Mountain Laurel

May is the time for Mountain Laurel at Suzanne's Cottage

When we moved to the cottage 8 years ago, it was covered with magnificent blooms of Rhododendrons and Azaleas. The problem was that none of them had been cut back or trained. So they had grown wild and leggy and pruning was not going to retrain 20-years of unbridled growth.

So we removed most of them, except the ones that could be salvaged and cut back. That left some big holes to fill.

Over the past years we have filled in a great deal and the house is much more open to the street. It is less like a jungle fortress and the curb appeal is much more welcoming to the neighborhood.

Two weeks ago, Charles and I were walking around surveying the blooming Rhodos and I commented to him that I wanted some Mountain Laurels to fill in a few areas where we needed bushes for privacy, color and texture. So last week I went to Lowe’s to get a couple cans of spray paint for another project and I walked through the garden section. There were pallets of Mountain Laurel. They had lost their flowers and they had been marked down from $28 to $4. So I filled up my car with ten bushes.

When I arrived home, Charles was in the garage working on another project. I told him I needed help unloading my car. “How much work can it be unloading two cans of spray paint?” he said. He can be so naive sometimes.