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The roses are all in the ground! Thanks mainly to Georg. Who is King Awesomeness of Awesome. I did lots of weeding too. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the soil is up there. I remembered it being horrible, hard clay. But the top few inches were actually kind of loamy and soft. (No wonder the weeds like it so much!) I guess mixing in a truckload of compost and then piling a truckload of mulch on top does make a difference. Who knew?

We used the "poor man's irrigation system" recommended by David Terry: poke holes in a plastic milk jug, bury it next to the rose, and fill with water. I was kind of surprised by how fast the milk jugs drained. I thought the water would trickle out for 15 minutes or more, but actually it drained out so fast, it was almost hard to fill. I guess it doesn't matter since the water is getting deep into the soil & not sitting on top or evaporating.

We wanted to get the roses planted by today since it's supposed to rain a lot overnight. Although I read it was supposed to be pouring by midnight, and it's 11:30 now, and it sure doesn't look like it's going to pour in a half hour. Maybe it will just start a little late.

I hope the roses like their new home! It will take them a few years to get big if the saying is true: "first year, they sleep; second year, they creep; third year, they leap!" In the meantime I got morning glory seeds to cover the bank. I hope it isn't difficult to make them grow down instead of up. I guess I can encourage them by staking strings down the bank for them to twine on. I seem to recall they like twining.

What a relief to feel like myself again! I hadn't even realized what a mess I was. I think yesterday was the first day I truly felt back to normal. I only worked a couple of hours in late afternoon, but it was a good productive couple of hours. Weeding the bank by the road, where we're going to put the new roses, and digging one of the planting holes. That makes 2 of the 5 holes dug. Unfortunately those were the two easiest holes & the rest won't go so quickly. Still, I feel confident that we're going to get all the roses in the ground before my surgery. Another relief.

I didn't see any more aphids when I watered the roses today, but just in case I bought some neem oil from the organic gardening store in Carrboro. Which seems to be 1/3 organic gardening supplies, 1/3 fancy flowerpots and lawn art, and 1/3 hydroponic gardening supplies. I guess it's the store for rich hippies who grow pot organically, in fancy containers.

Tonight I didn't get home in time to do any gardening, but Georg did an amazing amount of weeding. We will defeat the weeds! They are no match for us!

We had a wonderful dinner tonight. Grilled pork tenderloin and vegetables with bourbon molasses barbecue sauce. I love barbecue so much.

As a lark this year I decided to try growing artichokes. They're doing great so far: ten cute little seedlings. Today I realized that to figure out where to plant them, I need to know how big they're going to get. My vegetable garden says to space them 2 feet apart, but doesn't say how tall they grow. So I searched Dave's Garden for photos, and found this. Holy moley. I think ten of those would fill the entire front yard. That photo is from Southern California; here's hoping they don't get that big in this part of the country!

Did y'all know the Durham County landfill is having free dumping every Saturday this month? They're open late too: from 8 to 3.

We discovered this when we showed up there yesterday morning, and found a line about 4 times longer than normal. Luckily the line moved very fast, since no one had to go over the scale. Unfortunately we weren't dumping, just there to buy a truckload of topsoil. The topsoil is gorgeous. Black, rich, and crumbly. We're adding it to the new bed at the front of the yard. Which is coming together, unfortunately not as fast as I would like. I think it's going to take another 2 truckloads after this one to fill the bed, but we only have one more weekend before I have to take a month off. Well, we can only get done as much as we can. As long as we get enough dirt on there that I can plant my seedlings, I'll be happy.

After the dump I had to go to a work meeting for a couple of hours, and Georg did a ton of weeding on the bed along the driveway. Because he is awesome. On my way home I got my roses from the mailcenter, which took up some time getting them unpackaged and watered and so forth. After that I dug the hole for the Crepescule by the house. The place where I had intended to put it had a couple of big tree roots right under the soil, so I decided to remove a big salvia a couple of feet over and put the rose in that spot. Problem solved! I think the Crepescule is going to look really nice there. The flowers are orange & it's supposedly a robust good repeat bloomer, and disease resistant. Which is important to me because I'm not willing to spray synthetics. I figure I'm making a one-time investment in roses as an experiment. If they can survive with good soil and the occasional treatment of organics like "Cornell formula" (baking soda and horticultural oil), fantastic. If they need constant pampering and weekly fungicide sprays, then I don't want them in my garden.

We also put down landscape fabric and bark chip mulch on the path around the septic tank bed. I really need a better name for that bed. I mean the area where we took out the septic tank a year ago. Last fall I planted asparagus in there so maybe I should call it the asparagus bed. Although there aren't any signs of life yet from the asparagus.

Anyway, last summer the path around that bed got all weedy and it was kind of hard to walk around it. So we put down landscape fabric and that big chip mulch. I must say, I was surprised by how much better it looks. That whole area looks so tidy and pulled together now.

I feel like I did some other things here and there, but now I can't remember. Still, it was a lovely day. Beautiful weather, nice to be outside getting things accomplished. I'm trying to focus on garden tasks that, if I do them now they will save us work later on. Like covering the path now, before it gets all weedy.

Today hasn't been as productive, because first of all, we're both tired from yesterday. And secondly, Georg had to work and then we had a party to go to. Which was a lot of fun, it was the birthday of a friend we don't see nearly enough. We have an extra hour of daylight tonight so I may still get something done.

My rose order from Ashdown arrived today! They had sent me a statement saying they were being shipped on Tuesday, and by yesterday when they hadn't arrived yet, I was beginning to get alarmed and wondering if they had been lost in the mail. But no harm done, they were actually shipped Thursday and only spent two days packed up in a cardboard box.

Two cardboard boxes actually: their big box holds four, and they shipped the fifth in its own box. (I had ordered a sixth, a pale yellow/apricot climber called Lady Hillingdon, but it died over the winter. No big deal, I have plenty enough for what I need.)

Here's what I got:

Crepescule
Awakening
Mme. Alfred Carriere
Reve D'Or
Colonial White

They're all climbers. Most of them are for the bank along the road, but the Crepescule is for the side of the house. The roses all look healthy, and came in big pots which were still moist. I was expecting tiny little babies based on customer reviews on the Gardenweb forums. Well either the Gardenweb folks have higher standards than I do, or Ashdown paid attention to the feedback and started selling bigger roses, because mine are a nice healthy size. Much bigger than other shrubs I've ordered by mail. (I do concede that a couple of them are a bit small for the pot size, and I guess they must have agreed because they gave me half-off the smallest one.) A couple of them even have flower buds already! That was a nice surprise.

I gave them all a good watering and put them on the shady side of the house, to give them a chance to get used to sunlight again. By the time I get the holes dug they'll be acclimatized and ready to plant!

Now, the bad news. One of the roses was infested with aphids. That one was shipped in the big box with three others, and after two days inside a cardboard box, the other three have aphids too.

I wrote to Ashdown and asked them if they have a policy about sending roses with aphids (i.e., is this normal, do they give a credit for the hassle, etc), and also what should I do. In the meantime I isolated the one with really bad aphids from the others, and also isolated the one that had been in a box by itself.

Also while watering them I used a blast of water to knock off the aphids. Which worked better than I had honestly expected. I guess aphids don't hang on that well. I probably didn't get them all, but if I do it again every day, that might actually get rid of the little bastards.