I tried to move a Chaste Tree to the front yard, without getting the soil moist enough for a gentle digging. Memo to self - Chaste Trees get very attached to their original locations.
I learned my lesson and soaked the Clethra and its new location. Digging it up with a soil ball and installing it in the rose garden went fast. I did that with help and also discovered the second Clethra, which proved "Out of sight, out of mind." It became a part of a solid wall of green in the bird feeding area.
 |
| Clethra is also called Summersweet. Tapping the flower will yield a bunch of tiny insects, which like tiny flowers. Butterflies seem to favor those small flowers which people would never grow for a bouquet, so they are treated to a variety of butterfly displays instead. |
I repeated the Clethra move this morning, after soaking it last night in buckets of rainwater. I moved the this one into the wheelbarrow easily, with a rootball, and found a good place among the roses for it. If I want a plant to prosper, I put it where I will see it all the time. The rose garden never lacks color, whether from mints, Crepe Myrtle, Joe Pye, daisies, hostas, or the milkweed family.
I am catching onto butterfly gardening. The Butterfly Weed bloomed and formed Milkweed like pods for the seeds. One opened up today and the seeds headed off on the breeze.
Since Clethra is known for its attraction to butterflies, I decided to move it where it would thrive with more sun and with Joe Pye blooming nearby.
I have bags of Stinky Peat in the limo trunk, so I pulled out a couple of bags and dumped them on top of the Clethra base and on the Chaste Tree's final resting place. Peat Compost is only $1.60 a bag and remains my favorite for planting. If the project does not work out, I have improved the soil in that spot.
 |
| Bumble Bees adore the Chaste Tree. The oil is sold on the herbal market. The leaves have a definite medicinal aroma. |
God has a plan for every living thing. That is clear from moving a few things around and planting some new, unual flowers and shrubs I never head about before. Creation Gardeners know how little they do for the garden. The schedules are already set up for blooming, reproduction, support of butterflies and birds.
Every gardener has an enemies list of destructive bugs. Mine is short - Japanese beetles and aphids. This year I saw little of both, because the good creatures kept them down and Milky Spore got to the grubs before they romanced, chewed, and reproduced in the roses.
My Facebook friend found tetanus in her soil in the microbiology lab. I replied, "But there are also antiobiotics in the soil. Otherwise death in the soil would poison us all."
Even false teachers have their purpose. They show that figs do not grow on thistles, or grapes on thorns. They make the difference between sound and toxic doctrine clear, if only we pay attention to the Word of God.
 |
| My father, born in 1910, would say, "You have to buy milkweeds now?" I would say, "For the Monarchs, yes." |
