Soothing to the Soul

Last night the temperature was perfect so I dug out my sneakers and gardening gloves and headed out to the yard to plant my new Impulse Purchases.   I have not planted anything since May and oh my, did it feel wonderful digging in the soil, stepping back and admiring the new additions, dreaming of what they would become when they grow up.  After so many days of heat, my heart and soul were renewed!

I'm linking up at Tootsie's Fertilizer Friday so pop over there.  It will definitely renew your gardening soul!

The garden was looking a little tired to me - mostly yellow and white blooms in the side garden. No offense to yellow, but you remind me of fall, which I don't want to ever get here.  I don't care how beautiful the trees are in New England.  It just means that I will soon be freezing my !#$ off.  So I need pink to deceive me into thinking that it is still late spring / early summer in my yard. 

The delphs have all gone by, except for the chinensis.  The only pink to be seen was my little Rose Campion still blooming away, but they are small blooms so are hard to see from a distance. 

I do have several Echinacea Pink Swan planted but they are new baby plants this year so they have not filled in yet and only have a few blooms.  Not enough for the pink to pop.  

I was able to cross off two items on my 'Wish List':  Platycodon and Phlox. I was so excited. I still am.

Here are my new purchases, all gathered up for planting:

Echinacea Big Sky Sundown:

Phlox Laura (my step-daughter's name is Laura so I'm extra-excited about these):

Phlox Bright Eyes (which smell so good); the variegated plants are Phlox Nora Leigh.  There aren't any blooms open on these yet, but they look like Bright Eyes in the picture:

Platycodon:

And last but not least, my only annual purchase.  Pentas Graffiti Pink.  These also smell really good and the bumblebees just couldn't leave these alone.  I had to brush them off to get the plants into my car when I bought them:

I found that my Campanula White Clips are blooming, but need to be divided badly.  They're blooming around the outside with a hole in the middle.  I'll have to check to see if I can do that in the fall:

Echinacea White Swan (was supposed to be pink, but I like it.  It's actually more of a cream color) is blooming.  It's a bit chewed up, I'm not sure what's eating it.  Oh, I see tons of earwigs and grasshoppers in my yard this year! Normally I would only see a few.  They definitely had a population explosion this year: 

And my Echinacea Pink Swan:

I cut back the browning flower stalks on the Heuchera 'Firefly' in the past week or so.  They have rewarded me by sending up new flower stalks.  Now, these are the only Heuchera that I have so I don't know how long they normally bloom, but these have been in flower since the end of May:

Coreopsis Moonbeam is blooming.  It isn't a great bloomer for me, but I really like the spiky foliage:

Rudbeckia, doing it's thing:

Echinacea Pink Double Delight and Achillea Cerise Queen (sneaky little bugger, thought I pulled it all out last year):

All of the new plants went into the Side Garden. Here are some pics of the garden after I finished planting.  You can barely see my new babies but they're there (I know they're small, but it doesn't help that Hubby's camera just doesn't pick up the color and detail like my camera does):

A friend at work who knows how obsessed I am with gardening gave me a brochure to a daylily farm that is 45 minutes from my house.  While checking it out online, I realized that it is only a few minutes away from a botanic garden that I have wanted to visit for a few years now but still have not visited.  I feel a day trip coming on, which I will probably be taking alone since my friends and family are not interested in gardening in the least.  Maybe I can drag hubby with me, after reminding him how I must still get up for work every day while he has the entire summer off.  (Sometimes you have to play dirty) I have never visited a botanic garden so it will be a new experience for me.

I must wait for the return of my camera though.  There is no way in hell I'm visiting these places with Hubby's old dinosaur of a camera!  Side note:  I checked the repair status of my camera again today; Canon still says they can't find it in their system and to call the customer service #.  Umm, yeah - about that.  Now, I may be a little slow but tell me if you can find anything wrong here with the Canon response:

We are sorry, but we are unable to find your repair order in our database.  Please re-enter your repair number and zipcode and try again or call Canon customer service at 555-555-12223

OK, time's up.  Check out the phone number.... the last I knew, that was one too many digits for an actual phone #.  Just for fun, I even tried calling it.  I got Directory Assistance.  

Double thumbs up Canon Customer Service Department!  You guys rock!  I felt like I was back in my newly divorced dating days when you thought someone really liked you but it turns out the phone # they gave you was bogus. 

For your internet browsing pleasure, here are the links to the gardens I want to visit. 

http://www.goldenskepfarm.com/index.html

http://www.towerhillbg.org/index.html

As my step-daughter used to say.....  Toodles!