early because not many plants were out yet. But early spring is a great time to plant shrubs. I picked up some Illinois wild rose (Rosa setigera), a tall climbing rose with pink flowers, and leadplant (Amorpha canescens), a woody legume that grows 1-3 feet tall.Normally, I wouldn't drive an hour out of my way for plants, but good-sized native shrubs aren't easy to find. Since I was there, I picked up some Virginia bluebells (Mertensia), in the upper right corner of the photo, and Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), the plant on the left, for the shade garden near my kids' Barbie playhouse. The Natural Garden stocks many local ecotypes, but I'm not enough of a purist to forego the convenience of mail order very often.
I got home on Saturday, just before it started raining for 3 days. Today was 60 and sunny, but I still haven't managed to get the shrubs in the ground. I planted the shade perennials on Sunday morning when the rain slowed to a drizzle, but digging large holes for shrubs in the rain didn't sound fun.
The Morton Arboretum's plant sale is this weekend--and that's always very tempting. But I can't buy more plants if I haven't got the ones I already bought in the ground yet. Oh well, guess that means I'm on a deadline now.
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