Our Garden Beds

The end of our driveway turned out to be a decidedly hostile environment. Every year I'd plant a bunch of Iris. By the next spring they'd be dead, and I'd plant a bunch more. This went on for about a decade. Finally these took.

Showing some stress from the heat, despite daily watering for these mostly-new plantings. The Columbines, in particular, have collapsed, which is likely OK but I'll be holding my breath come spring. And our poor lawn's gone brown . We need rain. We really need rain.

The garden we call The Circle. Trust me, it usually looks better than this.... This bed began as a circle of bricks, sometime in the summer of 1992 (I think). I originally planted some crocuses and freesia inside the circle--both still flourish, here, and are usually our earliest-blooming spring flowers. There are also a few tulips in the mix. For summer color I originally planted some pansies. Then Joan arrived, bringing (among other things) her Shasta Daisies. Ever since, this has been an early spring/mid-summer garden, with a dormant season between. Usually we plant a few annuals around the outside, just to add some early-summer and fall color. Right now, obviously enough, the Daisies need to be divided, rearranged, and (for some of them) transplanted to another bed. One of the next few days' projects....

As you can see, calling this a "flower bed" is a bit of a stretch. Somehow we arranged for these Painted Daisies to share a corner with random weeds, tall grass, and milkweed. The door into the garage opens, by the way, but you can't get in or out through here because the way's blocked by old appliances. We occasionally decide to let the wind blow through, and in winter we run a power cable out to the backyard birdbath's heater.

This is, obviously, not a flower bed, but it's too big a plant to ignore on this tour of our yard. I told you this bush's story a few days back .

An actual flower bed this time, but a small one.... We call this one "The Rose Garden," which is pretty much a deliberate joke. It does grow roses--there are four rose bushes in the little circle--but only one of the bushes is consistently pretty. I talk about doing some serious work on this bed from time to time, but never get around to it. The pole supports the red & white birdhouse the swallow was inspecting a few days back. There are a couple yellow tulips, too, though they didn't work out well this spring. This flower bed used to feature a nice chrysanthemum, from my mother's funeral, but it didn't make it through one of our winters. Since the mum was one of the original plantings, this bed dates from 2003. The annuals change radically from year to year, and are usually the bed's best feature.

Actually looks like a rose garden these days. Who'da thought?

When I bought this house, the one landscape improvement I was certain I'd make was a row of daylilies along the driveway. Never regretted planting these; they're reliable, low-maintenance, and pretty. In a few weeks this row will be just glorious. There's another daylily bed in the yard. And there's another flower bed directly adjacent to this one; you'll see that next. (It actually has flowers.)

Since we've got a half-dozen or so varieties in our daylily garden, there's no one time when all the plants are flowering. These particular plants were actually at their best a week or so ago. But they're still quite fine. You can also see the last blooms on one of the regular lilies and some of the now-transplanted shasta daisies in the adjacent flower bed. And remnants of the yuccas, and of the red hot pokers, which managed nearly to complete their cycle while we were in Saint Ignace.