Last two weekends I caught up with some of the backlog I'd been meaning to do. First thing was getting our rock fountain up and running.

I repotted ten plants, five of them were ferns. I moved the three Japanese Forest Grass plants to pots, they just weren't doing well in the ground. I can understand why - it's dry, compact, very rooty and not real fertile, not even weeds like growing there. When I repotted some of the other plants it freed up 3 large clay pots and that's what I used. I took advantage of the holes that were made and partially sunk the pots. I don't think there's any real advantage to that, I just did it anyway.

Some ferns we had growing in containers around the fountain were moved to larger containers with fresh soil. I repotted the rosemary plant to a larger container and moved it to a sunnier location. I planted a bare root hydrangea I got at Molbaks in a container, hope it takes. It was packed in sawdust in a plastic bag and I left it in a bucket of water for a week. That was only because I couldn't do anything with it until my days off. It started to sprout so I planted it in a container, but now I don't see sprouts.

About four years ago, my wife picked out an arrangement of plants in a container. I thought it would only last a season. I ignored it the next couple of years because I wasn't into gardening at the time. When I started taking an interest in gardening, I noticed the sad looking collection of plants in the pot still had some green, so I repotted them in a larger clay pot. It's been going gangbusters ever since then with minimal care, especially this year, I've never seen it spring up (no pun) so robustly! It's nice even in the fall when the part with the leaves start turning autumn colors.

Planted some Black Runner Beans this year. I guess the seeds are really yummy, because something (probably rabbit or coon), decimated them overnight after I planted them in the cedar container.

I replanted more since I had three packages, this time I used some "hardware cloth" secured with small nails to protect them. (Why is the word "cloth" used for this? It's wire mesh. Whatever). That worked, but only four out of a dozen or so seeds sprouted.

Since the ones that have sprouted have grown higher than the hardware cloth, I'm going to separately germinate eight more in small containers that I can put outside, but with a lid (clear plastic tote) to keep them safe from varmints until they're ready to move into the cedar container. Tonight will be the first night that I removed the wire mesh. Keeping my fingers crossed that the varmints will leave the plants alone.

I also just learned about "inoculating" seeds like these. Had no idea what that meant so I googled it. For some reason it was hard to find clear, concise meaning and how it's done, but finally found a link that helped. Since it involved having to find and buy a product, I skipped that part and am trying the soaking method: https://www.planetnatural.com/...

I used the ziplock bag method with Willow Water, which is another thing I just learned about. We have two willow trees, one on each end of the tree line.

Oh, and the bare root hydrangea has sprouted!

Used some temporary pots we had kicking around to plant more Black Runner Beans to transplant into the cedar containers. I'm glad I finally found a use for those pots. There were 12 seeds left in one package, but I only had eight small pots, so I made three more out of empty Gatrade plastic bottles. There's a ridge at the top of the label that makes a good guide where to cut the top half off. I also happened to notice that the Gatorade bottles have an indentation in the middle of the bottom. If you drilled a hole in the middle of it, it could be used for a small "self-watering" pot. I didn't want that, so I drilled three or four holes around the outer edge. (Plus I'm not so sure about "self-watering" pots). I put the whole chebang on a board and covered it with a semi-clear plastic tote I had on hand, then weighted it down with a brick to keep the varmints away.