Thursday, October 06, 2005

Rock Me Amadeus!

The rock slope project is completed! It only took me a week (although it was PMS week, so LAY OFF, OKAY! *sob*), but the slope's done and I just bought a metric shedload of plants.







There are a few disappointments. This batch of basalt seems smaller, on average, than the last batch. Which is good for my back, actually, but it does look a little mismatched to me. The new side is also much less steep as the other as a result of putting in more planting niches. I also still haven't gotten around to preparing the planting area above the slope. I don't like the roses—scratch that, I HATE the roses—but it feels wasteful and ungrateful to just get rid of them. Does any one want any unkempt roses that are probably mostly suckers by now?

Among the new (hopefully not moribund) plants I bought: tons of creeping rosemary (I'm hoping it'll do something like this:



to soften the rocks a little), a "razzleberri" chinese fringe flower:



(yes, I know the name is awful and self-consciously cutesy in that Vaseline-toothed Miss Texas way, but I like the foliage, damnit), several cordylines that look like this one:



as well some ajuga for groundcover and a few other things that slip my mind at the moment. I think I got another nandina, actually, but only one beacuse it's the end of the season and Christ are there ever some pitiful-looking plants haunting the nursery section of Home Depot. It's almost as depressing as the aisle of grungy used toys at the ghetto Goodwill.

I'm aiming to get the plants in the ground this weekend, and I'll try to take some photos. In the meantime, I'll wrestle with my inner laundry-scoop saver and figure out what to do with the damn roses.

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