I decided that this weekend would be all about gardening. A little bit about getting my computer network back up and running like it should be too, but that’s boring, so I’m going to talk about gardening.
My plan was to go around a bunch of garden centres and things yesterday. I only ended up going to two.
I first went to [Native Plant Source](http://www.nativeplantsource.com/) in Breslau (that link doesn’t go anywhere terribly useful at the moment. I’m linking it in the hope that it’s fixed some day in the future). It’s a neat little place down a back road off Highway 7. It all looks a little bit scruffy, but the lady there was very nice and helpful when I described the currently day lily-infested area of my backyard and how I’d like to work towards making it more like a natural forest glen type of area. So I now have a few plants to start with there (along with the few trilliums and [jack-in-the-pulpit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arisaema_triphyllum) that are already there.
I haven’t planted those yet, though. I’ll have to get to that this week sometime.
I also went to a more conventional garden centre. I was going to go to a bunch, but since it’s after Victoria Day, their prices weren’t bad and I just picked up what I was going to get and headed home.
I got a flat of petunias and a bunch of giant marigolds.
I pulled out one of my cedar bushes in the front. It was in pretty rough shape. Not quite dead, but too ugly to live. The other bushes are getting scraggly too and keep getting smushed by the snow in the winter. They’re probably going to come out soon to, but not this year.
Speaking of pulling things out, one of my trees died in the back. This is really sad. It was the one that was being strangled by a clothesline. It had buds in the spring, but I guess it decided it wasn’t worth making another go of it. I’m going to have to get it removed.
Anyway, petunias and marigolds.
I suppose I could be a bit more adventurous, but I know how these plants work, and they’re cheap and pretty low maintenance. Hopefully by the end of the summer, the marigolds will be taller than the bushes they’re currently hiding behind and I’ll have a blanket of petunias.
Planning all this stuff out is what makes gardening fun, really.
Petunias! Lovely! And very good for window boxes (or planters on decks) because they trail. What colors did you choose?
And marigolds are always a good choice–very robust, and also repel mosquitoes.
Something you might want to consider, Squirrel, is to invest in moisture crystals and use them in any new planting. These funky little crystals swell up and hold water like crazy–they supposedly are a great way to conserve water since they will just sop it up (instead of it draining/evaporating away) and then the plants can access it from the swollen crystals and stay wetter longer. My sister loves that stuff–she discovered it when she lived in a nasty hot desert area in New Mexico. She said none of her plants would have survived without it! I just bought some, and am going to try working it into the soil of my existing lawn (which is in dire need of rejuvenating…and I’ve noticed certain spots just don’t hold the water well at all and so look dry and start to die if I don’t water them almost constantly). I’ll let you know how it goes :)
http://www.soilmoist.com/
http://watersorb.org/