A big weird garlic...

Hitting the wholesale nurseries after 4 can be interesting... this is after the Budweiser's been cracked open and folks are sitting down... not me! They love to laugh at me and tell me the plants I really want are not for sale. These are the "Mom" plants or special trial plants... Then they tell me there's no way I'm going to fit all of those plants in that tiny little car... But I do! And they are impressed and crack me a beer. They are also at this time, inspired to dig me out plants from their own gardens and this is where this "Elephant" garlic came from... It' a stunningly architectural plant, creating an exclamation point in the garden, punctuating all of the pretty pretty blooms. It looks like an alien to me, some moon plant, and it REEKS! All the way home in that hot little car the garlic stinks like stink. Old Butch tells me, as I find an inch of free space for it, "Make sure your boyfriend eats some too or you won't be getting any!" Nice!



Interesting how the bloom mimics the bulb...


The last (hopefully!) load in the Scirocco! My new Subaru (new to me that is, a hand-me-down from my Mom) is on the road! The Scirocco has certainly proven it's weight in gold as a capable nursery vehicle! Thanks Shimmy for the loaner! You're my hero!

more hypertufa...

I decided to go ahead and fill some of these hypertufa troughs I made over a month ago... The mix was too light - too much perlite I think - so a couple of the rectangular ones broke when I removed the boxes. The round ones molded onto woks were surprisingly strong!


I filled them with small succulent plants, mostly various sedums, and broke some branches off of larger plants to root in and become new plants.




Run Bambi!

P is for purty

Peonies were blooming like crazy in the garden club garden...


Poppies too!

woodland transplants

I dug up some woodland perennials in one of the garden club member's gardens, but don't really have a good shady spot at the nursery, so I took them up to my friend Shane's house in the woods. I made two patches of violets (a really cool upright bunching variety), cimicifuga (which was just roots with eyes), and Pulmonaria officinalis.


Bandit is very funny... when he sees me digging, sometimes he will come over and very gently dig at where I've put plants in. Maybe someday he will understand that the digging needs to happen before and not after the plants are in the ground. I'm not holding my breath on that one!


The bloom, slightly wilted, of the violet.


Bandit in the fern gully...


Calycanthus floridus, Sweet Shrub, Carolina Allspice, Sweet Bubby, is a beautiful native shrub here in western NC. This photo is taken from the car, it is growing happily on the side of the road! It prefers partial to full shade, blooms in the spring/early summer, and all parts of the plant are poisonous! oh, and it smells sweeeeeeet!

plants...

You would not believe how many plants can be creatively squeezed into this little shirocco...


Another car load waiting to be priced... The Cornus were a real score!


These are a bunch of babies I took from houseplants...


It's hard to see from so far away (taken quickly while driving), but this is a bad ass GIRL driving the tractor baling hay! I don't know why, but I just love tractors... Hers was very cool!

changing every day!

I've been doing a lot of work to clean the edges in the front of the nursery. I've put some flower beds in the front, double dug with a lot of mushroom compost and soil conditioner...



I squeezed this Saucer Magnolia, Magnolia x soulangiana, into the front passenger seat of the scirocco... the shrubs (Mahonia!) packed into the backseat were really amazing... it's like a clown car with tons of plants piling out of it!


Rob brought me some "scrap" pieces from the stoneyard that match the stoop stone... I put all of those grading and excavation classes from school to practical use! But hey, don't I know someone with experience in the grading business? where is he?!


I've been painting lots of new signage...


This is a shot of the new flower beds in the front...

beasts

driving home from a nursery in Fletcher, NC, the other day, I came across the very big pig running down the street. It seems to have escaped....



This very big pig is in the doghouse since he ravaged the trash for half an old sandwich..


bad boy!

stuff...

sometime Bandit has to share the front seat with plants... here he is with an Australian tree fern.

Can you see the rainbow faintly in front of the cloud?


geno! your painting rocks on in the nursery! loveyou!


Today I spent a couple of hours weeding with the ladies of the garden club of Brevard and they gave me a bunch to take back to the nursery... I was politely informed that you do not say "thank you" for plants in the south - this would cause the plant to die in your garden... Instead you say "isn't it lovely!"

Happy Mothers Day!

My mom came to visit for a few days! We had a really good time, doing work in the nursery during the day and going to yummy restaurants in Asheville in the evening. Here she is with her gift of tomato and pepper starts...


Her boyfriend, John helped with many big "man" projects; the fence, securing the wonky front door and here, swapping out the yucky old gross flourescent fixtures for...


...pretty shiny new ones! YAY!


Yucky fixtures banished to the corner!


Even the bathroom got a cute little vintage schoolhouse fixture!

WHoo- Hoo - how great is a box of plants in the mail!


Unwrapped...


I got some really great little guys at the big herb festival at the farmer's mkt in Asheville... Vitex, Callistemon and Mimulus cardinalis...

My mom sent this great gauzy fabric to hang in front of the strange negative space over the bathroom... it certainly looks much prettier!



Hard to see, but the small tree in the big pot in the foreground is an Acer aconitifolium , a really special and gorgeous Japanese maple variety...


Every week more and more plants fill up the nursery... Less lately since the truck blew a head gasket and I'm transporting plants in the scirocco!

things i didn't see in New York...

I used my PhD (post hole digger) to clear the mud out of the holes Rabbit dug on Sunday and then tamped in all 20 Black Locust split rails for the perimeter fence. Being new to installing fences, I had to be counselled on using the chainsaw before or after burying the rails to make them all the same length... it's after! And no one seems to feel comfortable with me using the chainsaw by myself! So the rails wait to be trimmed down.


So yes, I screamed like a girl when I flipped over a rail and found this black widow underneath....


and also when I found this one under another... this one was much bigger than the first and I ended up smushing them out of fear of them biting some one or Bandit, who likes to mess with bugs.


I have no idea what this lizard guy is, but he seems to have made his home under the stoop stone! I don't think he bites!