Black Knight Butterfly Bush

So far, I am singularly unimpressed with Spring Hill Nursery, a mail order outfit with a very user-friendly website and decent prices and a great online selection. But they end up canceling too much of what you order, or they make you think you'll get it in April or May and then don't ship it until October.

That's how I ended up temporarily putting my most recently shipped items (ordered back in April, mind you!) into a tupperware tub because I was home such a brief period of time last weekend, and there was the box with live plants in it.

In addition to the Black Knight Butterfly Bush, there are three Brilliant Miniature Hollyhocks. These four plants I put into soil and placed on the kitchen table until I could get back to town and figure out where and how I'd plant them. One other butterfly bush also came, and I went ahead and got it into the ground because it will grow only to a small size and it was easier to think about where I'd like it to be.

Yesterday, I brought my tools up from the cellar, pumped up the neglected tire on the wheelbarrow, threw the tarp off my pile of topsoil, and mixed up some of my mulch. The Black Knight Butterfly Bush is now safely in the ground, I hope in time to get a good purchase before the cold, cold weather comes. The hollyhocks will just have to do their best, taking the spaces where this summer I had three pansy plants.

I'm definitely out of shape again and out of practice. That dark red clay you see in the wheelbarrow was hard, hard-packed, and it broke my back making even that modest hole. Yowzer.