A half-finished corner

A day spent digging, until the weather came in, at least. Doesn't look at all spectacular, and the lawn is a little worse-for-wear (since it's had half a tonne of soil and rocks on it for the past six months), but very happy to have that little white cherry tree (centre) in place at last.

For those playing at home, that assortment of twigs and trees from left to right is (not including the trees right along the fence): the grafted weeping mulberry, dwarf white cherry, thornless lemon (at back), my beloved Moorpark apricot (largest), and the dwarf black cherry (far right).

Underneath so far, and so small most are almost invisible, are a couple of volunteer broad beans, three Salvia leucantha, two Penstemons (I think "blackbird" possibly, cuttings from an unknown variety in my mother-in-law's garden), one surviving peony (forget which), "Munstead Wood" David Austin rose, a prostrate caper, some Gaura from self-sown seedlings transplanted from the front garden, "Sandford" raspberry, and far too many Oxalis pes-caprae (Sour Sobs) that I just can't seem to stamp out. That seems like a lot, now that I make a list, but there is more depth to this area than appears in this 'in-progress' shot. And, let's face it, I tend to over-plant. 

From Saturday, there'll be a couple more plants in here because it's ROSES COLLECTION DAY! Wheee! 

The Bargain Hunter

So, there is this giant hardware store (let's call it 'S') that has fairly recently opened up quite close by to me, in direct competition with another giant hardware store that is also quite close. I have discovered that S's attached garden centre often has the most amazing bargains. I think they buy up so-called unwanted stock from various places and then flog it off really cheaply. My first favourite bargain was finding caper plants for the basement price of $2.50 each. I was astounded enough that they even had caper plants, let alone for that price! Naturally, I snapped up two of them.

My second best bargain was three deciduous magnolia plants for $13.95 each. They're small pots, granted, but a bit of a gamble in my area and I'm not sure if it's cold enough so I didn't want to spend loads of money on them (I have 'Merill,' 'Stellata' and 'Susan'). Anyway.

Here is bargain #3 which I got yesterday: Five roses for $1 each. I could have taken up to 'six per customer' except that I could only find five that I wanted. For the record, I have three climbers: 'Golden Showers' (terrible name, isn't it?!), 'Zephrine Drouhin' (a pretty name to make up for the previous...) and 'Pinkie', then one shrub rose, 'Apricot Nectar' (because when I went to a rose show - where I was by far the youngest person present except for a number of small children who'd been dragged along by grandparents - it was the only rose which really caught my eye), and a ground cover rose called 'Our Rosy Carpet.' I have places for all of them - I think - except for the ground cover rose which I have no flipping idea where it's going to go.



And to think all that time I spent making lists of roses, muttering over the prices, and making agonising decisions about what to put where, and how X would have to wait until I could justify it, and Y was probably not quite gold enough, and Z wasn't a repeat flowering rose so I wouldn't get it, and then all it took was one ultra-cheap rose sale for all that ground work to go out the window and I just bought whatever took my fancy at the time. Typical!