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Finally started gardening again today. We started with a trip to the farmer's market. The plant vendor area is only about half full, but my three favorites -- Messenbrink, Archer Lodge and Bramble Woods -- are still there. Their prices are a little higher than the big box stores, but it's so much nicer to buy plants that were grown here in NC, so you know they're suited to the climate. Not to mention having an expert to talk to about how the plants will handle the conditions in your yard. Last fall the guy at Bramble Woods warned me not to buy something that was a tender perennial unless I had a place for it indoors. How many Home Depot employees would do that?

It was especially nice that the guys at Bramble Woods and Archer Lodge remembered me, even though we hadn't been there in a couple of months. The guy at Archer Lodge gave me his email address and said they're working on putting their catalog online. When they do, I'll be able to email them and tell them what I want, and they'll have it waiting for me at the farmer's market the following Saturday. God bless the Internet!

So what did we buy? Well, we got some ground covers to go under the hydrangeas. Creeping jenny for the sunnier parts of that bed, and peacock moss (selaginella) for the shadier parts. The creeping jenny is a light lime green that turns chartreuse in sun, and the peacock moss is a darker blue-green. The guy at Archer Lodge suggested them. They look nice together and I think they'll look great with the hydrangea foliage.

We also started buying perennials for the bank along the driveway, which is now the vegetable garden. Two rain lilies, two coreopsis in dark pink and white/light pink (colors I hadn't seen before), a yarrow, a butterfly plant called "blue mist shrub," and a silvery foliage plant whose name I forget.

Also we admired the beautyberries, which are showing their berries now. Birds are supposed to love the berries in winter. Georg suggested we make a small round bed out in the sunny part of the yard, put a beautyberry in the middle, and smaller perennials around it. I think that's a wonderful idea. We can put other bird feeding plants around it, like dwarf echinacea. And we can use those extra bricks to make a ring around the bed so it's easy to mow around.

After we got home I went ahead and planted the ground covers in the hydrangea bed. Georg watered the vegetable and herb gardens -- did I mention that I planted brussels sprouts a few days ago? My seeds never came up, not one, so I bought seedlings from Home Depot. I hear that brussels sprouts actually taste better after frost, so I'm not worried about planting them so late. Anyway, the baby brussels sprouts are doing well so far.

Then I took a few hours off to wait out the heat. Once it had cooled off I did a little weeding around the bed under the oak tree, and around the blueberries. They are looking good! Two of the four are going like gangbusters; one is growing at a respectable rate; and the last one (the one which had gotten completely covered by weeds over the summer) is at least still alive and seems to be sending up new growth. I have more work to do out by the blueberries, but at least I took care of the weeds that were right near them.

After that I mowed the lawn. Which is always a big job because our mower isn't self-propelled. A rechargable electric mower is great: it's so much quieter, you don't have to fool around with gas fuel, no fumes, and less maintenance too. But there are downsides, mainly the motor is underpowered compared to gas, the battery runs down after about an hour, and it's not self-propelled. Still, it's well worth it.

Anyway, the point of that digression is that mowing is a bit of a chore with a push mower. Especially when you let it go for a few weeks and the grass gets really long, as we had done. I don't know if gas mowers do this too, but the electric mower has a bad habit of stalling when you push it through long, thick grass. My tips for preventing a stall are to go slowly, overlap already-cut grass so that only half the mower is passing over the long stuff, and if you hear it start to stall, stop (or even back up) to give the blades a chance to clear themselves.

By the time I finished mowing it was almost 8. At which point we realized that we weren't going to make it to the drive-in movie which started at 8:30. Oh well, we were sociable last night.