Even though it was terribly chilly, I had a productive gardening day.
After a leisurely morning, Brandon and I went to the farmer's market to get a few things for tomorrow's goat roast. Since I'm dying for a little color, I was planning on getting some pansies, but ended up choosing these beautiful ranunculus instead.
Dang! We keep forgetting to bring our cloth shopping bags from home - they ended up in plastic. So much for eco-consciousness.
As we left the house, my neighbor was out planting her new things from Bluestone. I had been thinking I needed to keep my poppies, which arrived the same day as hers, indoors until these 30 degree nights passed. But, unlike me, she had bothered to read the planting sheet that came with the order which said, "don't baby them," they would be ok down to 28 degrees. Well, I felt stupid and overprotective, but anyway - glad to be able to plant today.
After we arrived back home, and enjoyed a few snacks from the market, I sifted a bit of compost to spread around the plantings using my dollar-store wire bin. These things work well for sifting small amounts. Then I started trying to figure out where to put the plants - twelve in all.
When planting in the spring while things are dormant and cut back to nubs, it's difficult to visualize how it will look later. There seem to be bare spots, but I know there are plants there too, and I typically underestimate how large they will grow - especially when lustfully purchasing new flowers.
Looking back at the catalog for reminder height information I wondered - why had I chosen 'Brilliant,' which is red, instead of 'Matador,' which is orange - my favorite color? Red can be a difficult color to blend with others and I usually pair it with just greens or maybe whites and pale yellows. But now I have red poppies to find a spot for in an area with lots of pinks and other colors I've undoubtedly forgotten.
Also at some point during my winter planning, I decided to eliminate yellows in order to simplify and harmonize my color scheme, but here I am with these irresistible, yellow ranunculus. In other words, it's the beginning of April and my plans and ideas have flown out the window.
Who needs plans? It'll all work out great, somehow.
Did I mention that I got a new camera? My heavy, broken, old clunker of a free-gift camera has served me well, but it's wonderful to replace it and finally take some decent close-ups. Nobody minds if I include a bunch of photos, since I was trigger-happy today, right?
Well, I found a place for everything and it remains to be seen whether or not I made good decisions. By the time I finished planting the ranunculus, which were last, it was nearly dark and 35 degrees. My toes were froze(!) and the pics I quickly snapped on the auto-setting used flash and looked rather eerie so I'll show you this lovely pre-planted image instead. They certainly provide a nice color-fix now, regardless if they later clash with existing plantings!
What's the purple flower?
Posted by: Will | April 15, 2007 at 08:39 AM
Yes - you don't have to baby the Iceland Poppies. I plant them here in the fall (say, November). They will try to bloom all winter, but the flower buds usually get nipped by frosts. The plants, however, are very hardy. By planting them in the fall, the establish a nice root system and will put on a much bigger flower show in the spring. If I wait to plant them in spring here, they just aren't as vigorous. But I imagine that up there, the poppies will still be trucking along nicely in the summer. They die out here by say mid-June - once it's toasty.
It's funny, I too try not to use red, and always say I'm not going to plant yellow either. But somehow, yellows keep sneaking back in. There is yellow in the poppy mixture - and how could I not plant them? I also have a dwarf Iris pseudocorus that is screaming yellow. But I love the plant! Damn yellow...
Posted by: Leslie Finical Halleck | April 09, 2007 at 09:49 AM