The Weekend's Hard Work

Another weekend has come and gone and once again Jamie and I have spent a large portion of it working in the yard. We plopped a few more plants into their new homes and began putting out the new mulch. When the storm came thru it blew away every single bit of it right down to the bare soil. I can’t even begin to tell you what a difference it made in the appearance to replace it. It really defines the bed. Well, we were so pleased with the way it looked we decided to go ahead and replace the pine straw we had spread in the new patio bed. We knew when we put it down it wasn’t thick enough and since we like the way the pine bark looked we decided to carry it over to the new bed. We moved 1500 pounds of mulch four times, store to carts, carts to truck, truck to bedside and bedside to bed. Let me do some quick math for you, that’s six THOUSAND pounds of mulch, moved by hand, by me and Jamie. Do you think we were tired at the end of the day? The end results were worth it and we had a sense of a job well done.

Some of you may remember that one of our projects last year was to put in a new bed that ran along the back side of the house and down the entire length of the left side of the yard. We’ve been hard at work replacing damaged plants and shrubs and it’s really starting to come together and fill in some. I took these pictures this past weekend.

This picture is a glimpse into what we would like the entire garden to become. We want the complete back yard to be one big garden with nothing but a little path to lead you on your way. If we are able to continue at our present rate, we might just get that goal accomplished.

We have a long term plan drawn out and have a pretty good idea how everything will look when it’s completed. Rather than flying by the seat of our pants like we’ve been know to do in the past, we now have a template of sorts to draw things out on as we dream them up. Once we decide it’s a definite “do”, I add it to the layout. I’m really proud of myself for putting this together. I combined tools from Garden123 and Microsoft Word to make it.

This is Iris Ensata Variegata we found it at Petals From the Past about an hour north of us. The good thing about working in the garden right now is there are several things blooming and you get to enjoy them will you are puttering around.

Iris Ensata Variegata

Shasta Daisies have been a favorite of mine since I was a kid and I don’t know why I’ve waited until now to get some. Right now they are just tiny little clumps with a single bloom per plant. By next summer we should have a nice little clump of these or at least I hope so. We have two different cultivars. This one is ‘Crazy Daisy’.

‘Crazy Daisy’

This is the very first daylily I purchased. I got it several years ago and it has bloomed faithfully for me every year. It has large beautiful blooms with several blossoms per spike. It’s such a shame they can’t be weeklilies instead of daylilies.

‘Fairytale Pink’

About the same time I got the ‘Fairytale Pink’ I also got the one pictured below. This was the extent of the daylily collection until this year. Jamie and I have been running around like mad men collection daylilies since the beginning of spring. Now that we are up to 49 different cultivars we are going to have to start becoming a little more selective with our purchases… that is, until the new bed goes in. :-)

‘Little Missy’

Now that I’ve introduce you to the two that started it all, let’s take a look and some of the ones we got this year that are blooming now. I’m sure we will be adding to the collection on June 7th. I got wind of a Daylily Festival in a town named Headland about 120 miles south of here. If Jamie wants to and gas money permits we will be on our way.

‘Tiny Pumpkin’

I can already tell this one is going to become a favorite of mine really fast.

‘Sweet Southern Sun’

This is another one of the Daylilies I bought from the nursery way out in the country. I thought at one point I had identified it, but this bloom looks totally different from the first one it produced. I may have to wait until it blooms again and give it a second try. I guess there is always the possibility more than one type could have been planted in the same pot.

‘Violetta’

‘King Lamoni’

This daylily was purchased as ‘Custard Candy’ it’s obviously a mislabeled plant, but now, I have no idea what it is.

Progress on the New Bed

Well as promised, here is an update on the new bed. My next door neighbor finally got his yard vacuumed so I got a few more leaves to add as mulch. I would say at this point we are just about three quarters of the way done with the mulch.

Section I of the Tropical Bed

By next Summer I'm hoping the air conditioning unit will be at least part of the way concealed with some type of plants. I've considered putting a trellis of some sort up to disguise it too. It goes with out saying the hose will be made less visible as well.

Section II of the Tropical Bed

New Mulch

If you look closely you'll see we've added some Chrysanthemums to this section of the bed. There are also other plants that have been recently added, I'll post them in a separate blog later this week. I'll show them to you in their puny little state and we'll watch them grow in to something wonderful next Summer.

Newly Mulched Woodland Bed

Just Another View