Starry Night Pansy

This "stellar" specimin of pansy has helped me to add a bit of yellow in all the places I've needed it. I don't think it blooms as long as some other pansies, but hey... you can't win them all, hopefully some of the others will step it up later. I'm pretty much on thesis duty from now until the end of June - so - I probably won't have any pictures that weren't taken in my own yard and even those maybe kind of few and far between. So, my apologies in advance. I accidently cut myself a month short of time when I took this job, so I'm going hyper speed. Things are well on their way at any rate. I have a few things to plant, but I'll saved them for a few timed breaks here and there. Last night I managed to get one of the two annual beds done, all the plants for the shade garden in the front planted (hopefully not too late for some), all the tomatos in and a few more border plants in the sunny perrenial bed. So, my next move is to get the rest of the hostas in and the other annual bed. I think I'm going to delegate a bit of the digging to my strapping young brother. So far I've hit it lucky with the asian lilies - two new ones have started to flower and they were different colours than the ones that have already opened - so I have one pink, one dark orange, one light orange and one yellow. Not bad... it'll be interesting to see what the last two are. Some of the plants in the woodland garden are starting to get a bit bigger and the hostas have definately put on a growth spurt this week. The yarrow flowers are starting to form and one of the echinacea from last year has its first flowering shoot formed. The other exciting gardening news is that the last hosta - the one I bought for full price and that I thought had died - has shown its head. There are two small hosta like shoots pushing up in its place. I'm crossing my fingers, it was a really nice one, but it suffered from excess attention from the evil squirrels of doom and destruction. I'm still trying to figure out how to discourage them. I like squirrels, but they always dig up the plants that I love the most. Last year they utterly destroyed a hanging basket of fan flower. This year I've found one digging about in the woodland garden (grrr). Of course, it picked a favourite struggling plant to dig right up - my one trillium. It wasn't expensive, but I was excited about having one. I tucked it back in the ground and it seems no worse than it was before, but I'm ticked. I'm going try hanging nylon stockings full of dog hair in key locations and I might try adding a bit of bone meal.

Okay.. back to thesissing.

JP