Autumn Petals

When we bought our house in--oh wow this is becoming the far distant past--2009, the gardens were all very spring-bloom heavy. We had mostly azaleas, rhododendrons, and camellias. Oh and LOTS of "decorative liriope grass, of course." Over the years as we've replaced some dying plants and reshaped our flower beds, we've made a point of attemping to plant native pollinators and a three-season garden with lots of food for bees and bugs that make it to fall. When the azaleas, camellias, and our newly planted irises died, the coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, cardinal flowers, milkweed, and bee balm came out. We had made it through summer!

But fall still left a lot to be desired. We had some beautiful volunteer goldenrod that I've cultivated (cultivated as in "didn't cut down"). The bees were clearly happy about that.

Then this spring, in planning for fall, we bought a few varieties of aster that seem to be pretty happy so far! The hot pink ones in front are "vibrant dome" aster. The light purple ones behind are "October skies" aster. In the background, you can also see some unevenly growing mums (they never seem to take off--I think it's too shady there for them). It's so nice to have some color in our fall garden, finally.

It wouldn't be a fall post if we didn't take a quick tour of some of our fall foliage, specifically with our newer trees. After bunnies nibbled a willow oak we'd planted in this very spot in the front yard two years ago, last year (May 2022), I planted this northern red oak, which was already starting out much bigger than our free 6'' willow oak. Based on the description here, it sounded hearty with good odds of survival (I feel like our tree survival rate is about 50%). It was a little floppy so you can see here that a bamboo stake is holding it up--the actual trunk is still just a skinny stick. But even young, this tree seems to be willing to put on a fall show. Here's the tree in early October:

And here it is two days ago. It's like someone flipped a switch and the tree decided it was officially time.

It would be so great to get a big shady oak tree in the front yard, if this fellow survives. It claims to be fast-growing, but I'm not convinced yet. Or at least it doesn't compare to the willow I wrote about in my last post.

Finally, we have an October Glory maple in our back yard, a replacement for the one that the deer got to in 2018. Planted in 2021 at the same time as the sycamore, dogwoods, and the willow, it seems to be doing ok so far, moving from this:

To this:

We were a little worried about its health for a few reasons. First, deer seemed to be nibbling all its lower branches (but, fortunately, aren't rutting its trunk, which we wrapped in chickenwire). Second, this spring we dug it up from its original location and relocated it about a dozen feet away. That always stresses a tree out. This picture, taken in June, shows where the tree is now, closer to the back of our lot. It used to be between the sad magnolia and the house.

Why did we relocated our maple? Well, here's the big news for those that made it to the bottom of the post. We're in the planning stages for the biggest project we've yet taken on: a new addition that will expand the house into the back yard! Now that I've more or less caught you up on the state of the yard, I'll write a series of posts bringing you up-to-date on a completely new addition that will expand our footprint all the way to the magnolia. We're so excited!