Garden progress

In an effort to avoid sharing our progress on the nursery so that my parents can be surprised when they visit in a couple of weeks, I thought I'd catch you up on the state of the yard, since it's been a few months since we last checked in.

Some flowers of what I can only assume are from the "wild flower mix" are blooming:

One of our fancy red tiger lilies made an appearance. The flowers closed up and looked dried up and dead each night and then came back each morning. The leaves came up on the other side of the walkway but never sprouted any flowers.

Our Asian lilies were big and dramatic:

We actually had a surprisingly robust strawberry crop, considering this was the plant from last year. We put the planter in the breezeway and largely forgot to water it all winter, and yet it came back happy. The chives in the same planter came back too. This, basil ,and parsley (and the thyme and peppermint that we have in the ground), are our only homegrown items this summer. We couldn't be bothered with the ones that take more effort like tomatoes or cucumbers.

After none of the bare root black-eyed Susans we planted last year came up (I really have bad luck with bare root plants), I got impatient and bought some full-grown ones at Home Depot. Hopefully they come back up next year. This is my second attempt at buying full-grown black-eyed Susans. To be fair, the ones that I planted a few years ago accidentally got gobbled up by the rototiller when we were ripping up liriope, so I can't really blame them.

We planted a small plant that we bought at a county fair, called Strawberry Seduction Yarrow. It turns various shades of red and yellow:

Our butterfly bushes, while still puny compared to some, are growing a lot more than they used to.

 And they're living up to their name:

One hydrangea plant is thriving (relatively) and the other right next to it, not so much:

But we got enough from the one plant to convince me that it was ok to cut some off for our table (usually I hate to take flowers off the plant, because I want to continue to enjoy them outside in the yard where they won't die as quickly):

And my clematis finally made it's way up to the top of our lamp post! I've been trying for years to get a climbing plant to get there to no avail...until now!

Largely, this summer the garden has cared for itself. I'm seeing far less liriope than previous years, meaning that we finally made progress in ridding our garden of the horrible grass infestation. Plants are coming back - and coming back happier than in previous years. The grass in the front yard stopped looking stellar once the weather turned hot and dry. The back is doing pretty well still. This has led us to conclude that we might need to stop using a shade/sun mix in the front and switch to full sun. I always consider our light "dappled" but the grass has other ideas. So this fall when we do our annual compost spreading/overseeding (by "we" I mean D, since being so pregnant by then buys me a free pass), we'll try using a different seed blend.

But lest you think we're not continuing to work hard at keeping things looking nice, take a look at what we set out for pickup not too long ago:

So yes, even with all the nursery decorating, we haven't forgotten about our curb appeal.