Yard pics

I keep squeeing whenever online friends post garden or yard pictures. Mumsypower finally gave me a gentle tap on the head and pointed out that I could share some pics of my own yard. Hmmm... not much in bloom - seems I tend toward spring bloomers blooming plants.

Here, let me take you on a tour of my yard.

Very close to the back door for easy-picking purposes, the basil and oregano look especially happy - yay! Oops. Should have come into the kitchen and taken a picture of the oregano and chives (picked this morning) drying on lines. *headdesk*

If you looked up and to the right of the little herb garden, you'd see the island (better known as my husband's way to have less grass to mow). That zebra grass on the right end - the one that's too close to the tree now that it's gotten so big - is nearly eight feet tall. Jenthegypsy has (had?) a picture of the two of us beside it from last summer. If hers came out, that is. The one on my camera wasn't good.

Let's walk to that monster grass, okay? Turn right and see the mostly new bed around our volunteer maple tree (the thing was growing right beside the house, up against the downstairs bathroom window - husband rescued it and now, six or seven years later, it's finally stopped being completely one sided). If you look closely, you can find where I left the shovel chunked into the ground when I gave up last night. ;)

Just to the left of the last pic, this is what I'm currently working on - connecting the tree bed to the large bed in the corner (aka the briar patch).

Oh look - a helper! I missed getting a pic of the chipmunk who usually comes to visit, but the bird stood still quite nicely.

Moving left along the back fence, here's my sprawling sage plant, flanked by not-yet-blooming brown-eyed Susans on the right and my sweet Cordelia kitty's memorial weigela on the left. My rosemary bush is out of the picture, to the left of C's plant.

Still going to the left, the raspberry bushes are loaded for the first crop this year. *hopes the birds leave some for me*

And then a raft of day lilies. The very plain ones are almost over but this later blooming one demanded that I pay attention to it. You can see a bird-planted bit of grapevine that I need to go pull out on the right side...

Where'd the random grapevine come from? Concord grapes growing on the left side fence.

This is the back side of the central island. The three curved bump outs are bushes husband moved outside the island to alleviate overcrowding. Connecting them back to the island itself was what I worked on a few weeks ago - couldn't get the mower to the strip of grass between bushes and island, so I did away with it.

The island has five or six butterfly bushes. They're the coolest things! I just love seeing the butterflies (we get mostly tiger swallowtails and monarchs) flutter from one flower to another.

Lots of liriope (hey, Jenthegypsy - how do you pronounce that? is it LEER-e-ohpe, or is it like caliope?) along the side of the shed, and you can just see one of those flagstones I was digging up over the weekend.

Against the fence between the front and back yard, this used to be a shady bed till we had to cut down a couple of trees. Now my poor bleeding heart comes up and gets blasted by the afternoon sun before it ever gets a chance to bloom. I would dearly love to dig it up and transplant it, but the bed is much higher than it used to be and I cannot get down through the omnipresent tree roots to find to the main root of the plant. :(

This bed is in front of the house. Daffys and grape hyacinth are, of course, long gone, as are my Siberian iris. More brown-eyed Susans (left and right) will be full of flowers in another week or two, the lambs' ears are doing well - pleasantly fuzzy, and you can just see one of my dark huechera behind them. I don't remember what that thing in the middle is. Just planted it this morning - a coworker with a black thumb gave it to me so she wouldn't kill it. Hope it keeps blooming - I really like the color of the flowers.

>^..^<