24 hours, $250 plus and counting

Although I love mail order, it's really just foreplay. The true orgy of plant consumption starts now, when the nurseries are finally—and almost fully—stocked. Today, after giving a brief talk about Garden Walk (salvaged by a brilliant slide show, thanks to Jim), I stopped at our new city garden center, Urban Roots. There wasn't much of what I really needed (their heirloom annuals are coming in later) but I picked up some stuff for Allentown planters and some lilium hybrids annoyingly and wrongly called "tiger lilies." (That has to be one of the more confusing common names; I've seen both hemerocallis and lilium called this, with the word tigrinium thrown in occasionally.) I think they're actually either Black Beauty or Scheherazade orienpet hybrids.

Then off to the Botanical Gardens, where their glorious yearly plant sale was in full swing. Two sets of cannas, a buddleia, 2 palms, and some semi-double impatiens later, I got home in time for the delivery of 6 flats of homegrown annuals for the public planters.


Finally, I topped it all off with some fabulous hanging baskets from Niagara Produce, a store on the way to suburbanesque Lockport, where so many backyards, including the party I attended, have these:


It's always disheartening how these purchases seem to disappear into beds and planters, and how many other trips are still necessary to finish the job. Notice, too, how I've taken the practice of using non-native plants to extremes.