A Windy Knoll Report
Salvia Guaranetica
We’ve had so much rain we discussed looking for plans to build an arc, but John decided we wouldn’t need one since we live atop Sand Mountain. He said, “Let those people over in Wills Valley worry about that.”
It’s a busy time here — the garden is growing, but so is the grass therein. It’s actually too wet to work there, but . . . . . We’ve been putting hydrangea cuttings in the rooting bed — as I’ve told you before John has been accused of rooting broom handles — or at least pencils!! His rooting medium is oil dry — the kind you put in the carport to soak up drippings from the vehicles. Instead of using the expensive rooting hormone to dip the cutting in, he uses Gold Bond Foot Powder and has wonderful results. Next spring our Master Gardeners will have a plant sale and hydrangeas always sell well. We have something like 35 cuttings in now and still have to put in Hayes Jackson Starburst cuttings.
Hayes Jackson Starburst
I just have to tell you about our visit yesterday. We went by a friend’s to pick up some hydrangeas she had rooted (and then we just happened to get a few cuttings, too). I had decided I would just sit in the truck, rather than pull the walker out and struggle with it. Wrong!! I had not been there since they acquired a golf cart and I was carted around over the garden like royalty. What a garden — but let me tell you I travelled all that way with my iPhone in hand and didn’t make one picture. I reckon I was aghast at the beauty of it all and just forgot. They have everything in the plant line one could want and I felt honored as we drove along and the driver stopped and said something like, “Billie, this is the yellow ladies slipper you gave us and now one has multiplied into two and they both bloomed.” He said a similar thing about the Grandiflorum Trillium and I swelled with pride that I had contributed to that lovely garden. They have Papaw trees producing fruit, they have a Chinquapin tree and Red Corkscrew Willows. Hydrangeas produced color of all kinds — mopheads, lacecaps, arborescens and, of course, our native Oakleaf — used to be called “seven bark” here on the mountain.
There’s nothing that would beat this about country living!!