First GLAD.....Failure???

Skidiver or should I call you Stuart? I am rubber, you are glue whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!

Nother one peaking thru!! Hooray!!

I like this one, too!

Skidivur is always trying to trick me into spending my hard earned cash on you just so he can load up the guilt next time we go to a cool nursery. I'm WAY to savvy to the convoluted ways of both of you to fall for that one. In fact, I care so much about you, Herpst, that I absolutely refuse to buy you any pots, believing that you are better off for buying them yourself! You see how that works??? Hmmmm??? That's called MATURITY! So THERE! How do you like them apples, Mr. Smalley???


I bought some concrete forms for making pillars. I'm going to try making them in the Little and Lewis tradition of leaving the gaps in the concrete, then doing the color washing. I better schedule a day to actually do all of the playing with concrete rather than just thinking about it. Times a wasting!

I like the idea of the lilies in pots, planted in waves to keep the bloom longer. So I can accomplish this by keeping them in the fridge? Tell me more. Mine are all in the ground, but I hear the siren song...

But dad PROMISED that I could have the pots for my birthday/christmas/hanukah/solstice/kwanza/easter/ramadan/insert holiday here gift. If I get socks and underwear again this year, I'll just DIE!
All the other kids have new pots! Fine then if you want me to be the only one in the whole world with pots that I got two whole weeks ago, have it your way. See if I care!
When you give me a raise in my allowance, I might be able to buy them myself. Hint, hint!

Here's my understanding of the lilies thing:

Thalassa Cruso wrote in Making Things Grow Outdoors about wanting huge drifts of white trumpet lilies for the garden wedding of her daughter. She contacted a lily grower & had the bulbs refrigerated until the right time to plant them for the target bloom date. It seems that lilies have a predictable span of time between planting and blooming. Each variety is a little different but I would imagine that B & D would know about their own varieties.

When you buy bulbs from B & D, they have refrigerated them & don't store them at room temperature which is a good thing because lily bulbs, unlike many other bulbs, corms, & tubers, don't dry & store well. They like to keep fleshy living roots. When you receive the bulbs, you simply put them in your own refrigerator and stagger-plant them. It would work to do this in the ground as well. In the second year, they revert to their normal cycle & again all bloom together. So it's a good thing to buy more bulbs every year to keep this process going (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

Have fun making pillars and PLEASE make sure that you dig a deep hole to anchor the pillar and level the forms. I'm sure that you don't need to be told this but I, lacking the maturity that you mentioned above, like to do things quickly & have them done & usually end up skipping the all-important first steps. From personal experience I can tell you that it's not a lot of fun to have a 12 foot concrete column fall on you or your outdoor furniture. I used concrete pipes, stacked one on top of another, put rebar down the middle and poured concrete to fill the bottom pipe & part of the top one. The result is o.k. but they are a little smooth. With the exception of one of them falling shortly after I did them (fixed that problem) they've lasted about 3 years with little more trouble. I'm thinking of getting pillar forms at the big box store, putting them around the outside of my pipe/pillars and pouring concrete around the outside to make a stouter column and to allow a rougher look. I guess that the rough look is attained by not adding much water to the concrete mix. Jerry at Jungle Fever uses a large piece of PVC pipe that he's cut in half lengthwise & wired together. He is able to pour the concrete into the form and after it's cured for a while, he removes the wire & form and can use it again and again.

Ah yes, the old 'foundation' part of doing concrete work. I will surely do as you suggest. I'm not even sure where these pillars will go yet. I bought the cheap cardboard forms at home depot because I knew someday I would use them. The story of my life. I'm thinking of doing a shrine with a wall fountain in the shady part of the garden. Maybe on either side of that. A vision is coming to me........

Yes, the rough look is made by making the conrete just wet enough, but not wet enough to pour. You can also get it by using concrete rubble to fill in the big spaces and packing concrete around it to hold everything together. If you need rubble, I can set you up. (LOL!!)

Looks like I need to buy some lilies to keep in the fridge. I guess I could dig some up, too and do that as well. I looked at the B and D site last night and my bank account started shrinking!
Off to work now!

Off to work? You haven't quit that silly job yet to pursue gardening full time? RATS! I too have to work to subsidize my gardening/craft addictions. (not to mention that pesky mortgage payment) Hope you had a good day at work and are enjoying this lovely evening. There is no place as beautiful as the PNW this time of year!

