"It Pays to Shop Around"

O.k, sometimes she is right.......o.k. most of the time she is right!  We are getting the gardens here at Menagerie Manor in shape for my annual "Staff Party" that we have missed out having the last two years.    Several years ago MeMa returned from Hawaii with a new penchant for Agapanthus or Lily of the Nile.  So I being the adoring loving husband ordered three out of a nursery catalog.  They arrived in a few days, in little tube like containers.  MeMa did not believe me when I insisted they were her beloved Agapanthus.  A few days passed and they still did not look like much, I was out working in the garden when MeMa arrived home from a shopping trip with a very smug look on her face.  She proudly placed three of the largest pots of Agapanthus on the ground and then told me, "This is what Agapanthus look like," My paltry little weaklings cost me over forty dollars with shipping added in.  She paid nine dollars apiece for each five gallon container plants.  Actually my three little weaklings did not survive their first winter but MeMas are thriving and beautiful.  In getting ready for this party we decided to finish the bed off with two more clumps of Agapanthus so the search was on again.  I was willing to pay thirty dollars apiece at our back yard nursery but MeMa insisted I keep looking.  The next plants I found priced at 29.95 met with her disapproval as well.  Yesterday we were at a hardware store and happened to wander out to the garden department when MeMa spotted Agapanthus for $7.50 a pot....wait....oh yes, there was that smug look on her face again.

On the left is one of the first clumps just starting to bloom and on the right are the two new clumps.