Flower Power

I love flowers. Cut flowers, planted flowers, flowering shrubs, flowers with thorns ... I'm not too picky.

When I was growing up, my parents didn't really do a lot with our yard. Ok, they hardly did anything. The back yard was rather overgrown (thinking back now: it was a landscape disaster zone), and the ivy had come out as conqueror. The side and front yards had several overgrown shrubs and bushes that were only cut back enough to keep them out of your way. Blooming happened because the plants there were mere survivors -- but none of them were particularly pretty or showy. To this day, I still don't know what most of the plants even were: some of the bushes we just called "bee bushes", because -- you guessed it -- they attracted bees.

I remember one time, I thought I'd help out my parents by cutting back some of the ivy that was spilling over onto the stairs in the front yard. Mind you, I didn't have the proper tool, either: instead of hand pruners, I was using grass clippers. I was still pretty young, I didn't know any better, and it was the only thing I could find! When my mom told me it was wrong, she also didn't have a viable option to provide me with. And she wasn't about to let me use her kitchen scissors. So, back I went to the grass clippers.

I remember being shocked and amazed when I discovered that underneath all that ivy, there was a line of rock at the edge of those stairs. I seriously had no idea it was even there!

Fast forward to today. I am happy to say that my yard is way more cared for -- by a long shot -- than what I grew up with! (A lot of credit for that goes to Todd.... he works hard out there with me.)

Way back in this post, I told you about how we'd had the front patio done. That first year, we never got anything planted around the patio. Just the fact that it wasn't a weed patch anymore seemed like a huge improvement! And the expense of getting the patio also seemed like it was plenty.

Then last year, we planted, but without a good landscape plan in mind, so I picked annuals (that die off in the winter) and along the wall, I put in some dahlias for height. The dahlias are tender tubers, and we dug them up, in hopes that we could re-plant them again. They would not have survived the winter if we'd left them in the ground. The annuals were just a solid mass of red-and-white-striped petunias. They filled in great, but it wasn't much for variety. I'm describing all this to you, because apparently, I never took pictures of the blooming plants. I know, pretty dumb on my part. Especially when I entered the dahlias in the county fair and took ribbons with them!

This year, the dahlia tubers looked a little questionable for planting. So we didn't re-plant them in the same spot, but on the other side of the garage instead. If they make it, then great. That left the patio area blank and fair game for anything we wanted.

As much as I would love to find some rock daphne to put there, I can't seem to find it locally this year. I'd also love to put in some mums, but those won't be available until fall. So, off Todd and I went to buy plants, and this is the result:

I know, it looks kind of sparse, but it will fill in pretty nicely during the summer. I hope to take more pictures when the plants have really taken off. The back wall has perennials that will come back year after year. That is, if I can treat them right during their first year in place! The front edges have annuals.... we'll plant perennials when I think up what I want there. The back wall is lined with blue and purple delphiniums --- I LOVE those flowers. (I hope they like their home and decide to stay!) In the back corners is some coreopsis:

This one's new to me, and is a bit more orange than I wanted.... but it looks striking with the delphiniums. We'll see how it does. Also, between the delphs and the coreopsis, we put in some lupines (the two pink spikey ones in the middle of this next photo):

I hope they decide to stay, too. Because I really like them as well. Can I take this moment to say how much easier it is to plant things when Todd goes around ahead of me, and digs the planting holes?? YEAH, BABY!! And did you see what's tucked back there with the lupines? It's Emma's crazy-bird:

Emma loves these plant stakes, so we've ended up with a number of them. They're not exactly my taste in gardens, but they're there for Emma's sake. (Ok, I will admit that they do add some color to the area when most of it is not really blooming yet) We started with butterflies last year. This year, we've added in dragonflies, hummingbirds and this funky pink crazy-bird. Whatever!!

You can see a couple of them in this lineup of the lupines & delphs:

The lupines come in an assortment of colors. Some of the lupines we got are purple:

And I think I'm running in a purple mood.... these are this year's version of my porch pots:

That's some purple verbena, some blue-purple lobelia, and there's also some pink wave petunias that haven't come out yet. And on the other side of the front porch is one of our rhododendrons... that also happens to be purple (!!). It's in full bloom right now:

Todd and I recently returned from a business trip to Portland. Can I just say that Portland in May is stunningly beautiful, because there are rhodies and azaleas all over..... and in full bloom! It made me want more rhodies for our house--despite the fact that we already have 7 of them, all in the front yard. Maybe the back yard needs some??

I've also come a long way since those ivy-pruning days, in that now -- I can name most of the plants in my yard, and I can shop at a garden center with a pretty good idea of what I want, and knowing (or at least having heard of) most of the plants that are there as well.

I do love flowers!!