What a nice day in the garden. Actually, to be honest most of the day was spent on garden-related shopping. We went to the farmer's market, which has gotten really busy now that it's warm. We had a short list of things to buy -- a lime thyme, a French tarragon, an epazote, poblano peppers and tomato plants, if the heirloom tomato people were there -- and we found everything on our list except the poblanos.
The heirloom tomato people from last year weren't there, but there was an herb vendor who had heirloom tomatoes. We got Cherokee Purple and Zebra Green, a green tomato with reddish stripes. We've already got a Better Boy and an Early Girl. All we need now is a cherry tomato. I really like Super Sweet 100, it's done well for us in the past, but I've only seen it in 4-packs, which I'd rather not buy because we only need one. Here's hoping we find a single plant soon! If not I'll just buy a 4-pack and give the rest away.
We also bought a few things we hadn't planned on: borage, "toothache plant" which I've also seen described as "eyeball plant," a special gaillarda, a couple of geraniums with really unusual foliage, some hens and chickens, and one of my favorite annuals: bat face!
The garden center at the farmer's market closed last year, and we noticed this morning that the space had re-opened. It's now called "Market Imports" or something and sells lawn art as well as indoor tchotchkes. It looks to be really expensive, and I don't think we'll be buying much (if anything) there, but it was really fun to browse. I think our favorite things were the chickens and piggies made of scrap metal. They also had a watering can made of a 55-gallon drum that I really liked.
We also hit the concrete lawn ornament place across the street, where I scored the moai two weeks ago. We were looking for a bird bath, of which they have many, unfortunately none were what we wanted. At one point I said to Georg, "I'm just looking for something more contemporary." We looked at each other and I said, "I know, in that case what am I doing here." They have a pretty wide range of styles there, just not contemporary. Still, we did have fun looking at everything and I took a bunch of photos.
We ran a few errands on the way home, and then it was time to plant! I got all our purchases into the ground. Except the hens and chickens which Georg planted. I also planted a Cecile Brunner rose which my friend David gave me. The funny thing is, I went to his house yesterday to surprise him with a rose, and it turned out he had a rose for me! I gave him a Secret Garden Musk Climber, which I had just ordered for myself, because I knew how much he likes old-fashioned single roses. I planted the Cecile Brunner in a big clay pot because I'm not sure yet where I'm going to put it in the garden. It looks really nice in the pot actually; I might leave it there, as long as I can remember to water it!
The garden is doing pretty well if I do say so. It's such fun to watch the perennials get bigger every day. Some of them are starting to bloom, and luckily we have the pansies for color until the perennials get going. The only big bummer is that something ate all the artichokes I had potted up last weekend. The entire seedling was chomped right off! I still have the two that I planted in the new bed, but the eight in pots were razed to the ground. Dang.
While I was planting, Georg weed whacked down by the road. By the end of all that we were both pretty tired! So we decided to have dinner at the Q Shack instead of cooking. On the way home we stopped at Lowe's to check out their bird baths. Turns out they don't have any! While we were there, I picked up another packet of artichoke seeds. They don't fruit the first year anyway, so it doesn't matter if they get planted late. Also we browsed the plants, and discovered that they have poblano peppers! Yay! I've been looking for them for weeks, and had just about given up. In fact we were on the verge of buying some other kind of pepper at the farmer's market, but in all the hubbub we forgot. How lucky was that?
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