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I’m all about buying clearanced Orchids at Lowe’s. I don’t care that they’ve lost their pretty little flowers, the plant itself is more valuable. This is particularly reinforced by the fact my $10 Walmart-purchased Orchid is now in spike. How I justify a lot of things is by being able to still be interested in them a year after the initial “bam” of a buying frenzy. If I can keep a certain variety of plant alive for at least a year then I feel it’s safe to say that I can keep doing it.

With that in mind I didn’t really hesitate when I saw numerous Dendrobium Orchids clearanced at Lowe’s the other day. Dropping the price of a 6″ pot down to $13 from $25, and the 4″ pots being dropped down to a mere $7.

Matthew has mentioned buying an African Violet ( I think - but I’ve heard of this happening at Lowe’s) that wasn’t really a 6″ “big” type, but two of the much, much smaller ones carefully stuck together. Big scam. AVs don’t usually grow to be in very big pots unless they’re a special variety… otherwise your average African Violets will stay in those tiny little pots you buy them in forever. They like being root bound and if they’re not, well… they won’t flower because they’re just too “comfortable” in their roomy big pot to consider blooming to reproduce. All the energy that would go into blooming is transfered into growing the roots to fill whatever vast container they happen to be in.

The point of this though, is that the same thing happened with my recent Orchid purchases. These “cheapo” orchids are usually packed so tightly into their plastic coffins with the moss there is absolutely no hope of getting the roots air (Orchids are epiphytes afterall!) or keeping them from rotting away, taking the plant along with it to Orchid Heaven. So, in this delicate process of loosing the moss and all that fun, I noticed that the Orchid pretty much fell into two pieces… quite unusual. I quickly realized by looking at the roots (so crampacked full of moss it was ridiculous) that they were indeed two very separate plants. I found that highly odd for a plant in a 4″ pot, but then it happened again to the 6″ pot. Technically the 6″ pot had three, but one of them only had a tiny little piece, a baby… so now that one is “sphag & bag” fun.

I’d be quite pissed if I had paid full price… in the fact that this huge plant is not actually a huge plant, but several put together. As it stands, I’m kind of happy about it, sort of… I got four (maybe five if I can keep the tiny baby alive) for the price of… well… ONE. ;)

I mean turf grass, you know… a lawn. I’ve made an edict; no grass in the back yard.

Last year I started four gardens. One of them is a small perennial garden in front of the shed. It’s mostly montana bachelor’s buttons, black-eyed susans, various coneflowers (echinacea), and a rapidly multiplying bit of forget-me-nots. Everything has come back, and I’ll be sure to expand that area a bit to help fit in the with “no grass policy” I’ve started.

I also started (last year) a veggie garden, herb garden, and of course my marvelous rose garden. This whole frost in May thing isn’t working out too well for the tomatoes, right now they’re covered up… they can’t take another little frost. I figured by now we’d be safe, but… nope. The herb garden is looking quite nice, it’s the one surrounded by solid concrete blocks. I’ll be surrounding the veggie garden in the same way provided I can source the blocks this year. I stopped by Nitterhouse and they didn’t have any of the inexpensive “seconds” available (yet).

I started to really define the rose garden as a secluded little spot, tucked away in the corner of the yard. I tore up a vast area of grass around all of the plants, I’ll be mulching and planting groundcover plants sometime soon. It looks much more like a “rose garden” now versus a weedy mess with thorny sticks popping up here and there.

I’ve been long intending to put in a sort of patio-esque area in the center of the garden. I never quite got around to actually doing it until just the other day. We have a ridiculous number of two foot square “sidewalk” blocks, or pavers, or whatever you want to call them. Most of them are a bit too disgusting to ever use for such a purpose, and quite a few are either broken or cracked. A few well placed blows with the sledge hammer and they’re nice little chunks of rock-like concrete. I’ve taken to calling this my “poor man’s flagstone.” I started by putting down this horrible to work with black plastic edging crap. It’s basically, to me, a not exactly inexpensive way of defining the area, heh. I then put down a bunch of newspaper, nice and thick, plopped down some of the blocks in a fairly wide spaced (2-3″ gaps) fashion, and I’m filling in around it with nicely composted “dirt” from last year. So far I have about a third of it to that stage, over the next week or so I hope to get that phase finished. The next step will be to purchase a lot of creeping thyme and plant it between the “stones” in that area. If this works as planned (and so far it is) this will give me a nice “cottage garden” type look.

I’ve also put in four new roses, and I think I have room for about that many more before I’m totally out of space. This year’s additions thus far are Tiffany, Sterling Silver (I don’t have high hopes for that one… bleh), Hopie Girl, and Chicago Peace. This brings me up to thirteen, so with the addition of about four more I’ll be nicely close to a good twenty. I might just have to find a couple more spots so I can have that nice even twenty roses, right?

The half-moon area in front of the deck, defined by the little walking path, has been dug up on one side of the shaggy maple, and I’m working on the other side. It’s such horrible work to rip up grass, even grass that’s barely attractive as such. A matching half-moon area in front (on the side, depending on how you view it) of the herb and veggie gardens has also been excavated. I’ve planted white, pink, red & white, and dark red dahlias in that area, along with a handful of Stargazer lilies. Right now it looks like I’m having a bumper crop of green stakes. ;) The previously mentioned area in front of the deck is getting a similar treatment, daylilies, asiatics and dahlias… random assortments for the frugal gardener.

I am getting a terrific amount of work done now when it’s a mere 55 ° versus last year when I was outside slaving away in the 90 ° weather. The plan is to get all of the difficult work done now, when it gets warm all I’ll have to do is water and admire. Here’s to that hope. ;)