what I got

I had to work briefly on Saturday morning, but when I got back home, there was a postal truck in my driveway. The mailman was delivering plants that I had ordered a few weeks ago.

Given that the plants were are all bare-rooted, I could not be happier to get them on a Saturday. The temps were cool enough to keep them moist while I worked on getting them into the ground.

Of course, I still had some work to for where I wanted to put them. So I drove off to a big box hardware store and bought 30 bags of composted manure. At $.96 per bag, this is a very inexpensive way to immediately break up the hard clay soils here in Indy.

Most of my beds have pretty good soil, but I continue to work in compost to keep them that way. My beloved spading fork is the tool to do this, mixing in one bag per 2 square feet (in new beds) or as a top dressing working into the soils around established plants.

The three roses were: Reine Victoria Rose ( a pink peony like bloom with thick complicated petals), Graham Thomas Rose (yellow) and Winchester Cathedral Rose (white). These are David Austin English Roses. I already have one Thomas, and the Winchester is named after the cathedral in that English town. I also planted a number of plox shortwood, a pink summer phlox, and nicky garden phlox, a purple summer phlox.

And a blue wave hydrangea, a lace-cap bloom. This went in the back garden.