A spring tutorial! H’s been more and more interested in flowers this year as they bloom all over. She’s been picking dandelions everywhere we go, and digging holes in the mulch in the backyard with the gardening tools her grandparents gave her. I do not have a green thumb, but she’s fascinated. So I’ve been brainstorming some gardening projects we could do together, for me to learn some things and for her to watch things grow.
I love lilies. All kinds of lilies: day, calla, regular ol’. That’s what our front garden is filled with. I finally got our front flowerbeds weeded and mulched last week, and the flowers are looking so gorgeous this year! We still have a giant space in the middle of our big bed that seems to be a deathtrap for whatever we plant there, but otherwise it’s looking great.
Check out how incredibly ginormous our daisy bushes have gotten since everything on the patio was planted last summer.
Those roses are no slouch, either. I love it back there!
Remember this? We’ve gotten so much better about the whole yard thing since then. Once the patio arrived last year we started getting better.
Adam and I spent the entire weekend prepping all our flowerbeds for the season. And I literally mean the ENTIRE. WEEKEND. Four trips to Lowes, 24 bags of mulch, 19 plants, several bags of soil…you get the idea. We are exhausted, but as of this afternoon it’s done. Now we keep working on the lawn (which took a beating when the patio was built last year), and I’m thinking about growing tomatoes this year. Maybe. I’m not sure, but we’ll see. If Adam helps me build a raised bed for them.
The burning bushes got so big I had to prune them back. I’ve planted 9 more lily plants in the big flowerbed this year, I might add even more. We put a Common Boneset between the bushes, but it’s not too happy there.
I planted a bunch of daylilies in the small flowerbed. We had some tulips come up, but they’re already leaving for the season.
It’s time again for me to launch my annual full-scale assault on the grass that grows in the front flowerbed. I have no idea how and why this grass grows so persistently, especially since I’ve hardly watered that bed at all this summer (even through the drought). We’ve been so busy keeping the patio alive, so many of those plants are struggling after the drought we had here in NJ at the beginning of July. But the flowers and bushes are doing fine, so I’m working on killing the grass and weeds so that I can then mulch the dickens out of it.
Okay, so it’s actually an herb pot. Last weekend we got a big terracotta pot and a bunch of different herbs, I’m hoping they’ll take to the new environment. I’m trying to catch up on some things after being in a serious funk last week. This is one of them. My herbs are wilting a little in the face of all the heat, but I’m hoping that with watering and some rain they’ll perk up. The basil tastes amazing, so much better than getting it from the store. If this works, next year maybe I’ll put in an actual herb garden.