(“wish it was Sunday”) But it rained all over “funday” – somewhere between 2 and 4 inches for the weekend. There’s always plenty to do on Monday to get (dis)organized for the week. This week we’re planting. (That is going to start sounding like a broken record!) We’ll fork rain-mushed tulips out of the cutting garden, North Garden, and Visitor’s Center beds and start emptying the greenhouse of pot bound seedlings and cuttings.

Meanwhile here’s some up-the-skirts and other more demure pictures of blooming beauties:

The Dove tree is full of hankies – almost like it’s been t.p.ed – but so much prettier!

I think I might like the Pulsatilla vulgaris (Pasque flower) even better naked than clothed (I could never get a good shot of it in flower – that shade of violet/blueish is a toughy.)

Remember the tiny sleeping Cinnamon fern? This is the same one today:

And the May apples are blooming! The light wasn’t quite right to get a good picture but here’s one anyhow because they’re so cool – you have to really look for these guys!

And now I wonder if there are any other 30+ somethings out there that I’ve managed to infect with an 80′s girl band earworm? So sorry!

Gail and I need a good catch-up day in the greenhouse and the rain is forcing us to stay in and get to it! There are seedlings that still need transplanting (poor stretched out, pack-bound little things…) and plants to pot up for our sale table (open daily at the visitor’s center — bring $5s and $10s and $20s for the honor box) and pinching back to do and weeding and deadheading and tidying the potting shed and and… !

It’s also a great day for the new and improved Rose Garden to settle in. Yesterday we and the Floribundas planted 2 dozen new shrubs and 11 new roses (in 2 and a half hours!). For years the Rose Garden has struggled through humid summers and tough winters and although it’s always beautiful during its June peak, after that it gets to looking like “black-spot on a stick” (I can’t remember who said that but I know I can’t claim it). We can no longer allow the first garden that visitors see to be anything but stunning every day. The problem is that the garden has too many roses and not enough other stuff! A mixed garden is a healthier garden (everything in moderation! – A rule that applies where ever obsessions reside.) So Gail has come up with a design that is heavy on fragrant shrubs and has planned for a scent rotation from spring to fall – Lonicera fragrantissima, March-April; Daphne x burkwoodii, Daphne transatlantica, Viburnum carlesii ‘Compactum’, May; roses, June; Clethra alnifolia ‘Sixteen Candles’, Buddleia davidii ‘Adonis’ and Buddleia davidii ‘Petite Indigo’, July. Old fashioned heliotrope will waft it’s grandmotherly comfort scent as soon as it’s safe to plant it (soon) through the season to a light frost, and we’ve got Datura and Nicotiana sylvestris waiting in the wings for their gorgeous August evening perfumes. My contribution to the overall design (besides saying “mmm that sounds perfect!”) was suggesting planting three Pinus strobus ‘Blue Shag’ because I love the little blue muffins (I could have baker’s dozen!) and thought the garden could use a 4 season living rock-formation.

I also spent some time with the Sylvan Nursery catalog choosing a new round of high-hopes roses. Last year we got some Knock Outs and we understand now what all the fuss was about. Personally I like to do a little rose maintenance now and then because I find the challenge perversely gratifying. We didn’t touch the Knock Outs all summer -just to see what they would do – and they bloomed on and on and the foliage never looked terrible. This year we’re trying ‘Home Run’ – another one that’s over marketed for being (too) easy; Carefree Beauty, Delight and Wonder (the names say it all!) – these are Bucks roses which were bred in Iowa by a Griffiths Bucks who selected for toughness and vigor; Rosa ‘Champlain’ which is one of the Canadian Explorer Series – known for hardiness and disease resistance; Rosa ‘Angel Face’, reputed to be very fragrant and disease resistant as well as an AARS winner; Rosa ‘Betty Boop’ (if it’s half as cute as it’s namesake, I’ll be happy) and climber ‘Fourth of July’ (because Bristol is home of the oldest 4th of July parade) – both AARS winners. So cross your fingers for us and with any luck I’ll have success stories to share (although sometimes failure stories are funnier…)

In other news, just a quick note (because today is the day I wish I had about ten rain barrels filling up at my house): Rhode Island has its very own “Water Lady” who buys barrels in bulk and passes the cheaper-by-the-dozen savings onto anyone willing to pay ahead and pick them up at her house in South County. Sounds like an excellent reason for a road trip to me! The barrels she buys are big, attractive and half the price of buying retail not even counting shipping! It’s water-wise and wallet-wise. Click here for more information.

