I stood in the garage and took a couple of pictures to post here. My intention was to show the rain, but I ended up just showing the vitex tree and foxtail ferns on one side of the garage and the lantana, redbud tree, agapanthas, coiled up hose and the nice, big pot that Wayne broke when he got out of the truck without putting it in PARK. The lantana is so happy there. It's planted too close to the driveway and is just spilling out on the concrete. (I put that there a couple of years ago...not the fault of anyone else.)
I'm tempted to plant more lantana...the only thing holding me back is I don't want to have to water them. In fact, I am tempted to put all sorts of things around trees and in flower beds that have large shrubs just waiting to be the backdrop for them.
The Vitex tree and foxtail ferns
The lantana, redbud tree and broken pot
Robin and Chad gave me a beautiful hydrangea for Mother's Day. It had been positioned, in it's original pot, under a slowly dripping faucet. All during the landscaping, the guys would move it out of the way and I would put it back as soon as they left. So, Mother's Day is fairly early in May, right? The landscaping was done in July. Last week, on about September 1, I finally took the hydrangea (which by now is looking pretty sad...some crispy leaves, other stunted looking leaves, and yet, a hopeful stem with a pending bloom) and dug a hole in an area Jeff said would be suitable. It's about 8 feet or so in front of some very large shrubs with more very large shrubs to the east of it. There are two (untended and unwatered, for the most part) crepe myrtles in front of and to the right and left of the hydrangea. So, basically it's in the middle of, but not very close to all those things. It will get some sun in the afternoon. The hole I dug was half-hearted...not quite deep enough. I kept putting the hydrangea in it and smashing it down with my foot, then pulling it out and making a few more stabs with the shovel. I repeated that about three times before I decided it was now or never. I put the plant in the hole, but didn't really find all the dirt I had dug out of it. Where the hell did it go? So, I put as much dirt in as I could and smashed it down some more and covered the rest with pine needles. I'm pretty sure there are lots of voids in that soil. I watered it. And that's that! Well, I have watered it a couple more times and now it's getting plenty of water from the rain. I hope it does better than I did...which wouldn't take much effort on it's part. After I planted it, when I came into the house, about the first thing I saw was the card that was on the plant when they brought it. It had all the info I needed about how to care for it, where to put it, how to plant it. Let's just say that out of the eight steps of direction, I correctly did Step 2: Remove the plant from the container.
The hydrangea is waaaay back there, the small lighter green clump in front of the big darker green shrubs
I would have tried to take a better (closer) photo, but it's still raining and I didn't want to look any worse than I already do.
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