ABC Wednesday: Unfinished Business

For this week's ABC posting for the letter U, I am uninspired. I have had trouble coming up with anything unique or even one of my utterly ordinary posts. Frankly, I have been so busy working in the garden that I can't think of much else. Here it is the second week of June already, and despite the hours I've spent outside, my garden remains Unfinished.




My wise friend Cheryl once wrote "Is a Garden Ever Finished?" I would agree with her, and I have to remember that the fabulous Lurie Garden in Chicago pictured above did not look this way overnight. It took years for the enchanting "river of salvia" to get to this "finished" stage. My garden is on a much, much humbler scale, but I've resigned myself to the fact that there will always be something else that needs to be done in it.





One of the chores that was left unfinished this year was to transplant some of the many new coneflower seedlings. In early spring I did dig out a few, but more kept popping up, and I fully intended to thin them out. But time got away from me, and now it looks as though purple coneflowers will be ubiquitous in my garden this summer.

Two jobs that will continue all season are watering and weeding. This hydrangea bud looks pretty promising right now, but unless I water it soon, it won't look so good by the time it's ready to bloom. Wasn't I the one complaining about so much rain just a few weeks ago? That just proves that a gardener is never satisified. We've had either too much rain or not enough. Yesterday the skies--and the weather forecast--threatened storms all day, but they never materialized. Today I gave up on rain and started the process of dragging hoses around the garden. Depending on how our summer goes, this may be a daily chore all season. And then of course, there's the weeding. While I was away at Spring Fling, the weeds grew twice as much as the flowers. (You didn't expect me to show a picture of my weeds, did you? Of course, if you look closely enough at some of these photos, you'll no doubt spot a few.)

But the biggest chunk of my time this spring has been spent on planting. I have made a good dent in the "pot ghetto" in front of my garage door, but there are still a few homeless plants waiting to be put into the ground. One reason for my lateness is that I lost a few perennials over the winter and kept waiting and waiting for them to appear. When I realized my favorite gaillardias "Oranges and Lemons" didn't make it through the winter, I had trouble finding them in any nursery until this past week.

While I did lose several perennials this past winter, there have been a few unexpected surprises like this dianthus that has bloomed in the same pot now for three years. This is one reason I don't clean out my pots in the fall as I probably should; every once in awhile I have an annual that decides to come back for another year.

I've also spent a lot of time plant shopping this spring. I had no trouble finding the usual geraniums I use in a few containers. But Beckie and I commented on one of our plant expeditions this spring, that we found fewer unusual plants this year. We wondered if that might be due to the economy; perhaps nursery growers decided to stick more to the traditional plants this year rather than risk growing something that might not sell.

But garden centers and nurseries needn't worry about me. I have a serious case of plant-envy, and I find it hard to visit a garden center without buying something. Seeing a display of hostas on sale like this one at Rich's during Spring Fling usually makes me salivate and forget that there really isn't much more room in the shade garden for another hosta right now.

And while I was on a search for a few more Victoria Blue Salvia to fill in a space, I found something else, this Solenia Begonia "Dusty Rose," which I couldn't resist.

And this new-to-me flower, Lisanthus "Forever Blue." I still don't know where I'm going to plant this.

I never did find the needed salvia, but on the same shopping trip I found a new nursery that also had many garden accent pieces. This cast iron pot caught my eye, the price was right, and it already had a hole pre-drilled in the bottom. It quickly found its way into my car and is now filled with soil and seeds.

Not everything I buy, though, is an impulsive purchase. While hunting down my replacement gaillardia, I found this plant that I have wanted so badly since seeing it during Spring Fling. Do you recognize it? I'm sure you would if I showed it to you in full bloom . . .

. . . Yes, I am now the proud possessor of my very own Baptisia, "Purple Smoke," also known as False Indigo. I was thrilled to find it and hope that it is happy in its new home in my garden and one day looks as good as this one seen in the Lurie Garden.

