Friday Tuesday Garden Blogging

1) Because I knew it was going to rain for three days following; and 2) because it's AP portfolio submissions week and my Poor Wife is using up camera batteries like the Bush administration went through substandard military hardware, except productively. It is her camera, though I wish she wouldn't use that as an excuse to treat it like it's her camera.

Dead nettle (pinkish flowers) and Siberian bugloss (blue) showing why I put up with their constant attempts to take over the entire yard. I knew the nettle was intrusive--it's intended as a groundcover--but the bugloss not so much. Its flowers are an etherial blue, though, and the foliage is nice the rest of the season. What I didn't know about the nettle was its shape-shifting; I bought only the white, with white flowers, and now there's three leaf patterns and at least that many flower colors. The little hosta, one of my favorites, is Chartreuse; the blue one's Halcyon.

More evidence of the takeover, plus the eared pot, picked up on a lark, which was the first non-terra cotta pot I'd ever bought. That year my Poor Wife decreed No More Terra Cotta in the garden (she was, as usual, right), and when I went back to the store they didn't carry 'em any more. This is the first time it's gone in the garden, instead of being displayed in its full glory, but I thought it looked great with the red double impatiens. The stone pot (with the 12 Apostles carved on the side) holds the just-now mass marketed exotic impatiens, which are hooded, and which violate the standing principle of No Yellow Flowers After Easter rule, but I liked 'em and the red ones were too lipsticky. The big hosta is Hadspen Blue; the tiny one Gingko Craig, another personal favorite. The one in the middle is Patriot, or Independence, or John Wayne Totally Kicks Commie Butt, or something; I bought it because Fire and Ice, which had just come out, was sold out. You might also note the Lily-of-the-Valley around the stone pot, one of my Poor Wife's favorites, which I planted like three years running without telling her and which didn't show up until five years later.

One-eared gargoyle and bush rose.

In the foreground is the new trellis our neighbors sprung for because we didn't kill their animals over Spring Break. When I suggested it my Poor Wife said she was concerned about the dangerous-looking tips on those coils. "Look, they're not sharp," I said, fingering one. "That's what I mean," she said. I suppose I could have arranged things better for the picture, but that's just Tuesday's state of potting stuff. The glowing red neon stool under the table in the corner used to be uncleanable white, so I painted it in March with plastic paint. Burgundy plastic paint. Never buy paint from Goldman Sachs.