Yes thanks so much! What a treat! And then on the way home I found some garage sales with more nursery pots, so no end to digging in sight! I can't wait to get all my babies in the ground!

Emily

Thanks, Emily and Tracy, and Karen and Leslie and Debbie! I had a great time, and I managed to get half my new plants into the ground yesterday (with my daughter's help!). I hope everyone had as much fun and enjoyment out of our get-together as I did - I can't remember the last time I got to talk gardening with friends for half a day! Leslie, your cookies didn't last long - my husband thanks you!

The hostas have a happy new home, and they'll add SO much to my shade garden as they mature - THANK YOU to everyone who brought hostas! Thanks Leslie for that gorgeous purple columbine and the iris, and Debbie for the lemon balm, mint, and Jacob's ladder. Karen, those huge hosta will be GREAT in my shady border, and you're welcome to come back for ideas (and irises!). Emily, thanks again for all the astilbe and heuchera and hosta - and THAT COMPOST you potted your plants up in! Wow, that's like black gold, wish I had a source across the road from me like you do! (If you brought THAT in bags to a swap, I'm SURE we'd all trade plants for it!) Tracy, thanks for remembering the sedge - it will look great around that ligularia when it matures.

So, want to do it again next year??

Laurel

Thank you! Thank you! It was a great day. Food was yummy and best of all we all got to meet each other and came with lots of goodies! I went out at 8:00 this morning to weed and make room for the new plants. I have the shovel out for husband to increase the size of my one garden bed! He is thrilled ;) He deserves the added exercise today - he finally admitted at 11:00 last night that he had picked up my car keys by accident yesterday morning! LOL!

Laurel I'm so inspired by your peonies. They are just gorgeous. Something to put on my wish list for next years catalog shopping.Thank you for Iris and other plants (especially those you dug right out your garden). No better way to shop! Karen - thank you for the hens & chicks. I'm thinking of planting those in a container with some othe variety of hens & chick I got from my mom. Emily - The heucheras are a great addition to my new love of foilage plants. The astible will be planted with the 4 others I have. I like to plant in odd numbers so I'm thrilled to have the 5th one. Leslie - the balloon flower is one I've been looking for and have the perfect spot in my border garden and the hollyhock and iris will soon be in my front yard. Tracy - the Artemisia limelight has been on my wish list for a while now so that was a nice surprise!

Happy Gardening! And I can't wait to get together again.

Once I get everything planted I will post some pictures. I wish I brought my camera. Next year!

~Debbie

I want to thank everyone for the plants and the good food.
Thank you Laurel for hosting the event and for the scotch bread and the begonia. Your garden was lovely. It gave me a chance to see how some plants that I've been thinking about getting perform in the garden. (You can only tell so much about a plant from pictures.) The get together was fun. With all the lousy weather that I've been having I needed something to give my enthusiasm a boost and get me excited about gardening. (Also got to do a little geocaching on the way home, but that's a whole other website.)
Happy gardening to everyone. Here's hoping we get some warmer weather.

Laurel, I'm sorry I missed the plant swap. I didn't have a thing to swap after planting my spaces and Tom did his. All I had left was 17 Delphiniums that I gave to my Brother-in-law. We ended up going to Colonial Days in Painted Post.
I am glad it was a success and everyone had a good time.

Dirthappy,

I'm sorry you couldn't make it, but that's okay. We had so much fun, we might do it again next year. (We might have to draw straws to decide who hosts it, but that's a GOOD problem to have!) I'd like to make it to the plant sale you participated in recently - it sounds like you had some great things there.

Laurel

Sorry I'm such a slowpoke in getting back to respond!

I had a fabulous time and enjoyed meeting all of you local garden fanatics immensely! I came home with so many plants I could hardly believe it. I've only actually placed about half of them so far. The rest will require major digging so haven't had the time for that yet.

I learned so much from all of you, and Laurel thank you for sharing your home and your gardens - you've done a beautiful job!

I say it was a resounding success, and I definitely want to do it again next year! I'm already getting ideas about what I should be able to separate for that...

Thanks for including me!
Karen

You're welcome, Karen! The huge hosta you gave me are doing fine, and my daughter keeps an eye on "her" hens and chicks. I'd love to do this again next year; we'll see what we're all doing next spring. I know Emily (from near Ithaca) and Debbie (from Apalachin) from the swap also offered to play hostess, so we'll see. We should definitely do SOMETHING again!

Laurel

Thinking of you all -- Will have to take a picture, as this last week my husband and I created four beds, in the sense of laid down cardboard, created low stone walls for them, had 10 yards of compost trucked in, then filled each of the beds with compost, planted, and mulched them! Phew! But they look fantastic and many of your perennials are in them now. Need to make two more in order to get all the planties in... And will probably have room for about 10 of these beds in this area we have cleared that you walk past before you reach our mini fruit orchard. I am definitely getting more muscles from all the rock lifting! I'm guessing each bed, though rounded, is around eight feet long and five feet wide? Something like that? Finally got all my dahlias that had been growing mad out of their pots in the ground and staked, so that is a big relief. As is this rain!!!

Emily

Emily,

I'll bet the new beds look GREAT. If the compost you filled them with is anything like the black gold you potted up your plants for the swap in, you ought to be able to grow the world's healthiest, happiest plants. I like the look of stone retaining walls around raised beds; if I had more room I'd do more of that, but then my kids would have nowhere to play, so I'd better quit while I'm ahead.

I'm just hearing the first rumble of thunder as the rain approaches. I'm glad - we need a good soaking - but my kids do NOT like storms, so I think I'll have to get off the computer soon to distract them from the weather. Have a great week!

Laurel

Hello again garden friends!
I now have almost all of my new babies in their new homes! Emily, I totally agree with Laurel, that "black gold" is fantastic! It certainly helped enhance the soil I had in place and will surely give these little ones a great start. I've made progress on a somewhat smaller scale than Emily has, but I did follow up on my inspiration from Laurel's shade garden and created one new pretty area under the shade trees out back that definitely enhances the view out of my kitchen window. We shall see if the deer leave these hostas alone this year before I go to the effort to move any more of them back there.