Gardening tip 117 (not really)

So spring has sprung and we’ve been planting like maniacs- 21 plants in two days, a plantstravaganza, if you will. It would have been 22 but I threw one away to protect the neighborhood cats and my conscience. I had ordered a beautiful “Sarah” flowering mountain laurel with the most brilliant coral blooms in odd little boxy- headed shapes. Only I ordered it before I researched it. Then, of course, after I paid for it and it was speeding towards my house at 70 mph, I looked into it to find the mountain laurel to be extremely toxic and even fatal to animals and humans alike. Then I spent several hours spiraling down a search-engine rabbit hole, trying to disprove this new information and not being able to. Drats.

As I would hate to be responsible for the death of a thousand cats or a flower-eating human, I opted to throw the deceptively wicked shrub away after obsessing about it for hours on end, wondering when it was going to arrive at my house and warning my entire family not to open any boxes before I get there.

I opted to buy the slightly less-toxic but almost-as-pretty azalea shrub, three green velvet boxwoods, two blue star junipers, two kings gold false cypress, two dogwoods, one lilac bush, two roses, four dappled willows and four Ezekiel blue fescues (they’re like little chunks of blue grass). Lots of mulch, potting soil. We bought the house from a fella who tore all the plants out before we got there. He did leave behind the world’s most dilapidated wheelbarrow thats so corroded it’s on the verge of turning to powder. As a bonus, Jason has fashioned a new handle out of a piece of wood and ducttape. Don’t ask- I didn’t.