Menage à Trois Bingo

Went to the Sugar Creek garden center this morning and acquired several new plants: basil, rosemary, lavender, three varieties of tomatoes (Roma, Sungold--yellow cherry style -- and Old German--a red/yellow striped slicing tomato) some phlox, a few decorative perennials with purple foliage called Persian Shield, some strawberry plants called Hulaberries that produce white berries supposedly flavored like pineapple, and the weirdest thing of all: a Ketchup and Fries plant. It's a cherry tomato grafted onto a potato root system. We could not resist it.

But I am still going to have to go to another garden store. Despite their really cool variety of plants, Sugar Creek didn't have my favourite of the varieties I planted last year and I want it again: Cherokee Purple. Giant dark red/green to true purple slicing tomatoes with a delicious intense flavor.

Something we didn't buy, but will probably go back for: a shrub called Nishiki Willow. Long branches with white and pink leaves at the tips. They'll look fantastic against the brick of the house, but I just planted flowers in the place they would need to go, so we'd have to move those first, and we didn't think we had time to plant everything else we bought and still do that too.

One that looks nice. And not too expensive.

I have an empty spot in the border beside my house where a rhododendron bush used to be, and I'd like to fill it with something. But given that the rhododendron died--I think it got too dry and hot over there after the big tree in the verge fell over in a storm and was removed some years back--and the one at the other end of the border is dying, I don't think replacing it with a rhododendron is a good idea. I might also consider evicting the other rhododendron in favor of something more likely to thrive.

The space is maybe twenty square feet (5x4 or so), east facing and not shaded except by more shrubberies to the north and south, and reasonably well drained. Height-wise it could grow to about fifteen feet before it blocks a window, though any new plant at the other end needs to be shorter--maybe max eight feet. I live in the city of St. Louis. Climate references for the area probably list a bit more rainfall than we actually get, since storms have a habit of tracking the rivers and often miss us completely while they soak the rest of the metro area.

Remaining plants in the vicinity are (north to south) a white dogwood surrounded by a magenta azalea, [insert shrubbery here], three big burning bushes, a none-too-healthy pink rhododendron, and a thriving thirty-foot holly tree. There are some ivy and hostas surrounding the base of the holly tree.

Called Christine this morning. It's been a while since I had talked to her, and I recalled that her baby's due date was Aug. 1. Lo and behold, she's currently in the hospital. But no baby yet. It's not so overdue as all that, since they'd changed her due date to Aug. 6, but they did a test yesterday that showed that all the amniotic fluid is gone (?) so she was admitted for induction. She's not getting dilation, however, so if the current drug doesn't induce dilation she'll have to have a cesarean. Either way, there should be a baby within 72 hours.

Baby baby baby nom nom nom!

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Jennie is also in the hospital today; she's just had an abdominal surgery intended to prevent gastric reflux that could eventually have caused rejection of her new lungs. All is well so far, she's out of surgery and in recovery.

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One of the things I was concerned about when we left for Huntsville last week was that the peaches on my tree were thisclose to being ready for picking. I was delighted, on our return, to find that they had ripened to almost perfect, and the tree was still loaded down with peaches.

The tree has been in my yard for six or seven years. Each year, it's been covered with blossoms, has set a plethora of fruit, but something has happened between spring and harvest. There were the birds and squirrels. There was the big windstorm that blew them all down. There was the freeze right after blooming. But this year, they made it all the way to the end.

We started by picking up the windfalls and freezing the good parts of those. We picked a few more and made up baskets for the nearest neighbors, along with a few cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden (we have cucumbers coming out our ears but for some reason the squash plants all died almost immediately). It felt so good to give away our very own produce.

But this morning, between when Tammie left for the hospital to sit with transplantmom and when I left for work, Someone or Someones Unknown picked all the peaches left on the tree. GRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Reminds me of the time we came home to find that Someone had chopped the top off of our baby oak tree. It was all of eighteen inches tall, and Someone lopped it down to six. In the long run that may have been good for the tree, as it now has little branches where it used to just be vertical, but hello? Is not your job to prune my trees.

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Rosa's first day of third grade today. Such a big girl she is now! But still excited to go back and see all her friends.

