Plant Rescue

I am such a scrounger. It saves money and it is kind of game for me. One of the things I like scrounging best is left over plants. The local K-mart, ShopKo, BiMart etc. are closing down their garden shops this time of year and their poor little underwatered leftovers go on sale, like from 5+ buckaroonies to 99 cents. Sometimes the manager has given them to me for free. I take them home and nurture them. I clip off the dried up stuff, put root hormone on their little roots, and water them. Most of them have survived over the years. The first year they may not bloom or grow much but the second year, wowie.

This year I got lavenders. The four little Provence above are in good shape, from a lavender farm, but I got two un-named larger lavenders (one is at the right) for a couple of bucks. You can see the yellow stuff, I look for some new growth, these even have some blossoms, and smell heavenly. The pot top center is one of six maple trees which came up on their own from the tons of seeds our maple looses on the neighborhood each spring. We are growing these for our son's farm. He intends to plant them near the stream that borders the south of his place. Silver maples need lots of water. It will be good for the maples and good for the stream, providing shade for the fish.

When I was a young scrounger, I saved money and bought the biggest shrubs, trees, or whatever I could afford. Then I acquired some patience about the same time a generous garden store manager gave me a dozen daylillies for free. Now I have daylillies enough for many people. This fall I will be digging them up and redistributing them. I am hoping to put some along the road by the kids' farm. Do you remember when gas stations gave away free packets of wildflower seeds to toss out the window for self planting? On I-5 in Washington we had daisies, cosmos, and others blooming in the center strip for years. I think I will do that again; I hope you will too.

Flowers Everywhere

We have a lot of damage in our yard from the winter snow and long periods of night and day freezing this winter. Several very tall pyrmidalis are bent clear to the ground. However on the up side, the roses seem to have thrived on it as well as assorted bulbs I had given up for lost in the last two or three years. The climbing rose on the back deck has taken off and is covered with blooms and tons of buds. This rose is spread over several trellis (trellisi?) and is shading our deck which gets the worst of the afternoon sun here.


In the back near the garage little clumps of spiderwort I planted have spread mightily, weed-like actually and are surrounding the pots of petunias we planted this year and are reaching for the ginko tree I have out there. Guess I will have to haul the shovel out and do some thinning.

Here's more spiderwort draping itself over the pink snapdragons. Some of the other things seem to be slow in coming along. Maybe we need to water more. We have already had three days in a row of 90 degree heat. Still, there are poppies getting ready to bloom and some little wild red columbine from Mt. Rainier that we planted a couple of years ago. The columbine is in the shade and it does need water. It's a long way from the forested canopy in the Cascades. We've started experimenting with plants that don't require a lot of water.

Hope your gardens are growing well in your own climate. Meanwhile we will keep searching for those xeriscape plants.