Nice new tree - Persian ironwood

Well, it remains too dry, but TPP could not help himself when a visit to a favorite nursery found a great tree, Parrotia persica, sometimes called Persian ironwood [a native of Iran]at a bargain price.  This is a small tree that's in the same family with witch hazel; the leaves look quite similar and provide nice color.  A lot of people would miss the flowers, which are also similar to reddish flowered witch hazel.  Dirr raves about this tree, and if you don't know what that refers to, then you shouldn't be buying trees like this anyways.  This specimen has a stem diameter of over 3" and it's nearly 8 feet tall and a nice tear-drop shaped crown, and at under $200 this is a great deal.  This is usually a good time of year to plant trees, and there are often sales.  So it'll need to be watered, but what you gonna do?  An old spruce along the sidewalk in the front of our house is in serious decline after last year's drought, aided and abetted by current conditions, so a new tree/shrub will be needed in this location, but nothing that will get too big because the back ground is handsome and screened from view. 

Flowering shrubs - the intelligent, tasteful, moral choice

"I feel quite comfortable saying that unless your garden is filled with flowering shrubs, your taste, intelligence, and probably your morals are highly suspect." So reads the advertisement that just arrived. Well, you'd have to be a real Ediot to argue with that!  And as a fellow who collects magnolias, flowering shrubs do get a lot of the Phactor's attention.  It's not as if you need another gardening reference book for your already overcrowded book shelf, but the Phactor does assure you that the Encyclopedia of Flowering Shrubs is a very good reference, and marked down to $35 it's a bargain.  Then you will be able to carefully consider where that Disanthus might be planted.  What? You don't know Disanthus?  Well!  Guess who needs this book?   File it right next to your Dirr.   What?  You don't have a Dirr, or worse you don't know who or what a Dirr is?  OK, put down the blog, show both hands, and step away slowly.  You are highly suspect!