Final Planting

I now (think) I have all my plants in for the season. The next-to-last plantings were some Delphiniums that arrived a week ago. They looked hot and tired when they arrived, so I watered them immediately and planted them the next day. They have perked up quite nicely.The last plants to arrive were white creeping thyme (Thymus praecox ‘Albiflorus’). I put 16 of them in yesterday and had to stop when the rain came. This morning I planted the remaining 8 and finished the drip irrigation for these (upper photo). The thyme is planted along side of the rocky drainage away from my house toward the ditch along the road. The opposite side of this drainage is planted with small native iris that I transplanted from the side of the road.

I have so many rocks that I put the smaller ones in this drainage area. The biggest ones go into the ditch along the road, and the middle ones are at the base of my house walls (to prevent mud from splashing on the lower part of the walls). I pick out the smallest rocks and the broken ones and put them in the garbage. I realize that picking rocks will be a life-time avocation for me, just as it was in Seattle.

Most of the rain that falls on my roof goes into tanks (for the drip irrigation), but the excess comes out of a spout, falls onto a rock bed (lower left), and then either is absorbed into the ground or runs out toward the road. This rock bed is lined with plastic sheet so that the water does not immediately soak into the ground, but runs off about six feet.The original design for this run-off was in the opposite direction. However there was already a wet area there that I did not wish to aggravate and there was already drainage toward the road, so I simply put rocks into the obvious drainage to visually emphasize it (and get rid of a few rocks).

I can see that this rocky drainage will be a maintenance headache. The seeds of the invasive Siberian Elm are trapped between the rocks and germinate very well in the moisture that runs down this drainage path (photo right). In addition, the rocks act as a mulch, preventing the soil from drying and encouraging the seedlings more. So I may need to pull aside the rocks and scrape out the drainage basin every year or so.The original plan also called for a fountain just where the excess water drains from the roof. This seemed like overkill, so I put my fountain (from Seattle) onto the front porch. I have aquilegia, delphiniums, and spirea planted around the basin (lower left).

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