Garden Update

Yesterday was the first break since this unseasonable heat started, so after dinner I raced outside to plant the perennials and annuals we’d bought last week. In went the yarrow, orange-red avens, mystery colored campanula (no label on the variety, just a nice fat healthy plant and the name “Campanula” on the label), and over two dozen bronze-leaf begonias (one of my all time favorites) and white, purple, pink and salmon petunias. Petunias thrive here in Virginia. I think it’s all those cool nights and hot days. Last year I had just fountains of petunias all over the garden, and that was from a $1 clearance flat I grabbed at Lowe’s. I love that clearance rack. What the clearance rack at Filene’s is to a New York City gal, the discount plant rack at Lowe’s is to my life as a country gal…

So in went the flowers last night. The butterfly garden got weeded and new plants added. The cocoons on the buddleia still haven’t hatched. John speculates that nature won’t let them hatch until the buddleia leafs out, so that the babies have enough food.

I’ve got a new yellow theme going up in the island flower bed in the middle of the lawn, and the poppy – the sole survivor of my first forays into poppy growing – has perked up. One half of the bed contains plants with all sorts of yellow and white colors: Stella d’Oro daylilies, yellow yarrow, yellow echinacea and echinacea White Swan. I’ve got a big white snowball bush there too and white peonies. I’ve added white petunias. On the other end of the bed are my pink crepe myrtles, lavender, Echinacea purpurea, and now hot pink petunias. I think it’s going to be a love it or hate it with the color.

Wonder of wonders, the echinaceas I grew from seed last year have started budding. I’ve got White Swan, purpurea, and a yellow variety whose name escapes me now. The yellow echineacea has just started sending up flower buds – I feel like a proud mama at graduation!

The scabiosas are blooming like mad now, and my purple and white iris that smells like a grape soda pop is just about to bloom. The new irises in the back of the garden are also sending up at least one tentative bud. I’ll finally get the answer to the question, “Which survived? The blue or pink irises?” since I can’t read my own handwriting in my garden journal where I recorded what I planted and where last fall.

Best of all, out of my five peonies I bought from a catalog and planted in the fall of 2007 – four survived, and three of the four have masses of flower buds. Peonies are one of my all time favorite plants. I am stalking my Festiva Maxima now like a crazed fan outside of a starlet’s window.