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“Chimes of the Appalachians” - Aluminum tubes anodized with Copper, with black walnut wood, hand tuned and all that jazz, made by Weatherland, oh it’s 42″ long!

I’ve been wanting a wind chime for at least a year now, but never could find one that I felt like actually paying for, and I refused to buy some cheap piece of crap. I was up at the greenhouse today, they were rather wiped out of everything… and inconveniently they’d potted up pretty much everything, making it less than desirable cost-wise. They did have an entire building still full of freakin’ Petunias though, hah. We did buy some more, but they were huge and it cost $2.20 for four of them… they do work well in various spots, but anyway.

I like the way the petunias and pineapple mint work together in my barrel… I need several more of them for my mints, the tiny pots from last year just aren’t cutting it. I don’t give the petunias long though, the mint will quickly take over, as usual. You can also see the little silver torch ‘things’ I picked up the other day, they’re a lifesaver when it comes to warding off the bugs, they’re also such a perfect height as to not be annoying during the day.

So, I had a sage plant and some feverfew, a whopping total of about three dollars… kind of defeats the driving up there. I definitely needed to make the trip more worthwhile.

They have this spectacular wind chime outside made of black pipes something on the order of 6″ in diameter. It rarely makes noise, but when it does… wow. I finally got around to looking for chimes in there, and found a couple that I really liked. Firstly, they had a smaller version of that gigantic one outside, but… it was still nearly $300, ouch. Smaller versions of that were available, but still ghastly expensive, but finally I was stuck deciding between this one “Chimes of the Appalachians” or “Chapel Bells” …and it was a tough choice. I really liked the chapel bells one, but I wasn’t sure I’d want to hear something like that on a regular basis. That one was 71″ long, with very small diameter tubes, rather spectacular in its own right, but I went with the ‘mountain chimes’ obviously.

Fortunately and also unfortunately these large chimes require quite a bit of wind to do anything. The plus is that I won’t be hearing the chime so often as to become annoying, but of course I really want to hear it now because I’m obsessive about just having bought this thing.

Finally, my mother bought me that cute little lady bug ‘thing’ made of blackened metal. I’m just giddy over it, so very cute, hah. I’ve been working on the pathway, thus it has ‘fresh’ cocoa hulls, which are a lighter brown than the ‘weathered’ ones in the ‘patio’ area of the rose garden.

Actually, I highly doubt it’s the first bird, but it is the first bird that I’ve seen… and was able to photograph. This reminds me, I really must get a digital SLR that will use my 300mm zoom lense.

I’ve been getting more and more excited about birds… similarly I’m now not annoyed with bees… even those evil wasps have a good purpose… they eat the more evil bugs (some kinds at least).

I noticed for the first time -ever- that I now have a woodpecker in the yard. It’s some sort of one with kind of gray and white wings… I didn’t really noticed it until I saw it flying, then realized that it was landing on the trunks of the trees… lol. I think it might be a Downy or Hairy Woodpecker… female, since I didn’t notice any red on the top of its head.

I believe I saw a couple of Chickadees, there are plenty of Robins & Catbirds, along with your normal Crows. I also have a few Cardinals, whee!

The back yard in June of 2003.

The back yard in June of 2005.

I simply couldn’t let the rocky earth I was digging in defeat me. I went back out there, with a vengance, taking the pick axe to every little area… raking out the bigger stones, and then deciding that I’d “simply” move the herb garden into that spot — making room for at least three of the five roses in the previous space the herb garden was using. Thankfully herbs actually like crappy soil, for the most part, so… yay for that.

That’s the photo of the area prior to my actually planting the three roses, but they’re in that block enclosed area to the right of the photo. I also moved all those blocks (still need to seat and align them a bit better) now seen toward the left of the photo, enclosing the overzealous strawberries and the other veggies. It’s all a bit of a mess at this point, but I’ll get it cleaned up fairly soon… hopefully soon, heh. The herbs seem to have survived their transplanting fairly well… my golden sage was a bit wilted today, but otherwise they seem happy enough.

My arms, and particularly my hands and feet are so very sore today, still.

I still have to find a place for two more roses… and yes, I know there looks like plenty of room… but there really isn’t when you take into consideration the little shade problem that my love of trees provides, lol. I think I have two places in mind… my less than beautiful pink carnation will get the boot — to be replanted somewhere else (no clue where yet) and…I think I have a spot actually in the “rose garden” provided I don’t run into tree roots. It seems that’s the problem… I either have no topsoil before the rock beneath, or I have tree roots, lol. The front yard, while expansive, is fairly shaded… although I don’t know if the soil really is any better or not. I think if I run up against my rose limit next year (I’m setting the limit at four, because I know I can fit that many into where the dahlias are now) I’ll probably have to start with raised beds… ugh.

The side yard has a decent bit of potential, except for the whole crappy soil problem. It isn’t so bad when you’re talking about regular plants… but roses & trees have this thing about big anchoring roots, heh…. and it’s pretty damned near impossible to get a deep enough hole dug… agh!

I guess the brightside is that the ‘rose budget’ will give way to the ‘perennial plant budget’ for next year, lol. I do have a rose I’ll probably be shovel pruning… the ugly orange/red/yellow thing that I got, it was mislabeled… the only thing saving it at this point is the fact that Justin has expressed fondness for it. It’s just that I’ve come to this discovery that my actual plantable space is considerably less than I thought, and now I need to become more selective about what I’m growing. That one-cane-wonder of ‘Sheer Bliss’ ….I love it, probably my favorite hybrid tea, but… if it doesn’t get another cane or two… it’ll have to be replaced with something more robust and productive.

The J&P roses I ordered in that ’sort of spur of the moment trying to resist but failed’ sort of way arrived Tuesday. I put them into five gallon buckets to soak, as one does with bareroot roses, and well… they’re still there. The ‘arrive by’ date was originally the 17th, then changed to the 20th, so… of course I’d get them on the 14th!

It’s time to order explosives.

Wait, maybe it’s time to order several cubic yards of “dirt” err, I mean “Soil” …right.

…and lots of concrete blocks or… something. I’m talking raised beds… The roses were only $5 each, that’s including the shipping. This isn’t worth it, unfortunately.

You see, the yard slopes ever so less than slightly… in the rose garden “proper” I guess there’s a good foot of soil before hitting the shale, enough that I can generally get a bareroot to the proper depth.

The rose garden is, well, I figured at least, full… when they all grow up and become big little roses, well, they’ll be mashed in together tightly enough. The rose garden then bends out around my herbs & veggies, where right now I have a fairly decent Dahlia planting… it was then to curve again and I’d plant these roses. That simply isn’t going to work… four inches of soil and then the shale starts, I pick axed a foot down, and it just doesn’t end. Perhaps if I had some sort of heavy machinery I could just scrape away all that crap and fill it back in with good soil, but… again, not worth it to me, I don’t believe.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do at this point… perhaps I’ll give the roses away, perhaps I’ll sell them to someone… maybe I’ll plant them there anyway, knowing that if I don’t plant them they’ll die — at least they’ll have a miniscule chance. …I could also just TRY to find some space in the rose garden for them, I just don’t know. I’m grumpy.