Gentian

A little gentian bavaria I bought from Beaver Creek Nursery at the Flower show. I have it in a peat mixture in a pot sitting in my deck tub. Its a tiny plant. The flower is about 1/2 inch wide, at the most. Love the clear blue color. The photo is using the 'super macro' setting with my Canon S3 IS.

Yesterday I did a couple more hours of renovation on the front garden. I found 2 long runners from the black bamboo, pulled them up and have 4 pieces in gallon pots -- hopefully they will grow. This bamboo was not suppose to run. It is not too fast, but it does run. Like the older stems, the older runners turn black too. Its a lovely plant. The clump is getting quite big though. If I get time this year I am going to thin it out a bit and pleach it... that is, take the leaves off the bottom 1/3 of the stems. It has accumulated quite a lot of 'duff' around it from dropping its leaves. The leaves turn a ivory color and this mulch looks good with the black stems and light green leaves.

Yesterday, I cleaned out more violets and dug over the soil. This soil was solid clay when I first made this garden about 12 years ago. It is now turning into some good gooey black soil ... from all the natural mulching over time. I moved the hydrangea into the spot where I took out the storm damaged globe cedar. Digging with this heavy shovel tires me out very quickly, but the shovel sure gets the job done, where my garden spade is too light for this kind of root digging work. I had a 'blue' hydrangea and a 'pink' one. Neither one of them ever bloomed. One of them got overwhelmed by the violets and so I discarded it. The other one is now moved closer to the edge of the bed by the driveway. I am going to put bark mulch down around it and all the plants when I get finished cleaning up this area.