In the Garden

I've been busy outside the last few weekends. There's still a lot I want to do, and I'll likely be putting in annuals and maybe a few new perennials for several weeks to come. It's an ongoing process every years. But here's a peak at what I've been up to so far this spring (spring? It's like 90 degress F out there today!)

For starters, I took out the old timbers that used to surround my small veggie patch. While some were still not too bad, others were badly rotted. Well, they were there when I moved into the house 15 years ago (15? where did the time go?) In their place I installed a composite "timber" system. Note that both timber and system are not to be taken seriously. However, the composite stuff is light weight enough for me to handle myself and won't rot on me possibly ever.





And the system involves parts! Spikes and corner joints and end cap thingies, oh my!








This is the set up I was thinking of initially, but I soon realized that the awkward angles were going to present maintenance issues. I've got spare "timbers" and eventually I'll run it longer alongside the fence. But for now I've settled on this.






But probably you'd like to see something prettier now. After all, I did use the word garden:


The blooming stuff are pansies and snapdragons, annuals which I put it for their instand impact. Oh, and some kind of spiky blue thing which I forget the name of. I put in some perennials last year, but those are just green leafy things for now.


And this is the bleeding heart I put in last year which more than just green and leafy. It's quite healthy and blooming like crazy.

And these are violas, as are those tiny green dots sprinkled across the rest of the bed. I started with one lone plant about 10-12 years ago, but it seeded like crazy, with each generation begatting some more. I don't really mind as the effect is so pretty. They won't be flowering for much longer though. Most of the seedlings will get rooted up to make way for more plants, and some of the bigger plants I'll attempt to transplant to that back corner. We'll see how that goes.


I liked the look of this annual vine. We'll see how it holds up, but it does add a nice splash of color. And finally, we have the lilac bush. I've been very excited at how well this has done. I just planted last year so I wasn't expecting a whole lot just yet. And now it's loaded with flowers and has quite a bit more height as well. I need to read up on trimming and training so I can get it to fill in a bit more, but I'm going to go very slowly on that so as not to ruin what appears to be a good thing.

And that completes the tour of my back yard. Y'all come back now, ya hear?