Let's face it, as long as I keep visiting other gardens, whether in person or through blogging, my garden will never be "finished." There are always new ideas to try and more plants to be added. Last weekend I celebrated my un-birthday. (I coined this term last year--my theory is that if you don't acknowledge your birthday, it doesn't really count and you can subtract a year from your age rather than add one:) Doesn't that make sense?) Anyway, one of the gifts I received was a gift card to my favorite garden center, so I know there will more additions to the garden, if not this year, then next.

I already have another idea for next year's garden--I am definitely going to plant some alliums. I saw them everywhere in Chicago and realized they're a perfect in-between season perennial, not to mention their striking blooms. Thanks to Mr. McGregor's Daughter for sending me this photo. She and another blogger thought I must have purposely worn this purple top to color coordinate with the blooms of the allium:)

Finally, if I am spending all this time in the garden and it's still unfinished, you can imagine what my house looks like. Suffice it to say that during gardening season, the housework remains Undone!

Check out other ABC posts by clicking here.

Garden Muse Day: Chicago!

Hog Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders . . .

from "Chicago" by Carl Sandburg

To Sandburg it was the "City of the Big Shoulders," to Sinatra it was "my kind of town," to others it is "the Windy City," but to over 50 garden bloggers this past weekend Chicago was the beautiful and gracious city that hosted this year's Spring Fling. I'm still a little bleary-eyed and coming down from a sensory overload, but I wanted to share just a few highlights of this wonderful weekend.

Garden Muse Day is sponsored the first of each month by Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago, and this month it is particularly exciting as we actually got to see her garden in person!

Carolyn Gail was gracious enough to invite all of the Spring Flingers into her garden and home.




I had admired her orange perfection iris on her post, but all of her irises were beautiful, including these yellow and purple ones.

It is one thing to see a garden or parts of it on a blog, but quite another to see it in person. Some of you may think this photo looks familiar--Mr. McGregor's Daughter showed a similar photo on her blog one day as part of the "Through the Garden Gate" meme. A few of us who arrived early on Thursday were able to tour Squirrelhaven as well, and I was amazed at how large it was! A picture may be worth "a thousand words," but the real thing is worth ten times that.

The weekend was jam-packed with so many activities that it may take me awhile to remember everything we did. But I won't forget the highlight of Friday's tours--a trip to the Chicago Botanic Garden. Beckie and I made the mistake of opting for a later arrival and barely had time to skim the surface of all this fantastic place has to offer. The English walled garden was one of my favorite parts . . .



. . . as was this field of poppies. I have a feeling you're going to see a photo of this on every Spring Flinger's blog:) This planting of over 4700 poppies made an impression on everyone who saw it.

But the best part of the trip had to be meeting "old friends" and making new ones. There was certainly never a problem striking up a conversation with someone I'd never "met" before! Bus trips to gardens as well as dinners and lunches gave us a chance to meet new people and learn more about bloggers we thought we "knew."

For example, who knew that Frances was such a butterfly magnet?

And, of course, a good blogger is never without his or her camera, ready to take advantage of every photo opportunity as Nancy, Gail, and Frances demonstrate here in the Butterfly Haven at the Peggy Notebaert Museum.

Another highlight of the trip was the Lurie Garden, part of Millenium Park. This wave of six different varieties of salvia was so impressive I must have taken 20 pictures of it and still couldn't capture its magical effect.

In the Lurie I also found another "must-have" plant--this baptisia. I know I've seen it on some of your blogs, but again it's not the same as seeing it in person. I'm smitten with it and now am trying to find a place for one in my garden.

It was truly a wonderful weekend, and it will take me several days to sort through all my photos and collect my thoughts enough to thoroughly cover Spring Fling. But there are plants to be watered and some still needing a home in the garden and there are blog posts to be read, so this short post will have to do for now. A big thank you to all the organizers of Chicago's Spring Fling for a weekend I will always remember!