planted some more of Carol F’s hostas around the trees and the 25 quinalt strawberries that came today from Indiana Berry went in a barrel, some in the herb bed and some in one of the flower beds. I thought I would try using them as a ground cover. I also planted all of the rose campion and the two pepper plants. I finally took the last two figs out of the back porch. They are pretty late in breaking dormancy but I gave them a serious hair cut last year and removed all of the growing tips. They started waking up this week so they are out to get a few hours of filtered sun to ease them in. I think I am going to try planting one of the smaller figs on the south side of the house as a test. Perhaps if I protect it with some leaves during the winter it will do well over there.