Got Chrysanthemums In

I mentioned that I bought 6 chrysanthemums at the Bergen Street Pathmark (on special at 3 for $12, a dollar less per plant than at Newark's Home Depot). Chrysanthemums are perennials: plant once, enjoy for years and years, so this is an appropriate time for planting that particular type of flower. I am pleased to report that, after some delay, I got all 6 into the ground at the back of my front yard before the rains came last nite. We have had a minor drought for the past two weeks and more, which actually worked out to my advantage in planting the chrysanthemums. The soil was very dry, so once I used my Garden Weasel to rip out the surface vegetation, removing the lite, dry dirt was easy. And I didn't even have to soak the ground with a hose thereafter with the second group of three because we had something like 12 hours of rain, with more to come in the next few days. This should give them a very good start in their new home.

Inasmuch as it has been dismal and raining since I put the chrysanthemums in, I'm not yet able to show a foto here. So let me show you other perennials, at the front of my front yard, specifically a beige minirose and purple pansy. I have 5 new miniroses to plant but have to find a place that vines won't cover up. Shortly after the foto above, the vines around it did cover that rose, cutting the lite so much that it has not bloomed since. Next year I'll keep the vines off it. The other greenery is also from perennials, clematis vines and dandelions. I still have not tasted the dandelion greens, but will get to it sooner or later.

Now I just have to hope the weather remains in the 60s and, preferably, 70s long enuf for the chrysanthemums to throw roots deep enuf for the plants to survive the winter.

In my side yard are some hostas. Tho I have completely neglected them, at least one still throws up a flower spike. The other plants around it include wisteria vines, which flower copiously in all parts of my property. The original vine is in the backyard, but it threw runners in all directions, and now there are offshoots in both side yards and all the way to the front, around the house a distance of around 100 feet. If you'd like pretty purple flowers all over your yard, I can give you a rooted cutting, and in a few years, you'll have wisteria everywhere you don't chop it away.

I put in the first 3 chrysanthemums on Tuesday, but since there was no rain in the immediate forecast then, had to water them with the hose. I actually have two hoses, one at the side of the house, toward the front; and the other in the backyard, off a pipe that pokes up thru the ground. The prior owners of my house had, for some reason, had that one disconnected, and made an actual break in the line of several feet of blank space that I had to have a plumber bridge with a new pipe, to the tune of a couple of hundred dollars. (It occurs to me now that maybe they used that portion of lead pipe from the basement as a handrail along the stairs down to the basement.) I'm very glad to have the backyard faucet working now, because I used to have to haul a heavy hose 50 feet. Both faucets are ultimately controlled by shutoff valves in my basement, so I don't have to worry about the hoses being burst by winter freezes.

Here's what well-tended hostas do, throw up a bunch of flower spikes, these among the tasteful plantings in front of Blessed Sacrament-St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church on Clinton Avenue at Van Ness Place in Clinton Hill.

By the way, I found the receipt for my KFC purchase, so may call to answer some questions for a chance at $1,000. We shall see if I win or end up one of the myriad people who hope for a prize but get none.

Here's another perennial, the tiger lily. I saw this planter on Clinton Avenue outside the Mt. Vernon Missionary Baptist Church.This planter does not abide by P. Allen Smith's rules for planters (central feature tall and spiky, round low plants around it, interspersed with something that hangs over the edge). I love tiger lilies but haven't seen any on sale. They tend to naturalize and self-propagate. The other plants here are plantains — a temperate weed, not the (tropical) banana. In that tiger lilies do spread, other plants might have been crowded out anyway, so maybe tiger lilies need a planter all to themselves.