It's Alive! It's Alive!

This my first Daffodil ever. It's the Rhine Wine that I bought from the Chicago Botanic Garden sale last year. I love it! All the plants below are ones that I thought were goners. This first one is the Red Twig Dogwood. You may remember it and the others that follow from last year. They were my Charlie Brown Shrubs. I swear I thought all these were dead.

Fragrant Viburnum

Hydrangea Lime Light. I can't wait to see this one in bloom.

Hydrangea Tardiva planted in the rocks. I'm sure I've complained about it before but I think my house was built on some rock quarry or something. After I found the perfect spot for this, I started digging then hit rocks. I was tired and lazy so I just plopped it in the hole with the rocks thinking it was probably dead anyway. What a survivor! This is also planted in the Coneflower cemetery where all the Purple ones that GB gave me were planted and died.

Japanese Kerria. I love the leaves on this one already. I have never seen one of these so this should be exciting.

Lastly, this is the Clematis that I thought I'd ripped out along with the bastard weed that was growing up the string. Thank goodness Jodi told me not to bother it and that it may come back this year. Thanks, Jodi!

I'm still waiting for some sign of life on the Weigela Wine and Roses from the HD sneaky shopping. They both look very dry and brittle, still. Oddly, those looked very healthy when I planted them but they sure don't right now. Rosemarie thinks it's bad karma. I hope she's wrong!

Gardening Charlie Brown Style

Here's the shrub sale section at my neighborhood garden center. It's wayyyyyyyyyyy in the back so nobody sees the sickly little plants unless they are really looking for them. I could be wrong, but I think I really scored today! I haven't been this excited about a bargain in a while. Here are my 5 new Charlie Brown shrubs. I got them all for 40 bucks! I took Jodi's suggestion and scraped the wood to make sure I saw green. I think all these are alive, but we'll see. Thanks for the tip, Jodi!

Here's the Limelight Hydrangea. This is the only plant I knew for sure I wanted to pick up today. It's another one of the plants that I was seduced into buying after reading Carolyn Gail's post about it's awesomeness. The very nice garden center lady (NGCL) who rode up on her golf cart to help me says this is actually in good shape. She told me to plant it right away but don't prune since it blooms on old wood. It's really nice sized.

Here's the Tardiva Hydrangea. There is definitely some dead parts on this plant but I'm hoping it can be saved.

This is suppose to be a Japanese Kerria. Nice NGCL threw this in for 5 bucks. After seeing a few of them yesterday when I stopped in, I came home and looked up Kerria on the Internet. I love that it grows in shade and the little yellow flowers were cute. I think this goes in the Good Neighbor Garden. I wish I knew if I liked these. They had several more like it.

Nice NGCL talked me into this Viburnum. I was trying to decide between this and a Tinkerbelle Lilac. Actually, I didn't even look at this Viburnum until she said "HEY, HOW ABOUT THIS VIBURNUM? I THINK YOU'LL REALLY LIKE IT!" The label just says "Fragrant Viburnum." Is that an actual variety or just some generic name they slapped on it because they forgot which one this was?

Here's my surprise find. It's a Bailey's Redtwig Dogwood. I was so drawn to the red stems that I had to ask about it. NGCL said it only gets about 6 feet tall so I thought I'd be crazy to pass it up.

Guess what I'll be doing this evening?

So that's it. 5 shrubs for 40 bucks. How'd I do?