Seed store

We went to the seed store yesterday, mostly to pick up some good rich earth to put into our plot.  We also picked up some plants.  

There is a yellow daylily.

There is a coreopsis (also yellow).

There is a hosta.

There is a white delphinium.

There is a bright pink primula which goes very well with the colour of the house, I think.  

Most of the work we will be doing today will be to work that good rich soil down at the plot, but I hope to get these guys into the ground in various positions in our flower garden, too.  

Further intrigue

I mentioned in passing that there is another mystery plant, by the hostas.

I have started to wonder if it could possibly be the brunnera, somehow transplanted through all that destructive digging I did last year.  I can't quite bring myself to believe it, even though I think the leaves are a pretty good match to the pictures I have from the plant last year.  It looks like the brunnera, but a) the brunnera looks like it has leaves that come out of the stem in pairs and this guy comes up in singles

.... and b) I planted the brunnera in the sunny patch in front of the rhododendron and this guy is up behind the hostas.  There was nothing there last year (as this crappy picture shows). 

Of course, any of my speculations should be taken with a grain of salt.  For some time yesterday, I managed to convince myself that the polka-dotted leaves which are exactly like those belonging to pulmonaria, (such as it is photographed online, anyway) were the calla lily I planted last year.  You may say I'm a dreamer.  

Hosting hostas

I am not the greatest of hosta hosts, as one might guess from my inability to tell what it looks like before it looks deliberate.  But I did a modicum of searching on the web and found a picture of something that looked much more like these little guys than my previous best guess.

The baby hosta plants look like little horns coming up out of the ground.  Or so I've been given to believe.

Looking at that picture, I am amazed by how tiny the thing is.  When I noticed it, I thought it was absurdly obvious and I kicked myself for not seeing it earlier.  But the photographic evidence says that the little horns are just about the same size as a maple key, which is not very big at all, especially given that these are wayy back in the front yard right near the house.  

Friend or Foe?

Although it is something I'm getting better at, I still struggle with the early identification of plants I want vs. plants I don't want.  I spent a whole year encouraging a choking weed because somehow I decided it was alyssum.    I think it still does better in my garden than in anyone else's because of that poor decision.

So yesterday, when I was yanking out a baby maple and I found this fellow, I didn't know what to do.  It's not like other things coming up at the moment.  It's in a place I might, indeed, have planted something.  It's also in a place I might, indeed, have left a choking weed.  It's got a sort of funny growth pattern ... lots of leaves growing as though they are a stalk, not as though they're springing from a stalk.  I don't know.  At the moment, I suspect it of being the hosta.  I've left him in place until he's identifiably friend or foe.

Edited later to say that more of these are popping up in that general neighbourhood, but I think I know it's not a hosta.   Maybe it's the mystery yellow plant which flowered so nicely and so persistently last year.

Up Front

The front yard ... I haven't mentioned it lately.  As the unpopular child, that's to be expected, but I can find some things to say about it.  

The yellow-flowering bush is still going.

The hosta did, indeed, come up with quite a charming set of bell-shaped flowers and they weren't killed by the painters.  Hooray.  It makes me think that I should get more hostas.  It's very nice.

The huge weeding I did ages ago is actually holding up well.  I don't have a picture, but it is much, much less weed-infested than the rest.  

In the un-weeded part, there grows a weed I don't recognise.  It has lovely little berries, though.  I'm sure they're deadly, but I can't help but admire them.  

What happened?

So, what did happen in the garden in those weeks that I was away?  

The daylilies came out.  

The delphiniums bloomed.  Then they were bent and destroyed by the painters.

The mystery plants in the front that I have diligently removed thinking they were weeds year after year before finally realising this year that they don't spread like weeds and they always come up in the same place so maybe, just maybe, I should give them a chance ... they bloomed.  And were then bent and killed by the painters.

The zinnias finally came out.  Well, a flower on some of the plants came out.  This was not a success.  Note for next year: No zinnias in the side yard.  Nonetheless, there they are.

The gazanias finished.

The herbs (except the lavender, perversely) have flowered.  

And been painted.  

The glads seem to be still coming out but I worry very much about their chances of surviving the attack.

The bush on the front side bloomed its one week of magnificent white blooms; I only know this because I have evidence of their demise.  

The other bush on the front side is blooming with a few yellow flowers.

The hosta in the front looks like it may be about to flower.  I don't think it ever has before, so that would be exciting were it not for the fact that it will undoubtedly be destroyed shortly.  

I think my favourite news is that the nasturtiums bloomed.  Well, some did.  These are the nasturtiums that we started from seed indoors and watched sprout and grow and put out just before heading away for our vacation and then they got snowed on and all sorts of terrible things and most of them died, but not all.  That's a true success story from the indoor planting.