I couldn’t resist a couple of pictures today — Here’s Augustus Van Wribbit kicking back on the lotus. Earlier this week, I falsely accused Gus-Gus of dining on one of the new fish but Milo, Edwin and Gracie are all present and accounted for.

Gail pointed out the Halesia to me this morning (I had my blinders on) – what a beauty!

and I was reminded by one of you to turn my gaze to Father Hugo’s Rose – the buds are like candles and it’s just about to burst into bloom!

Now that we’ve relocated all the perennials we had-to-had-to move and frantic spring is speeding along to an early languid summer (can you believe the maples that are fully leafed out already?!), I feel like we’ve turned a corner on the track and gone from a mad dash to a steady lope. We’re placing and planting cool season annuals, new perennials and shrubs and now the gardens are really taking shape. I have renewed energy to just go and go to the finish. We’ve still got self-imposed deadlines (everything planted by the 4th of July) but Gail and I can pace ourselves now. Three weeks ago, even Dick, who plants and tends the Vegetable Garden, said he felt at least a month behind. Now he says he’s not worried and not feeling rushed. (He is here every day though…) — I love seeing Dick in the garden – somehow, all’s right with the world when he’s here.

Yesterday, the Deadheads weeded the Idea Beds while Gail and I placed plants in the Cutting Garden and in the new raised bed by the pond. We’re planting that with our favorite Pennisetum ruppelianum, Salvia, Dahlia combination for old-time’s sake (the dahlia/grass beds around the pond were taken out in the first phase of the Display Garden redesign).

In the Cutting Garden we use concrete reinforcement mesh as a staking system. Planting through the grid is a little tedious but it’s worth it in the long haul because the heavy-on-bloom plants don’t flop over! (we raise the grids up on stakes for the plants to grow through – like a peony hoop).

The North Garden is being planted now with the first round of annuals and a few new perennials and later, Gail and I will place the new shrubs for the Rose Garden re-vitilization project. (I’ll have a lot to say about that as we go)

Here are a couple pictures of my current obsessions. One of the things that’s great about public gardens (whether you work in one or are a visitor) is that you get to look at established plants with an eye for how they’d look in your own garden! (so much better than just looking at a picture on a tag or a runty individual in a nursery pot!). I can’t stop thinking about crabapples and blueberries… Look at those colors!

We are asked – fairly frequently – what do we do to make our gardens grow so lusciously? – What do we use for fertilizer? Our answer “not much” is hard for fellow Rhode Islanders and New Englanders to believe. When we really want to push plants along, we use Neptune’s Harvest Fish Fertilizer which is OMRI listed organic. We also add Electra to the potting soil we use for our container plants and we feed the Rose and North Garden roses with Electra once a year. We’re lucky because our gardens are blessed with dreamy dark fluffy cake mix soil – only a mile and a half down the road at my own house, I can’t jump on a digging fork without a teeth rattling bounce against a pile of rocks embedded in clay. These gardens though, have been under cultivation – ornamental and otherwise – for almost 100 years – just think if your own garden had been annually ammended with compost and an arboretum’s worth of leaves…

The plight of the honey bee has been all over the news lately (Colony Collapse Disorder) and with garden chemicals being one of the possible causes, we all (I’m editorializing) should really think long and hard about how our choices impact the eco-system. For years now, Gail and I have refused to use chemistry on our infested roses – not only would our visitors and volunteers be in constant contact with it, but the beneficial insects and organisms would suffer. So we have plucked spotty yellow leaves and squished aphids and drowned Japanese beetles in soapy water. Last fall, Dan (one of our groundsmen) applied Milky Spore to several patches of lawn for beetle grub control. We’re crossing our fingers that that works! And instead of fighting a losing battle with blackspot – if the only way to win is with destructive chemistry or a weekly regiment of organic solutions that we haven’t got the time to apply – we’re raising the white flag, taking out some of the most disease prone roses and starting to interplant the rest with a healthy-garden mix of shrubs, perennials and annuals. Why fight it? (and don’t get me wrong – I love roses!)

In a nutshell (and there’s so much more to say but the greenhouse beckons – there’s a plant somewhere in there rasping, “waaater… cough.. cough … I’m thiiiiirsty…”), I think Blithewold’s gardens are gorgeous because we try to make sure our choices are healthy for everyone – creepy crawly or otherwise.

If I’ve raised more questions – please ask them!