So I'm pretty irritated with my garden at the moment. Well, okay, I'm just plain irritated. I spent three hours running errands after a morning of household chores, and I'm not very happy about it. It's such a waste of a beautiful day, but what can I do? I can't afford a maid, and with five creatures in the house it gets really messy. All week long I've been deploring the filthy rug, the piles of newspaper, and the repellent amount of clothing that needs washing. John was turned loose on the newspaper and other kipple, I cleaned the bathroom and did 87 loads of laundry, and we both decided Rome wasn't built in a day so the rug could just wait a few hours until the sun went down and there wasn't anything else to do.

At least I got everything else accomplished. I bought my friend Kelly a wedding gift, then mooched around the garden center for at least an hour deciding on one 6-pack of Riviera Blue lobelia (kind of a cornflower blue, very handsome) and some dwarf mimulas to fill in where my original mimula got crushed. I looked carefully at the hydrangeas, but I'm not sure they'd be a wise choice in such a limited space. All the plants I like need full sun. All the spaces left in my garden need shade. So that's part of my irritation today.

Then I got gas for the car, and orange juice for John who's not feeling well, and drove around like a maniac, and got honked at for hesitating one millisecond at a light to make sure the oncoming traffic wasn't going to cream me, and my irritation factor tripled. I hate being honked at. My invariable reaction to being honked at by motorists dissatisfied with my caution at intersections is to drive slooooooooowly throoooooooough like molasses without, of course, endangering anyone else. I like to inconvenience people who don't have time to actually stop at stop signs and the like. Cretins.

I've got lots of replanting to do since I'm unhappy with how things turned out. I need to re-pot my abutilon. What I thought was a trailing rosemary in my planter turns out to be dianthus. It just made two big flowers which is how I discovered my mistake. I quite like dianthus but I don't want a dark pink flower next to a neon pink geranium, so it, too, gets re-potted somewhere. I guess this means the rosemary didn't make it through our harsh, inclement winter where the temperatures dip as low as 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Geez. Remind me not to plant anything that can't survive Hardy Zone 8.

I made a startling discovery about my columbines, by the way, when I went to the Portland Zoo last weekend. The zoo was heavily planted with McKana Giant columbine and they were all in bloom. They really are giants. I'm talking four feet tall spreading a foot or more. I had planted some in a fairly small area, all crowded in. Whoops. This will never do. I am going to dig them up and give them to Denise who wants some for her yard. What was really interesting, though, was one trio of McKanas. Clump A was a beautiful dark maroon with a yellow center. Clump B was a pale yellow with a white center. And the third clump illustrated what aquilegia fanciers have known all along: columbines crossbreed, and they don't hybridize well. Clump C had a white center and grey petals. It was the most peculiar looking plant, like a bad photocopy of a columbine.

I'm off to plant that lobelia. Ciao, baby.

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