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Famed mail order nursery Bluestone Perennials is having an end-of-the-season 50% sale on everything until June 1! The prices are outstanding: packs of 3 perennials for $6 - $7. I didn't go crazy, but I did order a few things. Mostly blue and white flowers, which we're trying to get more of in the garden.

It's kind of getting late in the season for planting perennials, especially little mail order perennials. I think we might just  stick them into a bare spot in the vegetable garden where they'll get regular irrigation. Maybe even leave them in their pots and sink the whole pots into the veg beds. Then in the fall we can find permanent homes for them in the flower garden.

I have to plug the Durham Garden Center on Hillsborough Road. Georg heard a radio ad for them, and we went out today. It was great! A really nice selection with excellent prices. It's not as big as the plant section of a big box store, but way more of their stock is the kind of plants I like. They had some things I had never seen before, like pink verbena-on-a-stick.

They also sell pots -- not that many but again, mostly in styles that I like. They even have rough dishes and troughs made of a course concrete mix, like hypertufa (although I don't think it actually was hypertufa). Really pretty! I'm going to look around the yard and see if we have a good place for one of those. And they have a small indoor shop with organic fertilizers and pesticides.

I'm so happy to find a good nursery with good prices that's 5 minutes away instead of 45 minutes. Since they're so close, we didn't have to load up like we would at the farmers market. We got a few things: two packs of gazanias (which I think are among the cutest annuals out there, and I don't understand why they aren't as popular as petunias or marigolds), a pack of white-and-green shade annuals for the new bed, an african daisy with really interesting spoon-shaped petals, an ice plant with yellow flowers, a "ham and eggs" lantana, a peach verbena and a hardy geranium.

In the fine tradition of directions that make no sense to anyone but me: take Hillsborough as if you were coming to my house, but instead of turning onto Cole Mill, keep going. Go past the part where Hillsborough runs parallel to I-85, past the transmission shop that was so nice to me a few years ago, and it's on the right, just past the office of the persnickety plumber who redid our bathroom. If you get to Sparger you've gone too far.

Yesterday we went to the big open house at Plants Delight. It was great fun, as usual. The best part is their extensive garden, where you can see how the plants look massed together, and in combination with other plants.

We only bought a few things, that we haven't seen anyplace else: a hardy fuschia (wow!), a bright blue hardy geranium, a spreading ground-cover-ish perennial called fringed campion silene, a crazy-cool phlomis with a tall stem and a series of yellow pom-poms of flowers, and best of all, a cross between hardy amaryllis and crinum lily called amarcrinum.

Today we finished adding soil to the new bed, which is looking nice if I do say so myself. The zinnia seedlings are starting to come up and we're slowly filling it in with other plants. The big thrill of the day was that Georg put a drip irrigation system in the vegetable garden. Yay! While he was doing that I planted everything we had bought yesterday. I didn't want the amarcrinum to suffer the same fate as our hardy amaryllis (eaten by voles! Heartbreaking!) so I made a wire cage to plant it in. It was kind of a pain to clip all those wires, and I tried to do a good job of folding all the cut edges in so no one in future will accidently cut themselves digging in that spot. I accidently made it way too big, but what the heck, now the amarcrinum has lots of room to grow. At Plants Delight they had an amazing clump of hardy amaryllis. I can dream that someday our amarcrinum will be like that.

ps: I almost forgot: we have a tomato! One tiny little green Early Girl tomato. Today at lunch we had a salad with mint, green onion and sugar snap peas from our garden. I have to say, just-picked sugar snaps are a revelation. Almost a different vegetable. It's like the first time you eat a home-grown tomato. I think it's partly because they're so fresh, and partly because we're picking them younger than the ones you get at the store. My only regret about the sugar snaps is that we didn't plant more! Each plant doesn't make that many peas. We might only get one or two more meals out of them. Next year I'd like to plant two or even three times as many.

It's been 2 months since the new roses were planted, and today Georg and I took a gander to see how they were doing. It's been raining so much that we haven't needed to water them, and so I hadn't taken a close look at them in a couple of weeks.

Mme. Alfred Carriere: Dead, dead, dead. Our one major rose failure. My fault entirely. I had ordered 5 from Ashdown, and they shipped four in one box and one -- this one -- in a small box by itself. The other four kept themselves moist enough, but Mme. Alfred Carriere dried out more by itself. I didn't realize this, or didn't realize how important it was. I watered them all at the same rate, which wasn't enough for poor Mme. Alfred Carriere.
      By the time I realized what was going on it had died back mostly. But three little shoots of new growth showed up, and I thought it was going to be okay. Then we had that hard freeze over Easter. All the new growth froze off, and it's been dead as a doornail ever since. Alas!

Crepescule: Has bloomed several times already, with three more buds ready to open and several more tiny buds. It has lots of new growth, seems to be growing fuller rather than throwing out long canes. It will get more sun when it grows taller, though it seems to be doing fine now. A touch of powdery mildew, nothing to worry about.

Colonial White (Sombreuil): The smallest of the roses that survived, it's doing well. Has two new canes up. May not flower this year, but that's okay!

