Fall planting, and Fall tea party follows

So the long awaited Rose of Sharon arrived, and it's like getting a new puppy.  All the planning and thinking and ordering up and waiting (well, this is fiction in my case, my dogs have all been strays who showed up and asked to come in, but nemmind) and then the carton arrives and a tiny little tree lies there waiting for you to take over.

So I pulled out a lot of groundcover, and dug a nice roomy hole for Rose to climb into, while she soaked her tired roots in a bucket, 

and here she is with her new friends, looking small but determined 

She will have blue flowers, so let's hope she flourishes.  Behind her on the fence is the yellow climbing rose, starting to take hold, and around are the daisies and the dark pink sedum. On the right is the Japanese maple, and the jury's still out on whether it will survive the transplant, but there are a few nice new growth tips, so I'm hopeful.

The Dollivers flatly refused to take part in this rite of Fall, on the grounds that their gardening gloves keep falling off and it's annoying, so they decided that being hostesses to the Fall teaparty was more their line of country.

So here they are, all agog to meet Jeanne, in fact a couple of them already did, but don't mention that to the others, they hate to be left out, serious case of FOMO among the Ds.

Two views, so as not to exclude anyone from being in the foreground. Good thing there aren't more of them, or this could get tedious.

Jeanne was the perfect appreciative guest, came complete with handmade chocolates and the Ds are even now arguing over who should get the run of the box.  We enjoyed  some savory egg salad on wholewheat, banana bread, and raisin scones with tomato and lemon preserve.  It went down okay, and Jeanne left with a little care package for home consumption.  I do love to fix this sort of afternoon tea.  Don't do it often, but it's great fun with the right guest.

And as another mixed media artist, she was just wonderful to show around and let her see what was what around here, including the llama yarn, which, as a yarny person, she buried her nose in appreciatively.  And as a knitter, she had a funny knitting story, which I will not relay here, in order to protect the guilty.

Lovely afternoon.