Plant a Japanese garden

I know the red branches against the white snow in the winter will give me hope that spring has to follow the always interminable neverending hell of winter.

Seasonal Affective Disorder anyone served up with a side of lack of Vitamin D from sun deprivation—wait is that redundant. Oh well, you get the point.

I actually think I planted them too close together, but I’ll remedy that in the spring. In the spring, I’ll also get a ton of mulch to put around them, and it will be one more fairly large area that won’t have to be mowed. Life is good any time I can plant something.

I think I’ll plant a tree today. It’s about 75 degrees and Indian Summer will be over soon. Tree planting sounds good. I’ve got a lovely pine that’s been in a huge pot for some time. I think it would appreciate some room and ground to sink into and sigh.

It’s a pine that will fit into my Japanese garden. I should do the ground moving shaping work first, but I want to plant before hell freezes over here in the frozen tundra land where I live.

Perhaps this weekend I’ll get them weeded and get mulch delivered. I think I’ll also cut back some of the perennials, except for the coneflowers and the ornamental grasses. I should plant daffodil bulbs also. Sounds like a lot of work.

I bought two Maiden Hair (? I think that’s what they’re called) grasses, three Russian sage plants and a butterfly weed plant yesterday. Today I planted all these plants and moved all my daylilies. I have a lot of daylilies. I moved them and divided them last year, but when I planted them I planted them too close together. The poor things didn’t have room to breathe, so I moved them farther apart in the one bed and moved five plants over to a different side of the house. It was a lot of work, but I know it will be well worth it.

Some of my daylilies are the color of a Tequila Sunrise, some are a pinkish rose color, some are a reddish purple, some are lemon yellow, and some are yellow with red centers. I hope they do better now that they have more air and light. They were growing okay before, but I think they will do even better now.

I am sore and dirty!!!!!!!!!

the rest of my perennial beds are looking good. I planted three lavender plants yesterday (‘Grosso’) in a bed where I also have some agastache, sedums, purple coneflowers, and ornamental grasses. Everything is growing like crazy. I moved some of the purple coneflowers to another area that I want to make into another bed with some nearly wild roses that I got years ago from somebody else. These roses are practically indestructible.

This summer I’m also going to till up a big area to finally plant the ornamental grass that I love the most, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gracillimus’. However, I need to check and make sure that it is not an invasive species. I hope it isn’t because I love the way it moves in the breezes and wind.

I’m going to start planning exactly how the land needs to be graded. It will be so much work, but so worth it. It will be a couple years project—an evolving place of beauty and serenity that will probably look like a mud pit at first. Oh well, all things start with the first step.

I have photos of the garden I want. Now I just need money, but I did buy one plant for the garden for $1. I just need to keep looking for bargains this summer.