Plants, herons and pots…

It doesn’t look like much but one day…

I spent some time separating the hosta with the white and green leaves from the ragwort.  These hosta were planted along the other side of the path but I wanted to mix them in with the solid green hosta.  I have I think about 24 of the white and green ones and countless solid green as I found more of them the other day.  This is my first attempt at actually planning where I’m planting things.

The other morning I was sitting in the quiet enjoying my coffee when I saw something very large fly towards the house, as it made it’s was past the French doors my heart sank it was a blue heron.  Now our pond is not hunter friendly, the thing is almost 4 feet deep in the center.  The sides are not flat and I did this on purpose because I didn’t want anyone to be able to hunt my fish or frogs.  I have a Koi cave as well that looks like a log and if the fish hide in there you can’t see them.  On top of all of that I also have an aerator now and it does a great job of obscuring the view into the pond.  All those things are supposed to make it unfriendly to heron, yet there it was flying away and I didn’t know if it had a belly full of fish or not.  I quickly ordered a couple more Koi caves and a decoy heron.  Supposedly heron don’t like to share space with other heron and won’t come to a pond that is already occupied. I will move this guy around the pond all season, just to keep any heron that might be checking in thinking there is someone already here.

And then there were two..okay technically there are still 5 plants in pots left to be planted.  This dogwood and fringe tree, a yellow twig dogwood, a huge Turks Cap lily with some creeping fern and a Japanese rose.  All but the fringe tree require assistance in planting because they need big holes dug and the pots are heavy!  Ironic that I’m down to 5 and am about to hit a mega plant sale this weekend.  I will not however buy anything that I don’t have a place for!

Last but not least, my Sweet Tea finally made it into the ground!  I bought this at a plant sale years ago.  It was huge.  I brought it home and planted it in one of my shade beds and it slowly died away to just a few leaves in one season.  At first I thought it was transplant shock but the following season it did nothing.  So I dug up this pathetic little thing that barely had a leaf on it and planted it in a pot where I could keep an eye on it.  After 2 years in the pot it finally got big enough to try in the ground again, I’m hoping that this area is more to it’s liking because I love the colors on this one.  Oh and yes I planted it with these green hosta on purpose, funny, I’m gardening on purpose now!