MULCH

So I found out last nite that Curt had to bowl in the teams division of the county tournament today. ( In all fairness my father in law "forgot" to tell Curt until last night grrrrr)  So we got up early today, headed for the big orange box, and picked up 5 bags of black mulch and a purple calla lily.  I have decided that unlike my parents and uncles I like the shredded mulch better.  Especially since I use mostly perennials.  And I like the softer look.  Also I have decided I like black mulch better than the red mulch I grew up with.  I really think the black makes all the green "pop" and since our garden has a brick background, we have a lot of red - dragon's blood, stonecrop, huecha ( I think it's called)  So the red just fades those out.  We got back and Curt had to leave so I weeded ( took over an hour and a half) and mulched ( took longer than I anticipated as well)  not to mention - Min would be proud - in the 3 hours I was out there I drank 4 .5liter bottles of water, yes I drank water - and so far I haven't rusted.  ( Sorry mikey -- I may have drank water but didn't put on sunscreen -- didn't burn though ;P)

Besides looking pretty, mulch helps soooo much in preventing weed growth.  It also holds in the moisture so we don't have to water as often.  And the mulch acts as an insulator for the bulbs and roots in the winter.  But it is a pain in the bleep to spread around the the existing plants.

To show you the difference I took a picture of before mulch:

And in this picture you can see the cala lily

 So I weeded - lots of weeds ugh, then I planted the cala lily - which is a perennial so should come back next year, and in that hanging basket was last fall's mum growing back so I planted that with the rest of last fall's mums - and to think I used to rip them out after the frost killed them, I seriously never knew they'd come back .  Then I  mulched.





See how well the mulch shows off the dragon's blood ( the red/green creeping plant)?  

Then it was supposed to rain all day today, we had about 8 raindrops around 645, but that was it, so I had to water the urn on the steps and the lily, mum, the jacob's ladder I planted last weekend and the vertical garden.  So now that I watered it will obviously start raining soon!