I’ve been gone all week in DC, so coming home to a serious day of gardening was just what the doctor ordered, and the weather cooperated nicely. There wasn’t really much blue sky, but it was warm and it wasn’t raining, and I’ll take that after the cold and wet fall we’ve been having this year.
On my list today was primarily to get the tree peonies that came in from TreePeony.com into the ground before it gets too cold. I had ordered two plants from them, Gold Flecks in Chinese Ink and Luoyang Red. I wanted a red one and couldn’t choose between those two, so I bought them both.
A weird thing when I was planting them, though. The package had come in while I was out of town, and Frank had pulled it out of the box and it upright on the porch, and I took it out to plant. When I opened it up after digging two holes, I couldn’t get them apart. It had two tags on it, so I figured the roots were just really twisted together, but it turns out it was only one plant, which I turned into two, and there was another plant still in the box. Oops. I really hope it’ll be okay, but I now have three tree peonies instead of only two.
I amended the soil really well, using dirt from the new loam pile we got earlier this week, worm castings, compost and the crap sandy stuff that was originally in the hole, all mixed together. Then I covered the whole area with a couple inches of mulch, using Frank’s tractor and scoop by myself while he cut firewood. I got pretty good at moving that thing around, and it was fun.
