Ducks Can't Read

Or I can't count.  Either is a plausible explanation.

Everything I read about mallard breeding habits indicated a range of time for incubation of 21-29 days, starting from the point at which the female stops laying eggs and settles in on top of the nest.  I had figured 5/18 as the start date, targeting the hatch for sometime after June 8.  


Good thing I'm not an obstetrician.


It appears that what I thought was the first egg sighting was about a week into incubation.  Because on Friday the 27th, we came home from an afternoon out and -- because I'm very naughty -- I immediately went to check on the nest to make sure the Missus was on the case.  At first I thought she had gone out for an early lunch, but on second glance, it was clear that something significant had happened. No longer were there 10 perfect eggs; there were just a few shattered shells and wisps of feathers, and the mulch all around Cousin Itt was noticeably rumpled.

My first thought was that some predator -- a raccoon or fox (we have both around here) -- had found the nest and helped himself to a free meal.  And I felt somehow responsible -- after all, Mrs. Mallard had selected our backyard as her safe haven.


Investigating the crime scene a bit further, however, turned up some evidence that -- while gruesome -- did suggest an alternate scenario.  Upon closer inspection, we found two fluffy duckling corpses, once on the second step down the main path towards the patio, and the second, at the last step before the patio.  (No pictures of either corpse, I promise) They were the size of newly hatched birds, and did not look at all embryonic.  


This suggested that, rather than having been victims of a nest raid, they were hatchlings who unfortunately fell victim to Mrs. Mallard's Death March.  The bodies were along the most logical route from the nest to the pond across the street.  The steps are not easy for full sized people to navigate (particularly after a drink or two), and to hatchlings it must've been as daunting as rappelling down a sheer rock face.  In true "Mother Nature pulls no punches" mode, I'm guessing that the ones that didn't make it were the weakest of the brood, and the fittest survived.  Since we found no other bodies that day, the Missus probably made it to the pond with between 6 and 8 ducklings in tow.


And yes, I missed it.  


Having totally miscalculated her due date, I had no chance to observe the hatch or the march.  Which is probably just as well; I wouldn't have been able to keep myself from meddling with Mother Nature, and that never turns out well.


So now that the duck watch is -- sadly and anticlimactically -- over, I'll need to find some other critter capers to report on.  Here's one option.  If you look closely at the space between the two stones in the middle of this picture, you'll see one half of a pair of classic Chip n Dale chipmunks.  If this is Chip, Dale just disappeared through that crack, which appears to be their front door.  They were most indignant that I caught them, paparazzi-like, and scolded me loudly from just inside their entrance.  

I wonder if they'd be interested in some newly vacated real estate further up the hill.  Better view, and right in the middle of the action.

Aw, Nuts!

If you've read my earlier posts, you probably know that I'm not a big fan of squirrels.  They eat our corn and tomatoes, make it impossible to grow fruit trees, dig up whatever fall bulbs they can find, and leave huge piles of acorn debris on top of our stone walls which they're fond of using as dining tables.  But hardhearted as I am, even I felt a bit sorry for these critters over the winter.  They had to contend with such deep snow that they spent most of their time tail to the sky, upside down in foot-deep holes, trying to find their stash before their paws froze.  I caught one of them in the act last January, and it's hard not to root for the little guy who (spoiler alert) does, at the end, find his dinner.



Given how industrious he and his entire clan were over the winter, how many oak trees we have on our property (see earlier post on the velcro quality of their leaves), how effectively their squirrel-gps worked to locate their nuts, and how plump and well-fed they appeared once the snow melted, I was pretty sure they had found and eaten every treasure they buried.

Nope.

And how do I  know that was not the case?  Three hours weeding the garden this past Sunday most of which was spent pulling up mini-oak trees attached to all the acorns left untouched, buried at precisely the right depth to encourage germination and sprouting.  Forests of itty bitty saplings, still tethered to their original nut pod, just rooted enough to be unyielding to a careless tug.  And tenacious enough to regrow if you accidentally decapitate them rather than haul them out intact. 


