WALKING IN THE RAIN
~Ed Jensen

Having spent the early portion of my career on the production side of landscape maintenance, I fondly recall rainy days as opportunities to sleep in an extra fifteen minutes. This was a day to relax because you didn't have to be concerned about that expensive new landscape getting watered. Rain was a gift in more ways than one!

From a Property Manager's perspective, rain might mean leaking roofs or slick marble floors at the main lobby entrance.

From OLM's view, rain is a sloppy time to conduct a site inspection. Our recorders could get wet and malfunction! Our cars would have to hold wet dirty boots and require more cleaning! Worst of all, my perfectly quaffed hair would lose its style!

We recommend doing the site inspection anyway. If you and your landscaper make this commitment, you will become more aware of your property's idiosyncrasies and how to plan for the future.

Here are OLM's top 10 reasons to do a landscape site inspection on a rainy day.

1. Only when it's wet can you really see how water affects the landscape.
2. You will become more aware of why that group of plants does not look as healthy.
3. You will see where that French drain system needs to be directed to provide the greatest benefit to the landscape.
4. You may see the irrigation system operating when unnecessary.
5. You may wonder why the rain sensor you paid $100.00 for does not work.
6. You will have a greater appreciation for how rain can affect and delay a landscaper's work.
7. You can see fungus develop and realize why you need to include disease control in your contract.
8. Landscapers will see how low those branches do hang when they are wet and why they need to pruned.
9. You will see the source of that erosion problem and learn better how to correct the issue.
10. The site inspections do not take as long and you now have time to have lunch with your OLM consultant!
    

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

From the poem "Two Tramps in Mudtime" by Robert Frost

FIVE EASY PERENNIALS - HARDY PLUMBAGO
~Mark Dunaway

In old times the color blue was thought to derive from lead (Pb), so plants with blue flowers had common or scientific names referring to lead. The same Latin root word for the builder's plumb line forms the basis for this flower's Latin name. The tropical Plumbago auriculata is a popular light blue tender subshrub, often grown for summer color.

But this Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides) is much more cold hardy, surviving even the severe winters of the northeast. It is also part shade and drought tolerant, although it cannot accept dark shade. It serves as a great groundcover perennial, where a deciduous groundcover is needed in a bed receiving half a day of sun.

Hardy Plumbago bears lovely electric blue flowers starting in mid-summer and continuing until frost. To add to the beauty of these vibrantly colored half-inch wide flowers, as weather cools the leaves begin to turn vibrant red. Not every leaf turns red at first: only a few color in early fall, displaying an eye-popping tri-color effect well worth the wait.

Speaking of waiting, that is Hardy Plumbago's only drawback: Leaves are slow to emerge in springtime. Make this disadvantage an advantage in your garden by intermingling spring-blooming bulbs or an early-blooming ephemeral or summer dormant perennial like Old-Fashioned Bleeding Hearts. When Plumbago is ready to emerge, the bulbs or ephemeral perennial will be on their way out, and ready to pass the baton on to their summer-blooming friend.

This is the fourth in a series of five articles on Five Easy Perennials. Next issue we will look at the final flower in the series, Black-Eyed Susans.