Landscaping

So part 2 of our Saturday exploits involved finding a (plant) nursery we liked.  For us, this meant not only finding a wide range of healthy plants, but also someone who could serve as our advisor in this process.

Two words:  Grower's Outlet.  Oh. My. Goddess.  This place is amazing!  It's pretty much in Pineville down South Blvd and it is huge!  They have an amazing variety of plants at really reasonable prices.  And we hooked up with Kathy, who worked there, for a good bit o' information.  We were,  first of all, pretty psyched to learn that our landscape architect, Dennis Terry, set us up with a design which will allow us to be in bloom through trees, shrubs and perennials from February through November.  I did not understand that when I saw the designs.  We also decided that we're going to go for a monochromatic color scheme for the blooms:  pink/red/magenta and white. 

So what are the highlights? We're going for

• A pink Cousa dogwood which will bloom in May.  This is a later bloom than most dogwoods.  
• A dwarf Japanese maple to finish up the front yard.  
• Pink Satsuka Azaleas, a June bloom.  (Satsuka apparently means 6th month, and describes when it will bloom) 
• Yoshino Cherry, a white blooming tree for May
• Daylillies
• Firepower Nandinas, which are green in the summer and hot red in the fall and winter! 
• A Osmanthus Fortuni which blooms in the fall through November and is apparently very, very fragrant. 
• A magenta standard Crape Myrtle.  "'Standard" means that it only has one main tree trunk and not the several sprouty ones we've seen. We're hoping this tree will make a canopy over the deck and break the summer sun in our kitchen window. 
• Many, many "rare" pink scotch broom which will bloom early, stay green all summer and then when they lose their leaves, their stems are still green.  Most scotch brooms are yellow, not pink.  (BTW, this is not the same scotch broom which is such a problem in the pacific northwest).  These guys are going down the fence to make a prettier view to our neighbor's yard than we currently have. 

The good news is that this won't cost nearly as much as it did when we did the front yard.  The bad news is that it won't cost so much because we're going to be doing all the work.  I still have one more hour's worth of ivy cleaning for the first bed, and then a couple hours of ivy cleaning for the beds where the scotch broom is going.  Bleah.  It's not going to be any help at all that today, we're expecting more snow.  I'm going on record as saying I don't believe it and that we WON"T get any significant snow.  I hope that's true. 

Hair update

Slight change of subject.   I'm not blow drying my hair anymore.  Although it looked great the first time.  The second day was frizzier and the third day was downright witchy looking.  I think blow drying may be an occassional, I've-just-washed-my-hair-and-it-needs-to-look-dry thing for me and not an everyday occurance.  Every one's curly hair is different....and that's the tricky part, no???

Back to work. 

2:37:50 PM