Mini-oak; one of gazillions left behind

I found myself thinking as I yanked and tugged at these leftovers, that our squirrels certainly hadn't been raised properly.  Why hadn't their squirrel moms laid the guilt trip on them about all those starving rodents elsewhere who would be thrilled to go snowdrift-diving in this yard?  Or threatened them with losing their membership in the clean plate club?  Really, the amount of waste was astounding.

Just one of what felt like hundreds of handfuls of abandoned nuts!

It's a shame that I don't have a good recipe for acorn sprouts -- I sure had enough to feed the entire neighborhood.

In other critter news: the duck watch continues.  Her eggs will take between 26-28 days to incubate, so that puts the hatching sometime during the week of June 13.  She moved into her nest for good on May 18, and has left it only for a daily lunch break -- and a brief one at that.  23 hours a day she just sits there.  There's not much going on under Cousin Itt. I admire her fortitude, but don't envy her the associated boredom.   

My understanding is that she and the ducklings will leave the nest for good shortly after they all emerge, since they are one of the species of birds born eerily mature, with their eyes open, fully capable of swimming from the very beginning. Which means that if this event falls during working hours -- and with my luck it will -- there's a good chance I'll miss it altogether.  And that would really stink. 

I wonder if I could make a plea for Mallard Maternity leave.  Short of setting up a duck-cam (which would be tough considering how little light gets under Cousin Itt), that's the only way I'll be able to document the birth.  Otherwise all I'll be able to share with you is an empty nest and some hastily abandoned eggshells.

I have three weeks to figure it out.  Any suggestions?

All Right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready for my Close-Up

Two days after the tree peonies put on their exuberant display, we had 7 days of unrelenting rain.  It figures.  Peonies are short-lived to begin with.  At best we get 10 days out of the blooms -- 12 if we remember to put parasols over them to shelter them from the hot afternoon sun.  This year, however, we had raw afternoon damp for an entire week, and the ravages of that treatment were much harsher than the decay wreaked by time on poor Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard.


I did promise to share defeats as well as triumphs, so as painful as it is for me, here's what happens when peony blooms take one on the chin from Mother Nature.  They melt into an awful travesty of themselves, looking like overdressed dowagers whose best days have clearly passed.

Sad, defeated Peonies

There are two things that mitigate this devastation.  First, we do have one other tree peony which, because it's in a location with much less direct sun, has not yet bloomed.   And we also have two deciduous (non-tree) peonies that are also about to bloom, so I'm not entirely done creating peony envy. Second,  I did manage to get enough photos of them in their glory, so although the scent is gone, the vision remains.

This episode is a clear reminder that we enjoy the colors and odors of these and other blossoms at the very fickle grace of the weather and other forces of nature.  Sufficiently warned, I was inspired to document some of my favorite flowers and foliage currently in the garden.  And while the colors are impressive from a distance, there are some varieties which really need to be seen close-up.  

Irises are among my all time favorite flowers.  My dad, who was an artist, did many drawings and paintings of them when I was growing up, so for years I've tried to plant them in his memory, with little success. But today, the bulbs that were total duds last year have finally earned their keep.

Yellow Bearded Iris

A bluish purple Bearded Iris -- together with the yellow ones, I've
almost got the colors of the Swedish Flag!  (Mr. Mulch is Swedish)

Agastache "Acapulco"
Hummingbirds love these flowers, and so do I -- they
come in many colors, but I think this variety is particularly pretty.

These are the blooms on the standard lilacs that flank the entry to our
front garden.  As fragrant as they are delicately beautiful

Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla)
While this will put out small yellow flowers, I grow this because the foliage is so
pretty, and I really love how it looks after rain (which is fortunate, since we've
had so much) because the leaves hold each drop like small diamonds. 

This is a rose Achillea (Yarrow) which will soon be covered with clusters of
small pink blossoms with yellow centers.  But as with the Lady's Mantle, I like
the feathery foliage as much as the blooms.

