The epic yard saga continues

The weekend looked a little something like this:
volunteered at the Farmer's Market, shopped and found wedding-appropriate clothes for entire family, attended said wedding, stopped by Cabarrus Master Gardener's Spring Herb and Plant Festival to purchase 5 plants totaling $75 after tax, browsing and not buying any other plants after emptying wallet on those plants, went home tired with a big plan to rest up and make it out to First Days fundraiser.

Instead of going out again, M and I stayed in {while C went out} and watched Where the Wild Things Are.**

Back to the weekend and my $75 in plants.


I didn't break out the camera this weekend, so I found some Creative Commons images of my purchases--
a. Sambucus canadensis {lace leaf}
b. not the canadensis variety, but a similar leaf form to the elderberry I bought from Henryr10
c. American Cranberry via Lance and Erin on flickr
d. Comfrey by graibeard

To go with those, I've got some more natives coming my way. These are from Blue Ridge Gardens. I ordered them over the winter when I was ready to get out and dig some holes. In total I've spent a small fortune, but will have some really nice (mostly edible!) additions to our yard. PLUS! The sawtooth blackberries are blooming, the hops (non native, but will be put to good use, I assure you) are growing, the cardoons have doubled in quantity and last night we had roasted wild onions with our dinner.


e. Hamamelis virginiana via pverdonk
f. Good ol' American elderberry (no fancy leaves) via Wayne National Forest
g. our native Flame azalea {image by dmott9

Sunday I took the truck out and ganked about 10 bags of leaves to go in the chicken run. We took the girls out and corralled them in the raised veggie beds for the day, letting them do some surface tilling and fertilizing. I've also cleared out space for another mulch bed in the front yard and already put in 2 Early Wonder tomatoes, 2 Cherokee Purples, and a Purple Opal basil plant. Last year's mulch bed worked out so well (better crop, half the space, and no additional watering) that I'm hesitant to go back to the raised beds.

Signing off from all this blabber, I'm sure no one has made it this far, but if you have, thanks for indulging me in journaling the epic yard saga!

**With apologies to so many who loved the movie, I finished it and felt "meh" at best. The music was good and it was visually pleasant, but. . . meh. Dave Eggers, I still love you, though, and I wonder if you took the psychology of your difficult time playing parent to your brother and infused the boy character with his and your experiences. Maybe I read into it too much, but the plot weighed so heavily on my heart it was difficult to watch.