How to Get Other People to Haul Away Your Yard Waste

Yard waste containers full?  Want to avoid a time-consuming trip to the yard waste facility?   Here's an option for you that's sure to work.  Simply place said waste on a busy street in front of your home and, using spray paint or a marker write the word FREE on a piece of cardboard.  Place the sign where it can be easily seen from the street and voila you've saved yourself some time and work.  This works beautifully for me when the timber bamboo must be thinned and I have too many poles.  

On a very hot day in August,  while driving home from having lunch with a friend, I saw just such a sign by the side of the road with what must have been an entire large bush's worth of hydrangea branches strewn about.  Who could let these poor things suffer on such a hot day?  Certainly not me, so I filled my trunk.  They were pretty big branches so a bit of cutting was required for them to be ready for vases.  Why oh why didn't I have pruners in my car that day?

There were lovely blue hydrangeas all over the house!

I love flowers but hate to cut them from my garden as they last so much longer outside.  I'm also not fond of cleaning up dead flowers much.  Hydrangeas to the rescue.  The look great fresh but once you forget to water them they dry beautifully and last for a long time!  In fact, here are some of those same August beauties today.

What's been  your favorite free find?

 

You Don't See That Everyday in the Pacific Northwest!

Driving home from work on Monday, I saw a sign on the side of the road.  From the car I couldn't see what was in the boxes so I drove by but then made a u turn.

Oh my goodness!  Sometimes it's good that I have a bit of a messy car as surely there'd be something in the trunk to help me take a few of these pads.  Turns out that with the exception of a few bits of cylindropuntia, this was a single large opuntia somewhat dehydrated.

This second box had an opuntia with some purple on the pads. O.K. I'll rescue it! 

 Look at the size of the cylindropuntia trunk!

Do you suppose the top will root as a large specimen?  I hope so as, with the help of a plastic bag wrapped around the trunk,  it made it into my trunk. Not that I need any more of these but how could one pass up free cacti?  The remainder were still by the side of the road today.  Anyone want them?

Dumpster Dive Follow Up

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, I had a dilemma about weather or not I should take plants from a dumpster outside of a nursery.  I was a little embarrassed to ask in person so I called instead, got permission, went back and pulled out some treasures.  It was getting dark, the freezing temperatures had settled in and there was a lot more on top of the plants I was seeking so I didn't pull the dumpster apart like I might have if it were light out to further explore.  I pulled out a couple of two gallon pots of variegated Hedera (yes, I know but this will be grown in deep summer shade,  will never be given the chance to climb, and will have to compete with bamboo.) and the pot containing a couple of carex varieties.  According to the tags still in the plants, the ivy was selling for $40.00 a pot, didn't check the carex pot closely enough.  The plants got thrown in the trunk of my car where they remained for about a week during our recent freeze and emerged looking lovely.   Anyway, here's what I did with the freebies.

Before - The pond looks a little bleak sans summer foliage covering the rocks.

After - a little blanket of ivy and a cascade of grass covers a multitude of sins and the price was certainly right!  I wonder if that dumpster is always so full of treasure?  It's not far from the Bonney Lassie's house so maybe I should go check out the progress on her big dig and visit the dumpster again...

Things to do:
1)Cut horsetail reed down to the pot now that it's decided to flop over. 
2) Prune Nandina domestica 'Filamentosa' (Thread-leaf Nandina) back a little so that it doesn't obscure so much of the pond's surface.
3) Move another pot of grass to the other side of the Buddha.

O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis

 

A little while back, Beech Street Gardens had a contest called opuntia o rama.  I entered just for fun and SURPRISE!  I won. The other day, I had just come home from a great nursery hopping day during which I was given several agaves (more on this in a later post) and was already feeling like the luckiest gardener on the face of the planet!  As I walked up to my front door, what should I see but this gorgeous chartreuse box from Beech Street Gardens.  With luck like this, I made a point to buy a lottery ticket! 

Unpacking this box was really exciting!

 

 Here is the cholla looking cute as can be.

 

And here's Opuntia polycantha poking it's pads out of the newspaper.

 

 

Opuntia acanthocarpa snug in their new home.

 

 

Opuntia polycantha all potted up and ready to roll!

 

Thanks Steven for these fun new additions to my collection.  I'll do my best to give them the neglect they need! 

Some Lucky Finds and a Question

In June, I got the oputia on the right to add to my danger gardenette, an homage to Ms. Danger Garden.

Over time, the poor thing has become pretty crowded and has some new friends who need pots.

So, I went to H & L Produce, owned by the same company that operates Tacoma Boys to look for pots and found this one for the opuntia.

 There was a fellow moving a few damaged pots so I asked him what he was going to do with them.  He said that they were going to be thrown away & said that I could have whatever I wanted to haul away!  Free is my favorite price!  I got all of the pots below for the price of two pots. the three round ones in the back are non damaged.  The square one on the right only has some dings on the corners which doesn't bother me.  Not sure about the huge one in the front; I have the missing piece and will perhaps glue it together. 

Anyway, I'm loving the free pots.

 Of course, repotting the opuntia and a few others requires ripping the danger gardenette apart.

 And throwing stuff everywhere.

 And putting it all back together.  Now the opuntia isn't buried  but I'm not sure I like the look of this grouping.  Maybe too many pots?  What would you do assuming that you want to keep all the plants,they must stay in pots, and they must stay roughly in this amount of space, and a set of say three really huge pots containing mixed plantings is not an option as many of these need to be moved  twice a year by my gardeners (me, myself, and I.)