A funny thing happened with my High Country Gardens order

Well, my High Country Gardens order finally came. FedEx left them in full sun despite the cautions all over the boxes to leave them in shade. Thanks for nothing, FedEx! There were three boxes, which seemed like a lot for 15 plants.

(That's the sound of foreshadowing you hear. It's similar to the Law&Order bong!bong! noise.)

The plants took a week to arrive so they were really sad and wilted. I opened up the first box and my 15 plants were there. I glanced over at the other two boxes, wondering what the hell was in them. Then I realized that the box I had just opened had a SECOND layer of plants beneath the 15 I'd already pulled out. American Meadows, who has been struggling under the weight of their new acquisition, had sent me someone else's order. A big order. I panicked and texted Scott and he told me that the plants would never survive the trip back to HCG and to unwrap and baby them along with the others. They were mine now.

The packing slip included only the plants I'd ordered. There was no note saying, "Sorry your order was so bungled and late, here's a couple of plants on us." And who sends 50(!) plants as an apology? I unwrapped and watered all the plants, which took over an hour. Then I started reading up on what they'd sent me.

21 Salvia sylvestris 'Blue Hill'. You read that right; 21 of the same salvia.

5 Dalea pupureum

4 Ratibida columnifera 'Yellow'

9 Gaillardia (two colors)

12 Stachys coccineus 'Mountain Red'

I've called and called HCG, trying to get a rep so I can alert them that a customer probably got a shipment notification and never received their plants. I would be so upset if that happened to me. As before, no one answers the phone and their voicemail box is full. I spent an entire day putting plants in the ground, hoping they'll survive. It's a good thing I have so much empty space in my garden. Have you ever received an order that wasn't yours?

Silvery buns of goodness

Cotula hispida is described by Xera as "silvery buns of goodness."

Very aptly named.

Mark your calendars!

On June 8th Joy Creek Nursery will be holding a workshop called, "How to Form a Garden Community Through Blogging: A Workshop with Scott Weber [of Rhone Street Gardens] and Friends."

Have you ever wondered what the point of blogging was?  Guess what, there are lots of great reasons for gardeners to blog!  You can use it to show family and friends what you've been up to in your garden, or just to keep a record of your garden from year to year.  Blogging is also a great way to meet fellow gardeners in your area...and around the world.  Join some area bloggers as they discuss what spurred them to start blogging and what the benefits have been as a result.

The friends will be Loree of Danger Garden, Jane of MulchMaid, Ann of Amateur Bot-ann-ist, and myself. If you are reading this, you are a part of that gardening community mentioned above and we'd love to see you there! And if you have friends or partners who don't understand why you blog, drag them along. If you've never been out to Joy Creek, this is a great excuse to do some shopping or see their wonderful display gardens.

If that's not reason enough, Joy Creek serves cookies and coffee on the weekends. Caffeine + Cookies + Plants = Awesomeness. Please join us!

Mo' beds, mo' problems.

Last summer Loree gifted me the retaining blocks she removed from her yard during the great Bishops Weed expurgation. They sat in a pile in various areas of the yard, collecting spiders and looking terrible. My ultimate goal is to replace all of the retaining stones in the backyard with the same stone I used on the new shade bed but I spent way too much on plants last month and it's just not in the budget. I should use the free material I already have, right?

I started out a few weeks ago by dry fitting the blocks into roughly the area I wanted. Seeing that this corner was actually incorporated with the rest of the garden made me so happy. All of a sudden I realized how much this corner has been bugging me. But then I realized that I wanted to bring the line out a ways, so I had to remove some sod. And then I accidentally removed too much sod. I think I'm getting too good at it.

Side note: North Portland soil is much sandier than other parts of the city, where they have thick clay. Every time I get a plant from Scott I realize all over again how lucky I am, soil wise. His soil is sticky and unmovable and when it dries out it's hard as a rock. I've been able to see my soil improve dramatically (and quickly) by adding mulch every spring and compost every fall. My soil was badly compacted but I have almost no clay. I'm very lucky. The downside of North and NE Portland is that it was built atop a giant anthill. I could tell you horror stories of friends discovering ant infestations in their water heaters, so huge that grad students were brought in to study it.

