ABC Wednesday: Q . . . and a leftover P

This Wednesday we have reached the letter Q, which puts me in quite a quandary. Q's are not very common in the garden. I can't very well use my Quercus Macrocarpa once again, since it was the focal point of the last round through the alphabet and also showed up for O two weeks ago.

I do have another Quercus, much younger than the Bur Oak, though I don't know what specific type of oak it is. Like the grand old man at the end of our lane, it is one of the last trees to leaf out; now that it has, the front yard is full of shade once again.

For some time, however, I had planned to use the only other Q word in my garden--a flowering quince. But not everything in the garden works out the way you expect it to each year.

These are the lovely coral red blossoms that appeared for the first time last May on the quince. In fact, until last year I didn't even know what this plant was. As far as I was concerned, it was a shaggy, unsightly shrub that I was ready to dig out, so I gave it an extreme haircut in early spring. Apparently, that was just what it needed, because it was covered with these blooms last year. After it flowered, I took the advice of several garden bloggers and cut it back to half its size, thinking this would produce even more blooms this year.

Unfortunately, what I've had this spring is the same unkempt, boring shrub of past years.

Instead of a mass of blooms, a few appeared but hidden by the outside branches. I can only conclude that I should have trimmed this shrub again early in the spring to encourage its flowering. Perhaps someone more familiar with this plant can suggest another reason why it didn't bloom as prolifically as last year.

So I am rather disappointed with my Q's this week, and I'm also wishing we could turn back the clock one week, because I would have had some great additions to my P post. On Saturday my friend Beckie and I went on a day-long plant shopping expedition, starting with the local Herb Society's sale and ending at a favorite garden center, Prairie Gardens.

We managed to test the volume of my new crossover vehicle to see how the volume of the back compared to the old minivan's. I think we could have squeezed in a few more plants.

But this isn't the week for P's . . .

. . . so I won't even tell you about the local Prairie Plant Preservation Society's sale or how some of these plants made their way home with us. All this will have to wait for another day.

In the meantime for more creative and quirky representations for the letter Q, you can visit Mrs. Nesbitt or the ABC anthology.