Firstly, I remembered what I’d forgotten for yesterday’s post. The other plant I bought for the back garden at the plant sale was an astilbe. The other plant I bought in the two for one sale at the nursery was a catmint (yes, I know I didn’t even realize that I was forgetting it!), “Little Titch” which I’d read this summer is supposed to be an excellent rather dwarf cultivar, though I can’t even remember where I read it.
I had also forgotten to mention that I went to the nursery’s first end-of-season sale of the season as well, when they sell off the sad small-pot perennials that haven’t sold all season. Every year I do very well in that sale because I’m not afraid to nurse plants back to vibrancy and I don’t mind many of the plants no one else here seems to like (this year, as last, lepoard’s banes were amongst the leftovers; poor leopard’s bane, so underutilized here). At that sale, I got two different foxglove cultivars (judging by their differing leaves, I think they also have different parentage), ice plant ‘Mesa Verde’, a second Mt. Atlas daisy, and a couple other things that I am (surprise, surprise!) currently forgetting. Groundcovers for hot places seemed to not have sold very well, which I find weird; maybe people didn’t realize they were groundcovers for hot places? Honestly, it seems like few people even know what Mt. Atlas daisy is. Poor Mt. Atlas daisy. It’s a lovely plant for those truly hot spaces, the kind of place where nothing else will grow as it would get fried.
I also didn’t mention my own contributions to the plant sale. My top contribution was a couple of plants of tovara ‘Painter’s Palette’. My main blog post on that plant, from some months ago, still regularly gets hits from web searches for info on the plant, so I was pretty sure that it would sell well. I ended up wishing I’d donated more of them, as the two I donated had both sold within ten minutes of the start of the sale. One of the volunteers at the sale described it as “the plant to plant where nothing else will grow.” I love that description of it.
Secondly, I did some more work in the garden today. This time I planted the colchicums from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs. Unfortunately, they’d been in their paper bags for so long that one of them had started to rot and a few more looked like they might have started to get mold on them. I put the rotting one in the composter and planted the possibly-molding ones by themselves so that they wouldn’t infect anything else if so. It’s absolutely my own fault; I forgot to open the paper bags to vent them as soon as they came, and I’m sure that my stupid (really, really stupid) lack of providing proper air circulation is what’s to blame for the issues. Regardless, I planted four ‘Giant’ (also sold as ‘The Giant’), five ‘Waterlily’ (also sold as ‘Double Waterlily’), one ‘Alboplenum’, and five ‘Violet Queen’.
After what happened, I’m hoping to be able to plant the rest of the bulbs tomorrow, even though they all look so far like they’re doing better than the colchicums. The remaining Brent and Becky’s Bulbs are autumn-flowering crocuses and some things whose bulbs should preferably be planted earlier in fall than most spring bloomers – snowdrops and (smaller-bulbed) fritillaries. I got Crocus cartwrightianus ‘Albus’ , C. laevigatus ‘Fontenayi’, C. ochroleucus, C. pulchellus ‘Zephyr’, C. speciosus, C. speciosus ‘Albus’, C. speciosus ‘Oxonian’, and C. medius. (I already have some autumn-blooming crocuses, but luckily for bulb companies, I tend to forget which ones until I actually physically see their blooms in late autumn, at which point it would be too late to plant new ones, as – quite unlike colchicums – they prefer a period of settling in prior to blooming.)
For spring bloomers that ship early, from B&BB I got guinea hen/snakeshead frits (Fritillaria meleagris), Fritillaria uva-vulpus, Fritillaria verticillata, Fritillaria michailovskyi ‘Multiflora’, Fritillaria pudica ‘Giant’, and five snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii, Galanthus nivalis, Galanthus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’, Galanthus nivalis ‘Viridi-apice’, and Galanthus woronowii AKA G. ikariae). I also got some fall-blooming crocuses, and spring-blooming frits and snowdrops from Odyssey Bulbs, but all they’ve shipped so far is their colchicums (which have been happily blooming away in the back garden with last year’s colchicums for a couple of weeks now). Though the crocuses, frits, and snowdrops sound like a lot of bulbs, in actuality they are all quite tiny bulbs so they will be much easier to dig space for than the colchicums. A single “bulb” (really a corm) of colchicum ‘Giant’ is larger than a pile of fifty guinea hen frits!
As usual, I’m also behind on planting actual plants. I’ve got a lot of work to do by frost (that ever-moving target of any gardener who keeps gardening all growing season), but thankfully this is the time of year when I generally start to get more energy, though not necessarily more free time to go along with it.
A Bee in the City 
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