They have an incredibly long list of school supplies, and very specific: must have 2 purple, 2 blue, 2 red, 2 green and 2 yellow notebooks. D'you know, there was not a single solid-colored notebook to be found at Wal-Mart Saturday? I ended up clearing out the stock at Schnucks.

And then there's the room supplies: Clorox wipes. Paper towels. Kleenex. Apparently the school district can't afford to supply these, so the parents have to. But even Parkway Schools had such items on the list. I swear I didn't have to bring such things when I was a kid (cue rant about walking to school uphill both ways in the snow).

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The ex called the other day to tell me he wanted to enroll Rosa in PSR classes on Monday nights this year. I had two problems with that: 1) Monday is my custody time, and 2) girl scout meetings are on Monday nights. I'm really not willing to take Rosa out of girl scouts. He suggested putting her back in the troop she was in during first grade, but I was vastly happier with the one she is in now. Much better organized, actually accomplishes things, and all her friends from school are in it. So he did some investigation, and has two other possibilities for her. He found a Sunday morning PSR class which she might be able to do (depends on the parish and total enrollment, etc) or he can homeschool.

lavendargrrl and I just ate the first tiny harvest from our garden. A handful of peas and one tiny tomato each! They were lovely.

I'd really been missing tomatoes. I don't know how many meals-out we ate this weekend, and nary a tomato to be found. I had no idea how much my little world would be darkened by the absence of juicy red tasty goodness.

beckyzoole asked, and I had meant to post anyway, where did we get the Vampire Squash?

Last weekend, Tammie and I went down to Roger & Hunter's for a couple nights to attend TammyG's baby shower. On the Sunday, we all went to a Garden Festival at Bakersville Pioneer Village run by and located at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. There were vendors selling everything: yummilicious handmade bread and cinnamon rolls, garden plants, herbs, quilts and more. And heirloom squash. We bought three different kinds: Vif d'Etampes ("vampire"), Casper, and Jarrahdale. I shot some pictures of them before and during the cutting-up.

I also bought two strawberry plants and two raspberry canes. The strawberries got repotted last night; they're going to live indoors. The vendor swears they'll produce all year indoors--and if they don't, well it was only a coupla bucks. The raspberries will go outside to join the blackberries that were so prolific this summer.

Another day of gardening pleasure. Rosa and I planted the flowers this morning. She especially enjoyed pulling out weeds. Then we went to Home Depot and bought three baby trees: an apple, a peach, and a dwarf cherry. I planted all three of them this afternoon, with Rosa's assistance. She helped refill the holes with dirt, crumbling all the clods. She helped water--and watered herself rather thoroughly into the bargain. I spread mulch around my new trees and some of the things I planted yesterday. Now I think I'm going to rest from gardening for a couple weeks (except for mowing the lawn, of course). After Black Road I hope to do the pond. I want water lilies and a little waterfall.

After planting we came in and had corn on the cob for lunch.There are probably funnier sights than a two-year-old eating corn from a cob as big as she is, but not many. Jen called from the park, and we drove over to visit her there, but Rosa was being a pre-nap brat, so I brought her home again and she is now fast asleep.

I feel really good about myself right now. My hands and back ache and I've got dozens of small scrapes on my hands, but I feel good. I'm tired in that "excess of manual labor" sort of way. I spent most of the day outside, cutting down part of the jungle that was once my vegetable garden but became a mass of young trees, and pulling weeds out of my flowerbeds. I decided to leave some trees behind in the garden; I'm going to put in a pond, some shade-loving flowers, and a bench, and have a shady little meditation spot.

Tomorrow I'll rake up the mess and then plant some flowers in the bare spaces in the flowerbed, in hopes that they'll take over and force out the weeds. The pond project will have to wait for my next free weekend.

And the doors are all done. They look terrific. They even close and lock properly! .

It's been in the air all day: that muggy electric feeling that means rain is coming. It was almost 75 degrees today. I came home from work and planted the purple rose (Lagerfeld) that I bought last Sunday, hoping I'd get finished before the rain arrived.

It's rather difficult digging a hole big enough for a rose with a four-inch garden trowel. (Ray took the shovels.) As it turned out, I not only finished the planting, I played an entire session of Amber Cold War before the thunder began, and it was another hour before the rain finally came. It is raining quite steadily now, though at first it seemed to move across the house in segments: heavy rain for a minute, then nothing for three or four minutes, then rain again.