Sunday - March 18, 2024

The last thing I said to you yesterday morning was that I was not at all tempted to work in the garden again.  

That changed about noon, when The Husband came home from the dollar store with the bag of dirt I'd asked for.  I used it to fill up the holes in the tree stump, where I planted the stuff I bought to go in them.

I didn't buy enough plants.  Even when these things mature, they won't fill the space.  But I hate to spend a fortune on greenhouse plants when I don't exactly know how this spot is going to work.  Is it going to dry out three times a day and drive me crazy watering it?  

So I started transplanting things from around the yard.  I put some ox-eye daisies around the back side of the stumps (the part that's visible from the road) and some oxalis in the front.  Some time later, after I'd already washed up and put my tools away, I had the idea that a fern would look good in the mix,  There used to be a nice fern growing behind the shed, where no one but me ever sees it.  After supper, I ventured back there to see if I could find it, and sure 'nuff, there it was, flat as a pancake against the creeping myrtle that also grows back there.  It was a strange red color - frost-bit, I imagine. When it warms up later today, I'm going to dig it up and replant it amongst the stumps.  

I still want some hydrangeas.  In my mind, I can see multiple hydrangeas in that wooded space between the stumps and the pond.  Or azaleas.  But I've never had good luck with azaleas.  

Now that I think about it, my luck with hydrangeas hasn't been so great, either.  People have given me rooted cuttings, and I have tried to root cuttings, myself.  This place would be surrounded with hydrangeas if all of them had lived.  More than a few have probably fallen victim to the lawnmower.  In late summer 2022, I stuck a hydrangea cutting in the ground in the phlox bed, and kept it watered, and it lived, but it is scrawny and pitiful - probably doesn't get enough sun under the phlox.  I leave the original stick there just so I can find it.  

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[5 Hours Later.]

It is too cold to dig up a fern today.  I tried, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn't going to be fast or easy.  The wind is whipping.  Ain't happening today.