I'd LOVE to Stop and Smell the Flowers. . .

We've finally reached that time of the gardening season when we are supposed to be able to take time to stop and enjoy the fruits of our labors. Spring clean up should be only a distant memory. With the heat of summer upon us most mail order nurseries have stopped shipping, so the massive orgy of planting that so many of us face in spring and early summer should be taken care of as well.

Well - maybe you have a pot or three of plants that you just haven't found a home for. And of course there are always those few things that jumped off the shelves and into your car at the nursery when your car insisted on pulling in despite the fact that you were really on your way to the grocery store. But that's manageable. The heavy work in the garden should be all but done. Time to relax. Time to sit down and admire the results of all that early work.

So why is it that the relaxing and enjoying part so rarely actually happens?

OK - granted - I adopted a few lonely looking plants at the nursery today and there is only one in the bunch for which I don't have a specific place in mind. But that's one reason that I won't be sitting and admiring the garden any time soon. IO know exactly where the new purple leafed lobelia I bought needs to be - in the bog, which is very sparsely planted right now. And the two new dogwoods have designated places in the hedge which will some day grow tall enough to give us some privacy in our side yard. And the main reason I went to the nursery at all today was that I wanted to buy a Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light' . Taking photos of the garden last week showed me a large hole in the plantings of the main garden in need of filling. Now when I look I see the gap rather than the garden. So it had to be filled. All of that is easy.

But my final, last minute impulse purchase couldn't have been a tiny little front of the border plant that I can tuck in with a minimum of hassle. It was a shrub - a new and fascinating-looking hydrangea with golden leaves and burgundy stems. Well - you can see why I couldn't just leave it there in the garden center. The problem is - where am I going to plant it?

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