By the way, Norma, you'll notice that I didn't need any Vaseline on the lens for these close-ups.  Just sayin'.

Ghosts in the Garden

From a distance, the vegetable garden now looks like it's been visited by Kaspar the Friendly Ghost and his colleagues.  What, you may ask, are those odd looking structures leaning like miniature towers of Pisa on top of the beds?

They are called Walls 'O Water, and they're the key to getting tomatoes in the ground ridiculously early for our climate, so we can stretch out the tomato season as long as humanly possible.  



Each little tent is a series of tall plastic cells linked together to form a pliable collar for an individual plant.  We fill each cell with water to make them stand up straight, and set them around each plant, leaving the top open during the day, and twisted shut at night.  They act like mini-greenhouses, trapping the day's heat, tricking the tomatoes into thinking it's mid June rather than raw, drizzly early May.



If you peek inside, you can see how happy this makes the plants.

Happy tomato nestled inside the Wall 'O Water

We go to these great lengths because we're total tomato snobs.  The only time of year we eat them is during the time they're actually growing in our garden.  We'll eat tomatoes from local markets, too, but only during the same time that we eat our own.  And while they're in season, we eat them like pigs.  Grilled with eggs for breakfast, cut in big slabs for sandwiches at lunch, peeled and sliced in great wheels of juicy redness as a side at dinner.  


We also grow paste tomatoes which I process and either can or freeze so we can have fresh tomato sauce almost all year long -- I usually run out in July a couple of weeks before the new year's crop is ripe.  In the early days, our kids wouldn't touch tomatoes, so Mr. Mulch and I had them all to ourselves.  Now we have to share with the girls who have become just as disdainful as we are of the pink rocks masquerading as tomatoes most of the year.  They don't go quite as far, but it's truly rewarding to see that they now enjoy them as much as we do.

A harbinger of juicy tomatoes to come

In fact, the girls get really excited when they see the Walls 'O Water go up, because they know that means that tomato days are not that far off.  And they think their Dad is a real genius for having figured out this way of getting an extra month out of our crop.  I suppose I should let them think this was all his idea.  After all, I don't really have any proof that the true inspiration for these ghostly structures was the design of the Denver Airport...

Waccabuc International Tent City

Denver International Airport

...it's just hard to believe that the resemblance is purely coincidental...

Duck Tales, Part III

Who knew the US Department of Geological Surveys, had a sense of humor?! The article on their website,  "Help, There's a Duck in My Flowerpot!" isn't exactly laugh-out-loud funny, but it is a chuckle-worthy description of the eclectic nesting habits of Mallards.  Apparently, it isn't at all unusual for them to make themselves comfortable in attractive hiding spots as much as 3 miles from the nearest pond, and they do have a particular affinity for large flowerpots. 

We hadn't gotten around to putting any flowerpots out yet -- though we have plans for some dahlias -- and we hadn't seen our duck for a few days, so I was beginning to think she had abandoned us for crockery elsewhere. 

That would be wrong.

Monday afternoon Mr. Mulch headed out to plant tomatoes when there was another flurry of feathers.  The squawking blur resolved itself into Mrs. Mallard, who then flew up over the roof and disappeared.  Since he was all the way over on the other side of the garden it wasn't clear where she had been lounging when he disturbed her.  He relayed this to me when I got home from work. Since it was -- miraculously -- not raining, I tiptoed up the hill to check out her last known address: Cousin Itt.  As I approached from the path directly above, I could see why a predator-averse critter might find this to be appealing real estate.  On the uphill side of the plant the limbs form the sheltering roof of a not-so-small dark, moist cave.  And while I couldn't see anything in there from a distance...

Approaching Cousin Itt from the path above

 ... as I crouched down, it became blindingly apparent that we now had a tenant.



Monday's nest -- 4 eggs!

