Kiefer’s soccer game was cancelled due to weather, so I stayed home and worked on the tree wisterias in back this morning. It looks like two of the potted Japanese wisterias didn’t make it. But one of them is showing a few blooms, and the purple Chinese wisteria (’Amethyst‘) is blooming like mad and smells amazing even though it’s not that big - the flowers are really pretty too, sort of two-tone (pictures to follow). All of the tree wisterias that are back there and aren’t in the ground yet REALLY need to be dug up (their tap roots broke through the bottoms of the pots last year, and are who knows how long/deep now) and put into their real places in the yard.

Some shrubs are blooming around the pond and along the driveway, one that looks like a white lacecap hydrangea, but I need to go out and look closer and read its label to be sure. The purple wisteria on the trellis in the north garden is full of blooms, visible from the main road! and smells great. The white one next to it might bloom in earnest soon, for the first time ever - last year we got just a few blossoms. Dan’s Crimson Queen, the one he brought back from Portland with him in the summer of 2000, and the Octopus in that garden are doing well. The irises and lilies in those beds are starting to grow - they don’t need a lot of weeding yet, because Annie and then I did a lot in that garden last summer, but I need to get some mulch down on them so new weeds don’t settle in and go out of control too fast! think I will do that tomorrow morning if it’s not still raining. Then it will be time for a fresh truckload.

Kim came over and we worked on the south lily bed together. She also helped me dig up some of the huge clumps of dog fennel from last year, and cleared out the path between the lily and iris beds. We finished up the weeding and got the lily bed mulched and cleaned up shortly before 2, just as it started to rain. It looks GREAT! and Dan’s double purple columbine, in the middle of it, is blooming now - really pretty.

I went through the Japanese maples in the yard and some in the pots today. The Sango Kaku (coral bark) didn’t survive: it’s dead above the graft, but its generic acer palmatum root stock is growing and the leaves are nicely variegated; so I just took out its tags and moved the pot to the hosta bed area. The last Butterfly we had left didn’t make it, either :( But the Hubbs Red Willow is doing well and has budded out into a pretty deep red color like Dan liked. So I think perhaps it should go into Dan’s pot, and I’ll put an Orange Dream in its place in the yard, with a Red Filigree or Shin Deshojo next to it. Tomorrow I’m going to do a bit of planting with the maples that wintered outside and are doing well, and move some of the maples from the greenhouse out to that area - that way they’ll get watered and acclimated, and we’ll see how many I really did kill last year.

The purple smoke baptisia has really sprung up in the past week and is about 8″ taller. I really need to divide it soon! (one of the divisions will be for Kim, who says it looks like asparagus right now, and she’s right :) The fothergilla in what I’m now calling Dan’s garden, which I thought I had killed with neglect last year, is blooming - it looks like little white bottle brushes. I’ve decided to move the miniature roses in the corner by the iris bed out to the east more, so they’ll get more sun, and put Dan’s orange and yellow azaleas there. I took some pictures of the area, to help me plan out the redwood bench placements and lilacs and other shrubs, but didn’t get around to measuring before the rain started in earnest.

Tonight I went with Kim and John (and Neil) to their church and then out to the Brass Grill. The church was nice, everyone was super friendly, and the service was very different from what I grew up with (that’s basically a good thing, although I didn’t know most of the songs ;) Dinner was fun too. I noticed though that I kept catching myself, ‘censoring’ what I said … so many things reminded me of Dan, but I didn’t want to be a broken record saying ‘oh, Dan would have liked/used to like this, and that’ all night - I’m sure that would eventually get to be annoying to even the kindest and most understanding people on earth ;) I can always say that here!

Going to work on my PoV article for the N&O some more now …