Garden Glimpses

I spent a good chunk of Friday afternoon weeding, edging, moving plants around and fertilizing.

Here are some snippets of things growing around my yard.

This is Blue Star Creeper, and comes from the company Stepables. It is growing at the base of one of my rhododendron plants and I just love it. I have another rhody bush on the other side of the sidewalk that also has blue star creeper growing around the base.

This is a raised bed that I put in the previous year.

Daylilies, Irises ( from mom's house), Campanulas, some ground cover, asters, and a columbine plant fill this space.  The columbine has already bloomed and gone, so you can't see it. It sits between the bulbs and the daylily.

The former owners had a beautiful Japanese Maple tree that was planted in that spot that was at least 10 years old. We had to rip it out. They had planted it less than a foot away from the house and one side was mangled and shoved up against the wall. There were also two cypress trees that we had to rip out in the front yard, for the same reason. They were right up against the house.

This is how I grow my herbs, in a giant pot. The slugs don't usually get to them since it is so far off the ground. The Italian oregano and the Spearmint always take over, those pot hogs. They always grow more than I can use. We also have some cilantro hidden in there, it's not doing so well, and some basil. We all love omelets with fresh chopped basil in them.

My hydrangeas are starting to bloom! Hydrangeas are one of my favorite flowers/bushes. I have 4 plants on the North side of my house. This plant I bought 2 years ago and it was a lovely shade of purple. Last year it decided to be pink. This year, the acidity, pH in the soil must be right on, because it is back to lovely shades of lavender.

This is our modest vegetable garden...

I have a lot more of the stone retaining wall blocks sitting on pallets waiting for me to use them. I was initially going to do another raised bed like the one in the above picture as this area of our yard is clay soil. The water sits and it is almost impossible to grow anything in it. Well, I decided I couldn't really put in all of that work on a retaining wall raised bed, up against a fence that desperately needed to be replaced. I also knew that it was highly unlikely that the fence would get done this summer, so it was onto plan "B".

 I kindly asked my husband to make me a raised garden bed out of cedar, and he obliged. He placed it on top of a sprinkler head, and put the sprinkler head on a riser so it waters the plants. So far things seem to be doing well. I planted two tomato plants, a pepper plant and a crookneck squash plant. So far so good, and the slugs have yet to discover the bed... Mwahaha!!!

This is another pot by my front door.  Each day, the flowers get just a bit bigger. I can't wait until it is all filled in. I walk out my front door and it just always smells soo good.

I think a combination of the lavender, the honeysuckle and the verbena that are growing around the yard, help it smell just fantastic! 

This area used to be sod.

I had my husband dig it up so I could put in more plants and flowers. There are some petunias, irises, Lady's Mantle, some feverfew, Provence lavender, and the big bush at the end next to the lavender is Lemon Balm. The leaves on those smell so good!   I imagine as the years go by, I will have less and less lawn, and more flowers in the front yard.

This next patch of plants is in the corner of the front yard.

Lots of stuff going on here. Canna lilies, Bloody Cranesbill Geranium, Alyssum, wave petunia - which was ONE plant, Salvia, an aster, and a white lilac bush in the corner! So basically the plants in the front are annuals, the ones in the back are perennials. This is the second year I have tried to work with Salvia flowers. I have to say, that I am not a big fan and I don't think I will be planting them again. They have a hard, hard time. In that location, I eventually want to plant a climbing rose bush, or some wisteria to climb up over an arbor.

This is one of my rose bushes. I was just about ready to rip it out. It is highly susceptible to black spot mildew. We had an incredibly wet, wet spring, and it just looked so sick for quite awhile.

I went to town hacking it and pruned a lot of it off, sprayed fungicide every few days, removed all of the infected leaves, and waited for the hot weather...and tried to ignore it.

The hot weather is here, and it is doing much better. I am not so ready to rip it out now. :-)

So that is just a tiny glimpse into some of the things growing around my place. I hope I inspired you to get out and work in your yard!