Plantings a-plenty

A word of advice for those who are installing their own sprinkler system:  It is wise to put your pipes at least 4-5 inches below the surface of the ground, if not more.  Not only does this make them more resistant to freezing, but it makes it less likely that someone will sink a shovel into them.

In related news, I spent several hours today doing most of the planting of plants I bought from the church plant sale and the Denver Botanic Garden sale three weeks back.  This included turning over a big swathe of grass that I’d killed with Round-Up to make a new bed, during which time I managed to pinpoint with unerring accuracy where the sprinkler line to the sprinklers along the sidewalk comes across the lawn.

Ahem.

All in all, it went well.  Midafternoon I allowed to Margie as I may — may, mind you — have purchased a few too many plants.  Actually, I purchased too many plants that will grow big.  For that particular bed I wanted smaller plants, mostly, as I don’t want to interfere too much with the sprinklers. 

All that said, I did manage to plant, um, many plants in back along the NE fenceline — doing quite a bit of weeding and chopping back of both raspberry vines and Volunteer Mystery Berry Vines in the process.   That slowed things up enough so that by the time I was planting in the front bed, the clouds had moved in and it was a bit cooler.  I had just enough smaller plants to fill the area around some roses I’d bought and way too many penstemons and hyssops.  I wisely picked up a number of gazinias because they are hardy, colorful, and actually self-seed in our garden (they, and dianthus, are guaranteed to succeed in our front).

Didn’t have time to mulch the new beds, and I still have some plants to fill in the pots on the front porch and by the front cottonwood.  I also need to replace the sprinkler head that’s now in the new bed — it’s a 4-inch popup, which means it actually misses much of the bed around it, so I need to replace it with a 2-inch.

But that’s for tomorrow.  For now, a sense of work well done, confirmed by a nice thunderstorm that moved through the area and did a follow-up watering.

In general, the garden is going berserk this year — there’s a lot of weeding that needs to be done, as well as thinning out of things that are threatening to take over from other things.  The irises are at end-of-blooming, but the roses have started up, so it’s still color everywhere.  A great year for the garden, which means both extra work and extra enjoyment.