Everything in place

The strawberries arrived from Burpee's today, 25 'Albion' bare roots and one 'Montana' plant. I haven't opened the bare roots bag and won't until just before I plant them, but here is 'Montana.' It had six hard little berries on it, which I clipped off so the plant could devote its energy to recovering from its trip. I guess the plant is OK, but the ones at Home Depot are lush in comparison. Once again, to get the variety I wanted, I had to order online. I gave it a drink and stuck it under the grow lights in the closet with the Supertunias. The bare roots bag is in a bucket in the garage.

A snowstorm dropped five inches on us yesterday and today, but it seems to be over. It won't really warm up until Tuesday, but with the heat on in the greenhouse, it will be at least the mid-40s inside at night and warmer during the day. The current plan is to plant the strawberries tomorrow, and the Supertunias no later than Tuesday. Then I have to set up irrigation, and the season really will be underway. I fertilized the potted non-succulents in the greenhouse today, keeping in mind that the planting beds already were fertilized this year with three inches of compost.

On the succulents front, Succulents Depot once again is not giving any indication that my recent order is going to be shipped anytime soon. The FAQs say orders are usually shipped within 1-3 days. I placed an order April 5 and cancelled it April 14 when I decided to get some of the items elsewhere. Then I re-ordered April 15 and once again my order is "confirmed" but not shipped. We are going to be out of town soon and I don't want the plants sitting in a dark box at the post office for 10 days. Succulents are tough, but that's ridiculous. Andrea at customer service has been very nice and says the delays are due to a backlog caused by shipping delays due to weather around the country. So I'm not going to get mad at them, but it is frustrating to place an order and then nothing happens. Andrea said if the order isn't shipped in the next couple days, it will be delayed to May 11 as I requested. I said I would follow up in a few days if I didn't hear anything else. I have already set the Mountain Crest Gardens order to ship on May 11 to avoid all of this uncertainty.

As I have said before, I would rather not even deal with the online companies, but despite the occasional surprise like 'Topsy Turvy' and 'Coastal Coral,' the locals usually just have the basics. This is my third order with Mountain Crest, and they will probably get a fourth unless I recover my sanity before then.