Chantell, thanks, I'm getting there! My physical therapist says we can wind things up with 2 more sessions, so this was a much quicker process than the post-surgical PT. Until we did the initial evaluation, I didn't realize I'd damaged muscles and strained ligaments both above AND below my knee. I guess I went down so fast when I slipped on the ice that I couldn't tell how much that leg got twisted. It could have been way worse, for certain, and I'm grateful! I've also come to realize just how helpful PT can be in accelerating the recovery process. I was healing, but with the massage and stretching and targeted exercises I'm healing a lot faster!
I added some lily bulbs to Lisa's NBC shopping cart.
I have a bag of mixed oriental lilies from Costco to get into the ground, also! Most of my other Costco bulbs & bare root plants are potted up now, including tall garden phlox (4 varieties), hosta (2 varieties), tuberous begonias, bleeding hearts (managed to pick up 2 bags of the same variety in different trips), Siberian iris, and caladiums. Begonias and caladium tubers are on a heat mat in the basement; everything else is on the back deck. I do still have a bag of EE's to pot up (heat mat for them, too?), and it's probably about time to kick start my plumerias.
I picked up a bag of "mini" pine bark nuggets from Black Creek Nursery, and they were more like medium in size, not quite as huge as the large nuggets but definitely not the 1/2" to 1" size I was getting before. I have a couple older bags of actual "mini" nuggets (aka pine fines) from last spring but will need a new source after that. The ones we were getting at Meadow Farms are no longer "mini," as Terri found out last summer. If anybody finds a source, PLMK!
I use the mini pine bark together with compost for tropicals, especially plumeria. I did pick up several different types of compost at Black Creek, will let you know which ones seem best to me, but I think a blend could work really well. Got cow manure (dehydrated, extra dollar per bag but the bags are much lighter and possibly contain more product), mushroom compost, leaf gro type stuff (not the branded one), and the Land & Sea compost that they're always using on my favorite gardening you tube channel, Garden Answer.
When I was in GA right after college, a chef friend had a small organic farm supplying high-end herbs and edible flowers to area restaurants. He made the best compost the extension service had ever analyzed by combining live oak leaves (which fall in the spring) with crab waste (the nastiest stuff I've every shoveled into a truck). I wonder if Land & Sea is simlar?