 I counted four, maybe five, big white eggs, surrounded by some of Mrs. Mallard's down.  The eggs were surprisingly big -- about half again the size of chicken eggs.  Now, you might be wondering where the Missus was.  Well, according to the folks at USGS, the female Mallard lays up to 10-12 eggs over a period of several days during which she spends only an hour or so in the nest.  Incubation doesn't start until she's through laying entirely and then she takes up more permanent residence, leaving only occasionally to forage for food.

I have to say I was so unaccountably excited at this find that I nearly broke my neck tearing down the path to report my discovery.  I dragged Mr. Mulch back up to verify that I wasn't seeing things, at which point my younger daughter flexed her biology/anthropology double major credentials and soundly rebuked me for butting my nose into the natural order of things.  I had to promise I wouldn't disturb the nest or the duck ever. again. really. before she'd leave me alone.  And I kept that promise. 

Until Tuesday.

Home from work, I took advantage of a momentary hiatus from what looks to be a week-long rainstorm, and once again crept up to check on the nest.  This time, it was apparent even from a distance, that Mrs. Mallard had been reading the USGS article.



Tuesday's nest -- looks like more eggs!

 I knelt down to get a better look and, sure enough, she had added to her stash.  There were now 10 eggs visible!

Some are hard to see, but there are 10 there!

Later that same evening, not being able to leave well enough alone, I ventured out one more time (don't tell my daughter).  I just wanted to see whether the Missus was done laying and had moved in, unpacked, and set up her cosmetics.  It was close to dusk, so I couldn't really see too much, but I know what I DIDN'T see -- there were no eggs visible.  Which meant that she was there sitting on top of them.  I tried to get close enough to get a photo, but it was too dark under Cousin Itt even for a flash.  I did, however, hear a distinct hissing sound which could only have come from a furious fowl, so I backed off and will now leave her alone.  Maybe.

I will say that while Cousin Itt does offer a very protected environment from predators, if what Mrs. Mallard wanted was peace and quite from her human hosts, she couldn't have picked a worse spot.  Her lair is right alongside the main path we use on a daily basis to get up and down to the garden and seating areas.  It's not quite as public as going into labor at the Vince Lombardi rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, but it's as close as you get in our backyard. 

I sure hope she gets used to us, or she'll become a nervous wreck -- fleeing everytime we go out to pick radishes, getting hysterical when we head for the seating area with a cocktail.  And just think of the impact on the ducklings.  They'll spend years in therapy working out all the damage their neurotic mother inflicted on them during the 100 yard trek to the nearest pond!

Peas, Please!

For as long as my kids can remember, Mr. Mulch has grown vegetables.  And as far as I can remember, for most of their childhood nothing green would pass their lips.  It wasn't for want of trying, and the irony of their avoidance was not lost on us.  Back then our garden was easily three times as big as it is now, and we grew everything from Asparagus to Zucchini, and every alphabetic veggie in between.  When they were little, they turned up their noses at each and every one.  It didn't matter whether I served them raw, steamed, fried or sauteed, if it weren't for fruit and various gummy vitamins, I'd have raised kids with scurvy or rickets.  

Some of their avoidance tactics were truly admirable -- and far more sophisticated than simply pushing greens around the plate or slipping offensive stalks to the dogs.  One of the most memorable was the prestidigious carrot caper.  It appeared that the one quasi-veggie we could get my older daughter to eat was baby carrots -- "quasi" because they're really orange bullets milled from the trunks of  carrots large enough to choke a horse.  Every time we put them on her plate they disappeared.  

Until the day she had to practice her clarinet immediately after dinner.  As she warmed up -- literally as well as musically -- she removed the sweatshirt she'd been wearing during her meal.  As she pulled it over her head, all the baby carrots dexterously palmed and stuffed up her sleeves flew all over the room.  Turns out carrots were also on her hate list; but she'd been using sleight of hand for months to avoid revealing this truth.  

To this day, I don't know what she did with all those spurned carrots.  The dogs wouldn't  eat them either, so I only hope they didn't wind up moldering in some random closet to be discovered by the lovely family who bought our house.  Maybe that's why they no longer speak to us.  Hmmm.