Awakening: Looks great. Growing fast, sending out lots of sturdy canes. Only problem is, they're growing straight up. We want them to hang down and cover that slope. No big deal, we can peg it -- bend the cane down and attach it to a peg in the ground. In fact I should do that soon. I hear it's easier to do when the canes are young and still flexible. It has one big bud that will open soon.

Reve D'or: I think this one is doing best of all the Ashdown roses. Growing fast, in just the shape we want, has bloomed several times. I need to weed around it though. I'm going to try and do that tomorrow.

Secret Garden Musk Climber: These two came from Roses Unlimited and were planted much later (one a month ago, one only two weeks ago). They both look fine and are starting to send out new growth. Though of course they haven't had time to establish as well as the others. No flower buds yet. I've read that you're supposed to pinch off the flowers in the first year, so they put all their energy into root growth. Yeah right! I couldn't stand to do that.

Cutting: Two weeks ago I knocked a small branchlet off one of the Secret Garden Musk Climbers, and tried to root it. It's supposed to take two to three weeks, and I think it is starting to take root. It doesn't look at all wilted, and when I gently tugged on it, there was resistance. If it hadn't rooted, I guess it would have pulled right out. My only concern is that the leaves are turning yellow. Maybe it needs more light? Tomorrow I'll move it into a spot that gets some direct sun.

Mystery Rose: Cleaning up some debris on the sunny side of the house, we found a mystery rose growing against the wall. It must have been there all along, and I don't think it's ever bloomed. The plant looks healthy though. I'm going to give it this year and see what it does. If it doesn't bloom, or we don't like the flowers, we'll dig it out this fall. (The rose people call that "shovel pruning.")

I finished the path! Fourteen bags of mulch in all.

The hardest part was moving Tiki Man. He weighs 180 pounds and I probably should have waited for Georg. I just really wanted to do it myself. I had a hand cart -- which we found in the shed a couple of weeks ago! We have no idea where it came from or how long it's been in there. Maybe it came with the house? Anyway, good thing we didn't buy one.

The hardest part actually was when Tiki Man tipped over and I had to lift him up. Well no, the really hardest part was when he tipped over the second time. I almost gave up then. But I got him upright, wiggled him into place and then stuffed more dirt under one side so he would stand up straight. I think maybe I should plant something in front of him. Maybe nasturtiums.

The Massive Archiving Project is done, at least the copying phase. My friend Joe's duplication equipment made things go about 4 times faster. The burn time is about the same as my computer, but my computer only has one drive. Not having to rip to the hard drive, then burn onto a blank doubled the speed. Plus Joe has two duplicators, doubling the speed again. I spent about 11 hours over there last week! I hope I didn't wear out my welcome.

Next we have to make labels. Which might turn out to be even more time-consuming of a job. Because I am a perfectionist who isn't happy with the labels iTunes prints, oh no. We can't do anything the sensible way. (Well, we did the duplication the sensible way. But not the labels. Definitely not.) I have a label template set up in Quark Xpress that I really like, and I'm trying to figure out how to import label information from iTunes into my Quark template. My main problem with the iTunes labels is that they lack key information, like composer, featured artist (i.e. if it's a duet with a guest singer), and label (i.e. Capitol or Decca. Too many uses of the word "label" in that sentence).

Today I was tired after all that copying yesterday, so I only did a little yardwork. Put in a few eggplants and a purple verbena, and made a path from the sidewalk to the vegetable garden. Well, I didn't get the path finished because I ran out of mulch. I always drastically underestimate the amount of mulch I'm going to need. If I think I've got way too much, I'll run out. And if I think I've got it just right (as I did today), I've got less than half what I need.

So I weeded the path -- this was the hard part, digging out those hateful vines -- laid down landscape fabric, and put down the mulch I had. This evening Georg got more mulch, which I'll put down tomorrow. It will be a nice path when it's done, I hope!

For dinner we made a sort of hash, with leftover chicken and fresh vegetables. Including an onion from the garden, and the rest of the spinach. It was all bolting so we pulled it all out and cooked it. Ah well, it was nice while it lasted. We'll plant it again in the fall and hopefully we'll get a couple of months out of it again.

I was reading an article somewhere -- it doesn't matter where, somebody runs this same article every spring -- about how everyone wants to grow vegetables and then people inevitably realize that with all the money and labor they sink into the garden, they are growing tomatoes that cost $5 each or what have you. I think that, first of all, equations like that are meaningless because few people grow food crops to save money. A suburban gardener isn't a small farmer; they're doing it for fun! Just like the reason I make clothes: so I can have exactly what I want that fits me right, and because I like sewing. That's pretty much exactly why I grow vegetables. So I can have unusual varieties, that taste good and fresh, and because it's fun.

Secondly, those appalling cost analyses of your home-grown produce are only that appalling in the first year. When you add up buying soil, the lumber for your raised beds, tools, tomato cages, fertilizer, etc etc etc ... yeah, you're spending an awful lot of money and you haven't even bought your plants yet. Not to mention the backbreaking work of creating the beds.

But the costs -- both in money and labor -- drop enormously in subsequent years. (And I also think the harvest gets better as you gain experience, which further improves the equation.) This year we spent ... well about $3.50 on compost to add to the beds, and how much on seeds and plants? Probably about $20 total. No, wait, I splurged on those fancy-pants fingerling potatoes. Let's say $30. I think that's a fair investment for as much as we're getting.