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Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
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6:00 p.m. - 2005-05-09
Flocks of phlox. Here I am. Writing about flowers again. Hey, it’s the wrong time in my cycle for Profound Thoughts or political ranting. Also I’m still spliff-less so there’s none of that goofy tangent-y spew either. It’s kids, Mike and flowers. Such is my life. After an amazing night’s sleep on the new bed I woke up feeling great! No ouchie shoulders and hips. No half-numb forearms from sleeping on my stomach with my arms beneath me. Wonderful. (*Side note to Summer Gale: I was concerned about the lack of bounce too, but everything checks out A-okay.) My body functioning reasonably well, allergies mild, and having no pain whatsoever I hit the yard like the Green Tornado. Went out to the slope and sunk the 12 phlox, 6 creeping jenny plants, and a dozen hybrid dianthus. If it were just digging a hole and jamming a plant in, it would be no biggie. However to put in new plantings on the slope I have to haul in dirt. Soil, if you prefer. Beneath the groundcover most of the slope is rocky scree, slices of slate, and dust. What little topsoil there was came out with the weeds. I shook the roots off as I pulled, but there wasn’t a heck of a lot to shake loose. The new plants will do fine. They are all creepers, but to establish a sturdy root system they need something to cling to at first. So there I was this morning hauling bucket after bucket of dirt. Doing a sabre dance in and around the good plants trying to get at the bare spots with a minimum of damage. I might be built like a stevedore, but slinging an 80lb bag of potting soil over my shoulder and pouring the dirt precisely where it needed to go while balanced on my toes on a 45 degree slope is simply not possible. Bucket brigading wasn’t much better, but at least the dirt went where it belonged. Then I had to build tiny retaining walls so all the dirt wouldn’t slide down the hill in the rain. Mostly it was just chocking in handy pieces of slate at an angle on the lower edge of the new dirt patches. Finally I could plant the damn flowers. That’s when I lost my mind. See, I’ve been so zealous with my weeding there’s a whole bunch of bare spots. Not terrible huge wastelands or anything, but enough gaps that the 30 plants I had available would hardly cover half the holes. Guess who went back to Lowe’s this afternoon and bought another 24 pots of phlox? And another 4 creeping jenny? And another flat of geraniums? And another flat of petunias? And a wisteria that had been put in the clearance rack? (poor thing!) And 2 butterfly bushes for the perennial bed? And just for chucks another variety of tomato, because hey, why stop at only 3 kinds of tomatoes? Utter lunacy. Of course to make sure my phlox and the other new goodies would have a snuggly-wuggly place for their tender widdle roots I had to buy more soil. 320 pounds of it. Stop her before she does something really rash! Wait, too late. LA’s trolley has jumped the tracks. To make things even worse I’ve infected Michael with the gardening jones. I’d brought him along to be my bearer boy. (I’m not schlepping more than a quarter ton of dirt by myself. I’m crazy, but I’m not nuts!) Until today whenever I dragged him to the garden center he just trailed along in my wake with a bemused look on his face or hied off inside to go drool on fancy pipe wrenches and such. Any horticultural questions sent his way brought the same answer, “Sure. Whatever.” Today he participated. He made suggestions. Asked reasonable questions. Offered to buy a rose tree and sulked a little when I told him we have the wrong kind of soil for roses. (It’s true. They will not grow at the Hobbit House. I’ve given up on the dang roses. Fussy divas of the plant world.) He had such a longing look on his face while he browsed the succulent section that I let him pick out a wee cactus of his very own. Not for the yard, it’s an inside plant, but it’s all his to tend and fuss over. Awww. Tomorrow it’s back out to the slope. More buckets of dirt. More little retaining walls. More phlox. Lots and lots of phlox. This ought to do it though. And then, HOORAY! The slope is on its own. I’ll still have to go in every so often to weed, but the phlox and the jenny and the dianthus will do their thing. The vinca aka: periwinkle is fine despite my trampling around on it. There’s spearmint in there too. And pachysandra and some other very nifty curlicue creeper I haven’t identified yet. Altogether it’s very pretty. A few years from now when everything has grown up and filled in that road edge slope is going to be one of those things people slow down for. “Oooo, look! Wow!” Wow, indeed. ~LA
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