25 December 2018
The Christmas present exchange between me and Our Kathleen had a touch of O’Henry about it.
from Kathleen (Cream Earl Grey is delicious)
To Kathleen (from NIVA green gift shop)
I would love to have sent the same Liquid Wisdom teapot to Montana Mary but have a long and sad history of fragile things getting broken by the time they reach her.
We had already celebrated Christmas on Christmas eve, so I spent the afternoon potting up plants for my Memorial Day plant sale.
rain gauge
In hazy winter light, the lawn sparkled but I could not catch that in a photo.
new greenhouse lean to already full
Skooter helped with digging and dividing.
A terrible disappointment: The Eryngium, grown from seed from a reputable big name seed company, that was supposed to be Miss Willmott’s Ghost, have all turned out to be just an ordinary eryngium (and this one is blooming in winter).
I am sad. I still desperately want Miss Willmott’s Ghost. If anyone can bring me a real one, I will take that person out to dinner at the Shelburne Pub!
I have had a potting soil situation. I bought the same brand from two different local stores. One shipment is normal looking and dark. One is extremely red and barky.
This kind, spray painted to mark the barky batch.
So I bought some from each source and mixed them, two parts good to one bad (at least, I think it is bad).
I think the red and barky soil is not as good (left).
Look at the difference, same brand!
The barky bags also had a lot of this.
What do you think about that, fellow gardeners?
26 December 2018
rain gauge and Frosty getting ready to help
Along with potting up starts, I did a little project. The patio I made in January of 2011 had pavers at the edge, with the water boxes that were later installed. I suddenly realized those pavers no longer served any purpose and took them out.
I crammed in some sod so that it can be string trimmed right to the edge of the boxes and will no longer be a weedy mess.
From the free wood pile by Jessie’s Fish Co, Allan brought home an armload of plastic venetian blinds. He had asked me months ago if I wanted them for plant tags. At that time, I was tired from work, had no intention of having a plant sale, and said no. I had been regretting that no and was thrilled the slats were still there.
now chopped into plant tag length, four per slat
The potting continued with hellebore seedlings and divisions of golden oregano.
I am keeping track of the time I spend on this project, and the soil, and will divide that by any profit I make to see if this is a worthwhile thing to do after we retire. (I have dreams of a plant stand at the Saturday market.)
Allan got round to photographing a gnome (made by Wendi Peterson at a Basket Case Greenhouse winter workshop) in a downtown window.
27 December 2018
I continued on a doomed mission to remove as much Ficaria verna (lesser celandine) as possible from areas of the garden where it is taking over. It no doubt came from plants I brought from my mother’s garden. It goes dormant in summer, so during the time when I was taking plants while we had her house for sale, its tiny corms hitched a ride.
little round leaves on the run
I am unlikely to win this battle. I do love the bright yellow spring flowers.
I debated cutting down more dead perennial growth with The Toy, but what is left still looks beautiful to me.
Chelone (pink turtlehead)
We had made a trip to The Planter Box to get some pots back; I have been donating all my extras back to them before I decided on having a plant sale.
potted up some hens and chicks in these cute tiny pots
The only hen that has made no chicks is my favourite one that I bought for about $8 last spring:
Sempervivum ‘Gold Nugget’ is, so far, ungenerous.
After dark, I took a break from daily reading to watch just one episode of Gardeners’ World. I know if I go down that rabbit hole, my reading plans will end for the winter so I must resist. But…just one…
I trusted my memory so can not tell you the location of a garden right by the sea…
with a wonderful greenhouse…
…where the gardeners mulched with seaweed.
They said it helped to repel slugs and snails.
I wept with the tenderness of the visit between Carol Klein and Beth Chatto, one of my all time favourite inspirational gardeners.
30 December 2018
We’d had more rain. and now I had a semi-squally winter afternoon for more potting up of plants.
This time, I worked partly in the greenhouse making cuttings. Wish me luck; it would be wonderful if these take. I was advised in a workshop of yore and by my friend Ann to use perlite. I had one small bag of the stuff, but found it hard to stuck the cuttings in so I made a mix of half perlite and half seed starting mix.
I used santolina (green and silver), escallonia, rosemary, hardy fuchsia, red and gold twig dogwood, and a few other plants.
Maybe the ones in the lower right should have fewer leaves (olearia, just an experiment).
Skooter chose to not help out in the iffy weather.
sound asleep by the bathroom sink, the warmest room in the house
31 December 2018
We had ice! Definitely a reading day.
My sarracenia did not mind the ice.
My plant sale stash is growing, but no more will be added till the weather warms up again. We did not dip down into the 20s so I did not have to cover these.
I learned this month that while planting in the ground is not a task I enjoy, I love potting up starts and making cuttings. I found myself wishing that I had kept my previous home, which was zoned commercial, so that I could have had a weekend nursery.
Wishing you a belated happy new year as I finally got around to writing this on January 17th!
Next: some of the reading of late December.
