Gardening the hole day

TPP is bushed, tired, not politically inept. Yes, hole not whole, because that's what he did today; TPP dug holes. That's the bloody trouble with new shrubs, they need holes.  And when you take down 5 or 6 old spruce you end up with an empty space that's at least 65' x 20' to re-landscape, and that's what we be doing.  Let's see a Japanese snowbell, a fancy purple lilac, a Korean pine, a Korean azalea (hmm, is there a trend here?), a June berry, a double-file viburnum, a couple of Korean spicebush viburnums (yes, definitely a trend!), and something, something else?  Oh, a fancy dwarf conifer for the Japanese garden, but that's out back, and a quite nice plum yew was planted there too (Cephalotaxus - look it up!).  Of course lot's of old standard hostas were moved to make room for the new stuff; in our gardens, it's never an easy planting because things must be removed to plant something new.  Anchoring this new front garden is a large Japanese maple, a Crimson Prince who is at least 8' tall with a 3-4" trunk, a fairly big fellow, so the Phactors wisely paid younger, stronger backs to plant that one, and it already looks terrific. This is high impact gardening, a hobby, a life-style, with a built-in exercise program.  Watch for our exercise video out soon.