Why am I telling you this? Because I discovered that every ant in Portland is living in this bed. I'll poison them if they come inside the house but out here they can do what they want. But, ugh.

Anyway, this area has been looking really good with all the ferns coming up, so good that I'm thinking about moving them.

I'm thinking about moving them forward and tucking another ninebark between the cedar and the pieris. 'Diabolo' grows insanely well in the northwest, sometimes reaching twenty feet (or so says Dan Hinkley). I don't think it would get that tall in a dry shady spot like this, but some height would be appreciated here. Or will the dark foliage just disappear in this area? I'm also considering a Mahonia 'Soft Caress.' Am I missing another shrub that would be good for this spot? Or should I leave it as is?

I'm badly in need of more plants to fill out this bed but I need to stop for a bit and let my wallet recuperate from April's shopping sprees and my trips to Rare Plant Research and Wind Dancer Garden. I thought creating this bed with donated stones would be thrifty but somehow I need to go shopping again.

Get opinionated on me. You all have such good suggestions.

I finally achieved what most gardeners can do in their sleep

At last, my clematis bloomed. People in the northwest have clematis vines that are threatening to eat their houses. They are incredibly easy to grow, unless you are me.

I have no idea what kind it is, as I planted it almost four years ago. I moved it a few times, then finally settled it next to my 'Moonlight' climbing hydrangea. Everyone tells me that 'Moonlight' needs no trellis and can climb anything but I seem to have acquired a specimen with a lazy mutation. It can't climb without assistance, so I have jury-rigged a system. The Corokia cotoneaster in a pot next to them is doing wonderfully. I think maybe I'm just vine-ally challenged.

I'm done with High Country Gardens

I placed an order with High Country Gardens back in March. The plants are intended to go in the entrance to my yard, which is currently a weedy, awful mess.

They charged my card at the time of the order, which is fairly unusual for mail order nurseries (in my experience). I should have received my plants the week of April 15th. That week came and went and my plants never arrived. I called them and was told that I was "in shipping" and that my plants would go out the following Monday. But no plants arrived.

I called again and they told me that Bouteloua gracilis 'Blonde Ambition' had held up the order. It would ship as soon as that was ready.

Still no plants arrived.

I got a mass email saying that their winter had been cold and their stock wasn't where it would normally be at that time of year. My plants would ship the week of May 13th!

Then I randomly received an email last week stating that they would be unable to fulfill two of my plant requests (Lonicera reticulata 'Kintzley's Ghost' and Gaillardia 'Arizona Sun') and they were refunding the money and crediting me $10 to use at the nursery.

I still have no plants. At this point I want to cancel my order completely but when you call you get put through to a voicemail box that is full and no longer takes messages. When I tried to cheat and choose the phone option to place an order I still can't get a live person. It's like they just disappeared, taking my money with them.

I've placed orders with HCG and had no problems in the past. Now that they've been sold to American Meadows the whole operation seems to have gone to shit. I don't think I'll be using that $10 credit. Buyer beware.

I want an oompa loompa NOW.

I have a number of projects that I want to take care of this summer. A lot of them hinge on other projects, like bumping out the fence on the west side of the house. This area, which I call "the lab," has been taunting me.

I'm planning on removing the sod here, possibly edging the plants in stone, then replacing the sod with cedar chips. A couple of times I've even signed into YardRents and ordered a sod cutter, only to cancel it five minutes later. I want to remove the sod from the west side of the house (where the expanded fence is going in) and it makes sense to do that at the same time that I remove it here.

Then I can list the sod on craigslist once and deal with YardRents fees once. That's the smart thing to do but I want to remove it NOW. It's riddled with weeds and it serves no purpose. We don't bag our lawn clippings, so we end up with dead grass scattered all over the driveway and sidewalk, which drives me crazy.

But once we get this removed we'll have almost no lawn in the front yard. Huzzah! I think I'm going to save Greg so much time mowing the lawn that he'll have extra time to rub my back. Back me up on this.