A late start

My gardening got off to a late start this year. As soon as spring starts I'm occupied full time with the mowing, spraying, and trimming just to keep the place from turning into a jungle. Still, I wasn't as late as I have been in some years and I still found a good selection of plants available. I buy everything that I can from "Plants 'N Things" on Rt. 616 in Fluvanna County. It's a small nursery run by a nice couple and their plants are always wonderful and their prices are very reasonable. I like to support them all I can in spite of my dislike for the ungrammatical "N" in their name. (Seriously, why not just use an ampersand [&] if you can't spell out "and"?) But I digress.

With Clay working and no dog adoption event to attend, my weekend was pretty much free, so I made a big buying run Saturday morning and then spent the rest of the day planting.

Raw materials for the first day of planting.

I got most of my initial purchases planted on Saturday, but there were a few things that I wasn't able to buy locally so Sunday morning I headed off to Strange's Nursery on the west end of Richmond. Strange's is probably the best garden center around; they always have some things that I can't readily find elsewhere. I went with a just a few items in mind, but came home with quite a few more. I spent Sunday afternoon finishing up my planting. Well, almost -- I still need three more sweet potato vines and maybe one more purslane, but that's all.  Well, maybe. There is one other new planter project that I had in mind, but I'm not sure if it will happen this year.

Vince hung around and helped out for a while. He's really the only dog we have that I'll turn out off-leash and unsupervised. When Vince first came to live with us I tried keeping him in the dog yard with the fosters at least during the day but he would have none of it. He stood at the gate jumping and barking non-stop, clearly indicating that he did not belong there. I finally gave up and just turned him loose. He's an old guy and he's been around. He goes up and down the road a bit but not very far, just to pee on the neighbors' mailboxes. He seems to be pretty savvy, and he must be if he's survived this long living that way. I do not have any concern about him running off, Vince is not that dog.

Maya would love to be outside with me but I don't trust her. I know she will come back, in her own time, but she wanders farther than I would like and I just worry. I finally set up a crate on the front porch so she could hang out with me, be close by, and see me at all times, and I knew where she was. That satisfied both of us.

The empties, and just a couple leftovers, which will be planted along with the three sweet potato
vines that I still need to buy.

In 2-3 weeks, this should be bursting with color, which will continue until fall.