Back to the veggie aversion.  The first small triumph came with peas -- and that amazing process called growing up.  But the peas came first.  Even my kids couldn't resist the sweet crunch of sugar snap peas straight from the vine.  It was also fun to play hide n seek looking for the really fat pods -- then perfecting the technique of folding the end over to zip the strings off both sides simultaneously.  Then we introduced shell peas -- both bush and climbing varieties, and we were even able to convince one or the other of the girls that it would be fun shelling them with us -- much like Tom Sawyer painting that fence.  Then the next daring step -- serving them cooked.  That was taking it a bit too far initially; that turned it into suspiciously grown up food.  But eventually they came around.

In fact, they eventually -- and enthusiastically -- came around to most of the garden produce.  But they still look forward with special delight to pea season.  And what a pea season we'll have this year!  Mr. Mulch put in 5 full beds of sugar snaps and shell peas -- both bush and climbing.  And with the cool spring we've had, they're looking extremely happy and healthy. 

Long view of the garden beds; the vertical netting
is a jungle jim for the climbing peas

Happy peas getting ready to climb

Bush peas with radishes planted in between rows.

That's going to be a lot of peas!  While we do try staggering the planting so they come in over an extended period of time, they always seem to gang up on us and find a way to mature all at once, creating a frantic 4 week period of stringing, shelling, blanching and freezing.  

At this point, however, we can only gaze at them with yearning and anticipation.

Ka-Bloom!

I don't get to see much of the garden during the week.  Crazy as it sounds, I have an hour and 40 minute commute to work -- each way.  So Monday through Friday I leave the house at 6:25AM and walk back in the door just before 7PM.  That makes for a bit more than a 12 hour day away. It's really depressing in the winter when it's dark for both trips, and the only time I actually get to see the exterior of the house and whatever's left in the garden is on the weekends. 

But in the warms months, it's a different story.  The light holds til 8 or 9 at the peak of Summer.  Dinner is usually delayed by a leisurely walk through the garden, generally with a light pre-prandial drink in hand.  (This is no time for my preferred beverage, because negotiating all the paths and steps in fading daylight after a stiff shot of single malt scotch would really be tempting fate.  It would be truly embarrassing, not to mention painful, to tumble down in a soused heap onto the patio.)

It's been a somewhat cool and rainy Spring for the most part, but last week we finally had a stretch of beautiful 70 degree days.  On the fourth sunny day -- a Thursday -- in the 12 hours I was away, magic happened.  All the mid-Spring blossoms burst open in an exuberant riot of color -- the floral equivalent of an orchestrated fireworks display.

The Chinese Tree Peonies are the star of the show. Unlike deciduous peonies, they don't die back each year, but set new growth on old limbs which hold their blooms upright. When I left for work that morning the blooms were clenched tight.  But as I set out for the evening stroll, I saw that they had sprung wide open in a shameless display of color and intoxicating aroma.  We have two varieties whose names I'm no longer sure of but I seem to recall that the dark red one is something like "Red Dragon in a Green Pool" and the other is  "Phoenix White Feng Dan Bai."  Whatever they're called, they are spectacular.  I do wish I could make these photos scratch 'n sniff for the full effect, but you'll just have to use your nasal imagination.

Red Dragon in a Green Pool

Red Dragon Blossom

White Phoenix

White Phoenix Blossom

The Tree Peony display was just the beginning.  During the same 12 hour span, other small miracles occurred.  Here are a few of the other surprises I found on that same evening stroll.

The Rhododendron along the driveway burst into full bloom

On the mound the Allium -- a garlic relative -- opened

Allium close-up -- looks like something
Buckminster Fuller could have designed

Geum -- also known as Grecian Rose, also on the mound

Iris in the front garden

A clutch of Columbine, also in the front garden

The lower hill in back is now a symphony of pinks and blues

Carpets of Creeping Phlox and Ajuga (Bugleweed)
paint the hill above the patio.

