Impulse Buys

I am the Queen of impulse buys.

Today I received six butterfly bushes and nine raspberry plants in the mail.  I ordered them (and some other plants) last month thinking that it would be nice to have more fresh fruit and pretty animals (you know - bees, bugs, hummingbirds)  around the place.

I think I'd only meant to order three butterfly bushes.  They came as a sampler of three and I must have ordered two samplers by accident.  Oh well, I've got room for them and they seem to do well here.  You can put them anywhere that's sunny and has well-drained soil.  They die back to the ground in the winter so you can pile all the snow you want on them and they won't know the difference.  They'll be fine next to the steps that lead to the walkway to our house - and then no one will have to string-trim around the steps in the summer.  The others I can put near the patio, even in the area that gets pounded by the snow that sheds off the roof in the winter.

The raspberries could pose a little problem though.  They need a bit more thought and attention than butterfly bushes do.  When I ordered them I thought, "well, I don't know where to put them right now but there's plenty of time to figure it out before they get here."  Did I use any of that time to figure it out?  Heck no.

It might have been good if I'd had a plan and decided where to put them before I bought them - like last year - so the soil could be properly prepared.  My thinking was that brambles do really well here so raspberries probably would too.  I am a lazy gardener.  Then once I've figured out where to put them I'll need to find/make some supports for them.

Actually, ordering plants through the mail is always risky for me since these days I can never predict where I'm going to be.  It can be a total disaster (a waste of plant-life and money) if you're not home when your live plants arrive.  It worked out well this year, thankfully.

In spite of the danger I order plants every year.

Last week the cherry tree that was part of the same impulse order came.  I had no plan for that either but I'm extremely happy with the spot I found for it.  Time may prove me wrong (say, if the tree languishes and dies) but for now I think I'm pretty clever.

Yup, gardening's an adventure.  Especially for a doofus like me.