Monday
On the late Saturday afternoon trip to Lowes with Bonnie, I spotted what looked like a groundcover with yellow blossoms. I had never heard of it before, but it was so cold and windy that I didn't want to take the time to google the characteristics. I snapped a quick photo of the tag for reference though. Yesterday I looked it up - Erysimum, commonly known as wallflower. The cultivar at Lowes is 'Jubilee Gold', but it must be a new one out for sale because it didn't come up with a lot of results, nor is it in the NGA Plant database yet. There were plenty of results for 'Golden Jubilee', but I think they are different.
Erysimum 'Jubilee Gold'
I need groundcover in the Lemon Garden and have been googling to see what might be suitable. The Lemon Garden is both sunny and shady - sunny along the front where it is open to the cleared area around the west side of the house, but shady along the back where it meets up with the wood line. The criteria is deer resistance number one, soft yellow or white blooms number two. The groundcovers that I have on the list so far include sweet woodruff, achillea mollis, and winter aconites. I still want a few more, but I wasn't coming up with anything that caught my eye.
I was thrilled to learn that wallflower is deer resistant and the plants that I saw in bloom at Lowes were soft yellow. It prefers sun, so it will be perfect in the front of the Lemon Garden. So, yesterday I made yet another run to Lowes and picked up two flats, 12 plants total. After planting the 5 new hellebores 'California Dreaming', I placed and spaced the new groundcover to get a pleasing effect. I didn't get them planted though, hopefully will get that done today. With the addition of the new hellebores and the wallflower groundcover, I'm really pleased with the fullness of the first 0 - 20 feet of the 60 foot long Lemon Garden. The remaining 40 feet just needs a bit more filling.
While I was planting the hellebores, I dug up the azalea 'Weston's Lemon Drop' that is alive but really struggling due to deer damage. I will try to rehabilitate it this year and see if it can be saved. I also got the christmas fern bare roots that had been soaking potted up.
While I was out working in the gardens, I could hear Bonnie and Richard over at her cottage working on her new deck. They were putting the handrail and decking on the steps. Everything else is done, but stairs are so tricky when it is something you don't do everyday. River made several trips through the woods to check out what I was doing. At one point, he whined to go in the house - of course, it was noon and he wanted his usual treat 
Then he came back over a bit later and again whined to go in the house - this time, a nap on the couch was what this very spoiled dog was wanting.
When Bonnie and Richard finished up with the deck project for the day, they came over. At first we were just chit chatting, but Bonnie can never sit still. She got the loppers and started pruning the very overgrown weigela that has been bugging her. Richard, ever helpful, got in on the action. I am so lucky to have Mike's sister and brother often on hand, willing to help, and so easy to work with. Bonnie and I were collaborating on what to cut, Richard took the loppers to the thickest branches, and Bonnie took the pruners to the smaller branches. That weigela looks a lot better. We'll wait and see what it does with leafing out and blooming, and then probably fine tune the pruning later in the season. Richard eventually headed home, Bonnie took a tractor load of pruned branches over to the burn pile, and I went back to working in the Lemon Garden. By then it was getting late in the day and cold again. Temperatures had actually reached a high of 50 and the sun had been shining. It was not my ideal, but it was ok for working outside. The returning cold finally made us call it quits.
Today it is supposed to reach a high of 57 and mostly sunny. I plan to make the most of it. I have those wallflowers to plant in the Lemon Garden. I also have quite a few hellebores to plant in the Cherry Tree Nook too. The specialty soil from Amazon arrived yesterday, so I hope to get the water lily repotted. Want to get the four varieties of strawberries I purchased on Saturday potted up in the Greenstalk vertical planter too.
Well as Monty Don says, time to crack on. And as Annie says, the plans I have for today won't get done by themselves missy. I won't head out until it warms up a bit more though - at least another hour or two.
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