Purpurea forms a light blue carpet below the Phlox

And up top, the variegated Azalea brighten the first rock outcropping

Not a bad day's work for Mother Nature!

A Rock is a Hard Place

It was an ambitious game plan for a lovely spring morning. 20 plants. 20 holes. 4 hours.  That's 12 minutes per plant/hole, but only half the plants were in 12" pots, the others were in smaller 6" pots, and there were two of us. The odds were certainly better than those for Animal Kingdom, yesterday's Derby winner.  But it was Mother's Day, and there were other items on the agenda for the afternoon, so we had to get this finished by 1PM. It was either dig like crazy and get them in the ground fast, or hope they make it through another week crammed into the pots they were already clearly outgrowing. After all, these two new beds had been pre- prepared and should be relatively easy to plant in. 

Right.

We laid out the big stuff -- the yellow Potentilla and the burgundy-leafed Penstemon -- in the new lower bed. 

Then flanked the pear tree with Plumbago (that name continues to crack me up -- are there also plants named ague and gout, I wonder?) on the left and the Dwarf Goatsbeard on the right.



And because it was 9AM and we were fresh -- and delusional -- we tackled the lower bed, which would need the bigger holes, first.  We dug in tandem -- on separate holes until or unless I hit a rock I couldn't dislodge, and then we'd switch.  That system seemed to work and lulled us into a false sense of accomplishment.  Sure there were some setbacks -- such as discovering that the corner placement was only 6 inches above the solid rock outcropping curving under the bed, so we had to adjust the formation.  And sure, there were a couple of wheelbarrows' worth of small stones, but nothing that really discouraged us.  It took a little over an hour to get the first five plants tucked in.

Potentilla ready to be tucked in



Then we tackled the Penstemon.  The first hole went fine. The second hole revealed several two-person stones -- the kind I could move but couldn't lift out alone.  The good news on those is that when you do extract them, there's an instant hole.  The bad news, is that they like to roam in packs and are usually are accompanied by some even heftier friends.  And so it was for us.

Big Momma (it is Mother's Day, remember) announced herself with a teeth-rattling clang as the shovel jammed against her still-submerged surface.  At first, it was not at all clear exactly how big she was -- all we could see was her hip, coyly beckoning just above the soil.



Rock Tease

After exposing enough of her to reveal the impressive size of her exterior dimensions, Mr. Mulch attacked with enthusiasm -- claiming he'd yet to lose a battle with a rock and he wasn't going to begin now.  I was dubious.  This was clearly the kind of object that makes you wish you had paid attention in that "Physics for Poets" course you took in college where they covered things like mass, energy, fulcrums and lifting cars with your teeth.  I delicately suggested that we simply pick a different spot for the Penstemon.  He would have none of it. 

The clock was ticking, and I figured that we'd be better off dividing and conquering.  So I left him to tilt at his stone windmill and turned my attention to the 10 plants waiting patiently next to the pear tree.  Happily, that's where I found my own Mother's Day gift: soil that was, in fact, soft and yielding.  I was actually able to turn it with a simple hand trowel -- no shovel or pickaxe needed. Gardening nirvana!  An hour and a half of assembly-line digging, composting, fertilizing, bedding, tamping and watering, and all 10 plants were happily ensconced. 



Plumbago and Dwarf Goatsbeard planted and watered



I looked up from my planting fog to discover Mr. Mulch still working on Big Momma, whose entire upper torso was now fully exposed.  Boy, could she have used some Spanx.  He managed to get his crowbar under her nether side, and yelled for reinforcements.  (Hollering "shovel" doesn't quite have the same panache as hearing a surgeon yell "scalpel," but they do share a certain urgency.)  I grabbed the shovel, jammed it under one corner, and after huffing and puffing for only slightly longer and possibly harder than I did when pushing during the birth of my first child, together we somehow generated enough leverage to finally drag the bitch out of bed.



