I Plead Temporary Insanity

I just LOST MY MIND at the Home Depot. I went in for a drill and came out, sans drill, but with $150 worth of flower bulbs and seeds. It's not my fault. I'd just met with our contractors who told us that they liked my floor plan but I hadn't left enough room for the stairs. I had a 5x4 foot space reserved and they need a 9x6 to clear the headroom needed, big difference. They also told me that there's no point in vaulting the roof because the pitch is so low that we'd only get an extra 2 feet and only near the middle of the ceiling. NOT worth the money. Skylights it is!

I have a LONG night of re-floor planning ahead of me so I just needed a little something to soften the blow. Besides, Home Depot had amazing prices as only a giant warehouse of a store can and more importantly, they had.....PEONIES!!!

Here's the thing- peonies (and hydrangeas) (and Peanut M&M's) are my achilles' heel.  I'd cross traffic to buy them, I'd walk down a dark alley in New York City in the 80's when it was New Jack City, I'd stick my hand in a bug infested wall to grab a peonie bulb like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you get it- I heart peonies.  They are the Jackie O of flowers in my opinion.  Classic, understated, timeless. SO, I bought a couple bags of bulbs in every color they had annnnd I'm probably going to buy more from an online store with more color selections. Don't judge me, they're gorgeous AND they last 50 years or more once you plant them.  C'mon now THAT's an investment! Peonies, 1 - Wall Street, 0.

The light pink ones above are called Sara Bernhardts after an old timey French actress (she just rolled over in her grave). I think having a strain of flower (especially peonies) named after you beats winning an Oscar ANY day of the week.  Who even remembers who won Oscars after a while BUT people always know what kind of flower they're planting. Peonies, 1 - Oscars, 0.

I also bought them in white and another bag in hot pink- the color was just too vivid to walk away.

From there I can't really say what happened.  I bought seeds, more bulbs, muttered to myself about heights of flowers, ground cover, color schemes and so on and before you know it, my cart was full! Here are some of the flowers I remember buying:

DELPHINIUM! SO blue, the color radiates. They grow to be very tall.

DAHLIAS!! Lots and lots of them!!

Dahlias are so perfect and geometrical.  They remind me of this toy tracer thing I had as a kid where you put a colored pencil in one of a ton of holes on a plastic circle within a bigger circle frame and swirl it around to make perfect shapes of nonsense.  Dahlia's are a real world version of that!

How can anyone NOT buy something as beautiful as this??

I bought bright green dahlia seeds that are almost neon at the center when mature.  

Next up- ZINNIAS!

Zinnias look similar but are very different.  Butterflies LOVE them and they grow very tall which makes them perfect for the back row of a border like the ones along the fence in the picture above.  

Then SNAPDRAGONS! I grew Zinnias and Snapdragons back in California and loved them.  The pink snapdragons smelled amazing.  The flowers look like big cartoon lips and if you squeeze the sides the flower opens and closes like a dragon mouth snapping shut. 

They bloom continuously from the bottom up so there's always a new bloom when one drops off.

FREESIAS! I'd JUST read an article about freesias and how unbelievably good they smell in bloom so I was kind of set up for the fall on that one. 

RANUNCULUS aka peonie dopplegangers!

Ranunculus' look like little knock-off peonies but with zinnia-like colors, SOLD!

LILLY OF THE VALLEY- you had me at hello!

Who can resist a name like that?! 

They look like little bubbles effervescing out of the earth with springtime happiness! 

DAY LILLIES 

These grow like weeds once you plant them- I need to find the right spot for everybody! Indeed, my next step is to make a "planting plan"for where everything should go based on sunlight needs, water needs, soil needs, etc.  I can't remember what other flower seeds and bulbs I bought but there's a bunch more. 

On top of all these seeds and bulbs, I have an even larger shipment of vegetable seeds coming any day now. Again - temporary insanity - but who knew there were SO many kinds of tomatoes?!  I can't NOT try them, what if they're my favorite and I never knew it? 

GREEN ZEBRA!

The description read:  

"Green Zebra' is an unusual and exquisite tomato chosen by Alice Waters for the famous California restaurant, Chez Panisse. Fruits ripen to yellow-gold with alternating dark-green zebra-like stripes. Flesh is an emerald color and of good flavor. A choice tomato for colorful salads or as a slicing tomato." 

RAINBOW TOMATO! 

 "This is the most visually spectacular tomato we have grown. As fruits ripen they resemble a rainbow: green on the shoulder, yellow in the middle, and red on the blossom end. When fully ripe, the fruits are gold on the stem end and red on the blossom end. Early fruits weigh over 2 lbs." 

A WHITE TOMATO! Who knew?! 

"'White Wonder' is one of the varieties chosen for Alice Waters' famous Chez Panisse restaurant. It has a creamy white color and a sweet flavor. We like to serve it as an ingredient in a multicolor tomato marinade (tomatoes, garlic, vinegar, oil, pepper, and herbal seasonings)."

All anyone needs to do to get me to buy a food is tell me that Alice Waters, the mother or the slow food movement, likes it. I'll take 10! 

CURRANT TOMATO! 

"Excellent production of sweet tasting fruit. 'Sugar Cherry' is a large currant-type tomato with 3/4" orange-red fruits borne in clusters of 12. The berry-sized fruits are larger than true currant tomatoes and are intensely flavored and sweet. 'Sugar Cherry' is especially suited for salads and is of special interest to specialty growers and the restaurant trade."

Sugar = good, cherry tomato = good, SUGAR+CHERRY+TOMATO= AMAZING!

Then there were the beets, beets that look like psychedelic flowers when cut! 

"'Chioggia' is a beautiful bicolored scarlet red garden beet with interior rings of reddish-pink and white. This specialty Italian variety is notable for its earliness, attractive color, relative absence of bleeding, and its ability to compete with weeds."

And HOW about this EGGPLANT? 

"Heirloom originally from Turkey and more recently from Italy.] Miniature orange-red fruits (2 oz) look like tomatoes. Tall 4' plants are spineless and are very attractive when laden with fruit. Harvest before fruits turn red, otherwise the skins will be bitter. At edible harvest, the fruits are green-striped and sweet flavored. Bite-sized, may simply be cut in half for cooking."

I have never been an eggplant fan, mostly because I don't have a lot of eggplant recipes but THIS one is too interesting to ignore! 

Life is way too short to not eat good vegetables. If I believed in graves I'd put that on my headstone, as it stands I think they're a waste of good earth. I'd rather be cremated and thrown over a field of.....you guessed it, peonies!! 

I still need to get that drill, the purpose of which was to build a little hothouse for growing seeds and to drill holes in plastic tubs for my vermicomposting stand! That's a whole other post. I gotta get cracking so I hope my seeds arrive this week.  The property is on the borderline of Zone 6 and 7 so there's no telling what shipping batch I'm in! 

As far as vermicomposting goes, I'm going to try and be very mature about my worms. Solo, a single worm doesn't bother me but a slithering mass may be too much to handle without getting the "heebee-jeebees" (clinical term).  I'll let you know how it goes. I gotta go do something productive now, like see what kinds of peonies are available online! I really want to add this kind to my menagerie:

 MUST. HAVE.