Yesterday I trolled all of the local greenhouses, looking for medium height hardy roses - the top of my rose mound is a bit sparse at the moment, as I have lost a few roses there and, I guess, never really had a clear plan for that area. Anyway, I was looking for something in the 3x3 size. I have been reading up and Frau Dagmar Hartroop looks nice, and of course for sweetness Dart's Dash. I have just one pavement and I think they are lovely too. I was keeping an eye out for Roseraie de l'Hay, which is NOT for the rose mound at all, as she is a huge seven footer, and bushy. I thought I'd seen some at Wally Mart, but if I did they're all gone. Anyway I did get a George Vancouver there, it's a medium pink and grows the exact size I wanted. And it was $6.97.
Tried VanKampens in the afternoon, and they did have Roseraie, but at $22.99 I thought twice. Even with a buy two get one free sale on, it's over $50! But on my way out I had a closer look at the tree peonies - the sale was the same, and the base price was $9.99! So I bought three: white, pink and maroon/deep red. I've been doing research on them online. These seem to have Japanese names, and I have a short list of those. They apparently need quite a deep hole and lots of compost and such. Also alkilinity, which doesn't come natural to PEI! And they'll need full sun. I had a bit of a dig around in the bed along the driveway last night, and I think I could excavate a big enough hole in the middle of it for one or two of them. Because they're so tall, it will add quite a bit of height to that bed. I would like to put the maroon/dark red one near the house, but I am not sure there's room or enough sun - because it faces East, when the sun goes over there's deep shade there in the afternoons. Ah well. It's a glorious problem to have.
The lovely man who digs up my vegetable garden was over on Monday, and bless him, dug out all the dandelions before cultivating. I put them into the compost cart and they'll be gone when I get home today. (I love Waste Watch too.) So no seeds from them, at least. I went to Vesey's on Tuesday and bought $60 worth of vegetable seeds. Apparently it will rain on the weekend, but I may plant some of it anyway. Can't wait for green onions and leaf lettuce, and so on!
The next big job is to buy a lot of composted manure and mulch, as the rose mound needs badly to be re-done this year. I've started to save newspapers to put underneath the mulch. It will be so great to not have to mow or weed up there any more.
It's been cool, but that's fine with me - it means the heavy work in the garden can get done without heat-stroke. Things are slow to come out, and slow to fade as well. It's an exciting time, garden-wise, as the lilacs, spirea and honeysuckles are about to pop. Today I could smell the poplars - even though most of them have died, there must be one or two left. The smell is the best part of them, of course!