Thanks for the rubble offer but I'd hate to take away the building blocks of the famous pixy rocks. Also with my own numerous concrete failures, I've got quite a pile of my very own rubble to work with.

Buying lilies is always a good thing! (O.K. buying any garden stuff is a good thing) Money was meant to be spent. The love of money is the root of all evil but the love of lilies is never criticized. Consider the lilies, they toil not nor strain. The lily is used as a symbol of Mary. Really, by spending that evil money on lilies, you are doing God's work! Bless you!
(how's that for a rationalization?)

That is top notch!! Excellent rationalizing!
Yes, the lily is the symbol of Mary and, of course, I always feel closer to God in the garden. I have a 'Mary' statue in a niche in the wooded area of the garden, and then another Mary on the other side. Naturally, I agree with the sentiment that gardening is God's work.

Alas, my practice takes me out of the garden most evenings during the week. But I get morning time there. I would love to garden for a living, but we can't all be Dan Hinkley.

Tomorrow, my day off, I am taking a little trip up to Black Diamond to visit Big Dipper Farms. I've always wanted to pay them a visit, and time's a wasting! The days shorten, the nights grow longer. My seasonal depression sits like a large toad awaiting a hapless victim. Perhaps they will have lilies.

Big Dipper visit? YEA! Be sure to follow the directions on their website and not be tempted to mapquest them. Their directions take you through some absolutely beautiful rural land and through a state park. It's idyllic & as I drove through, the cares of the city, job, etc. seemed to float away. When I first drove up to the nursery, I was a little disappointed by what I saw. It didn't look very promising. Upon further inspection, however, there were quite a few treasures there. (don't judge a book by its cover and all that) There is also a large section which is off limits to on-site visitors. I had done an online order before I went and many of the more unusual things I ordered came from that back area so it might be worth your while to thoroughly check out their plant list (has lovely photos of each plant) before you go so that you can inquire about plants that might not be on display.

Your practice? Medicine? Law? Therapy? What do you practice?

Alas, the long dark approaches all to fast. In my hapless youth I used to look forward to the summer solstice - longest day blah, blah. As I get older (not that you'd know anything about that since, like Merlin, you are youthening) I am more drawn to the winter solstice as a turning point - the promise of spring, the lengthening of days.

A new addition

Very pretty! Your lawn looks very much like mine...that lovely PNW summer tawny faun color mmm. Well, mine is a little greener due to the large number of dandilions that cheerfully maintain a fresh green appearance & puncutate the tan lawn & tell all the neighbors with perfect lawns that I am a sloth. Oops...I meant that I support a biodiverse turf community - yes, that's it.

hey, that's a beauty! You inspire me! I've never really grown gladiolas. I did buy some that were an unusual kind - lipstick comes to mind for some reason. I planted them in a pot and the grew leaves, but they never flowered. They are probably still in that pot. Hm. Maybe I better look at glads for next year.

Big Dipper was fun! I did take the GreenValley road through the lovely farm land. Great Road! Plus, the kids and I went to Flaming Geyser state park and went swimming in the river. I dropped them off, then went up to Big DIpper for a couple of hourse, then went backt to the park. I've lived here for 20 years and didn't know about that place. We're all going back this weekend with more inner tubes. What a blast that was! The last time I went swimming in a river without freezing my bum off was down in Utah.

Here's what I scored at Big Dipper:

Begonia grandis 'Heron's Pirouette' (have to get all the heronswood cultivars I can find) Read my most recent rant on the Burpee thread.
Hydrangea 'purple tiers'
Weigela 'dark horse'
Viburnum picatum 'Mary Milton' (Lovely!!)
a sumac called 'tiger eyes' (I think - it replaces the bare root one I bought from them in the winter. My dogs dug that one up so often that it died.)

I'll probably have to go back for the Rodgersia 'chocolate wings'.
I was impressed that their prices were so good. These are all good sized plants in gallon containers, except for the begonia, and it was very well developed in a long root pot. They do have lots of stuff.
I should have looked at their plant list, but I was too interested in the actual plants. I'll check out their website again, though, just in case they have something there that I want and didn't see.

50th time seems about right. Took me forEVER to get this pic right.

And this new addition.

OOOH! Ahhh!

Wow, worth the wait!