Big -- and I do mean big -- Momma



I realize there's no sense of scale here, but I assure you, this momma was easily 2 1/2 feet long and over a foot wide, and must have weighed in at close to 300 pounds.  We managed to roll her into a wheelbarrow without rupturing anything important (on either of us, that is), and deposited her in the pile we'll use as stepping stones the next time we make a path. 

It was now 12:30PM.  We returned to the scene of the eviction, thinking her departure would have left a hole large enough for two plants.  And that with any luck, we'd have time to dig two more quick holes and get everything in. 

Right.

As the shovel made its first descent into the pit, we heard that familiar clang. Another one.  Even bigger. 

Even Mr. Mulch has his limits. 

We decided that Bigger Momma could sleep in for one more day, and instead of turning her out, we cracked open a couple of cold beers and toasted to the resilience of all Mommas everywhere.

Tabula Rasa

It's Mr. Mulch's fault, really.

Last week we planted our new Bradford Pear tree.  It's a lovely specimen and is in a prominent place, halfway up the hill in the back, just above one of the large rock outcroppings and bordered by a nice swath of lawn.  It stands watch over the rock and the beginning of a bed where we marooned two variegated azaleas last year, intending to someday surround them with other later blooming plants.


Now would seem to be that day.


Because while the tree planting guys were here, Mr. Mulch had them tidy up the border around the tree, and then set them loose on a second, larger bed  below, surrounding the azaleas. The result: two big, beautiful blank brown slates begging to be filled in with color and life.    

Border bed 

Larger bed below with two lonely azaleas

When we first moved here, I tried to approach planting an area like this systematically -- researching which plants were suited to which kinds of locations, compiling my target list, and then searching for those specific plants.  I drew elaborate diagrams and planting schemes, annotated with photos of the selected flora. This process produced impressive maps, but always led to frustration.  Local nurseries never had exactly what I was looking for, and I'd search catalogs in vain, finding that anything I had figured out was desirable was already sold out.  The few things I did find generally failed miserably.  I tried for three years to grow lupines in various locations, for example, and never even managed to coax a single plant through one growing season.

These days I have a far more satisfactory approach. Satisfactory, that is, to my local nursery -- Gossett Brothers Nursery -- where everyone recognizes the sound of my car approaching, and where the cash register shivers in delight when I approach the checkout.  It's a technique best described as swoop and snatch.  Armed only with the knowledge of the light conditions I'll be planting in, I swoop through the rows of new arrivals -- perennials, that is -- listening intently for something to call to me.  It might be a particularly interesting foliage, the promise of specific bloom times, or an unusual flower.  Sometimes there's a dim awareness that I once wrote the plant name on a long ago landscape plan.  

Then the snatch part:  I buy all they have of that particular variety.  I used to buy two or three, come home and put them down to watch the garden literally swallow them up.  With the amount of space we've got -- and certainly with the new bed Mr. Mulch just gave me -- I need 5 or 6 of anything before there's enough to even notice.  Which is why the cash register quivers when I arrive. Today's haul certainly looked  impressive, and seemed as though it would cover a lot of ground.

The cart holds plants to surround the pear tree: 5 Plumbago, a ground cover (that sounds like a sore back) that blooms lat summer to fall, and 5 dwarf goat goatsbeard that send up feathery plumes in midsummer;  companions for the azaleas: 5 Potentilla Fragiformis, with strawberry-like foliage and bright yellow blooms; and 5 Penstemon Digitalis, tall and foxglove-like with beautiful dark red foliage that shows off its white late-blooming flowers.  Oh, and there are also 7 pots of sedum to for the crevices in the rock outcropping.  

Here they are, all laid out.

I know what you're thinking -- that's an awful lot of holes.  Yeah, I was thinking that too.  And I'm also thinking that there's still an awful lot of empty space there.  And since I bought all Gossett's had of these plants, maybe I'll make a lightning strike tomorrow and see what else they've got.  It is Mother's Day, after all... maybe Mr. Mulch will dig all those holes!