It's a sickness

I've become overly obsessed with gardening this year, even more so than usual. I won't tell you how much I've spent on plants and flowers for landscaping the yard, but suffice it to say that some people would spend less on a vacation than I've spent on gardening this year.

At any rate, today I planted 26 plants, in areas that weren't easy planting. I'm exhausted. But I am hoping it will be pay off nicely in a couple of months.

I am starting to see the results of the early spring plantings, but not all of them have been successful. My variegated polemonium all seem to be dying off, for no particular reason. The soil is kept moist, they are shaded most of the day, and they are fertilized regularly. Everything else seems to be doing well health-wise, but these aren't.

The vinca are growing at an incredibly slow pace. They have hardly grown at all since planting, but at least they're not dead.

I also have some purple dragon lamium ground cover that is growing very slowly, as are the White Christmas hosta. I am wondering if all this slow growth isn't the result of cold weather we've had this spring. Only last week did it warm up into the 70s. And it went pretty much from 50s to 70s. We didn't really have a spring.

I can't wait for June, when the strawberries will be in season. Jess will drive me out to the east end of the Island, where I'll pick about 16-20 quarts of strawberries and then we'll drive back home, where I will immediately set to work washing, slicing, and macerating the berries before making them into preserves and sealing them in jars. Some of the berries will be simply rinsed, dried, and frozen whole for use in ice cream and sauces during the rest of the year. Last year, I put up 12 quarts and just exhausted my supply a week ago...but I was very conservative with what I had canned, using as minimal an amount as possible. I gave several pints and half-pints of preserves to friends who visited, but not as many as I'd have liked to. So, this year, I think 16 quarts will be the minimum.

I am glad that I now only have one thing left to plant, some Japanese hakone forest grass. It's to be planted in the summer, so I have a bit of a break...for now.

It's really an obsession, all this. And I'm up at 10 to midnight on a Saturday, blogging about it. I've lost it.