Looking shady

We had an opportunity in spring 2025 to get some free plants preselected for a shade garden. And we had plenty of shade now on the side of our addition. We jumped at the chance and started preparing the plot, using old railroad ties to map out the space. We removed the grass and filled it with compost and mulch.

Here's where the space is in our yard, for context:

The plants arrived in April, which apparently was the "right" time to get them in the ground, so we got to work right away:

We received a bunch of tiny plugs, each well labeled. 

The plants we received (from left to right) were: blue wood sedge, golden ragwort, alumroot, wild geranium, goat's beard, blue-stemmed goldenrod, and cardinal flower.

It even came with a planner that suggested exactly how to lay out the garden based on a few common shapes (rectangle border, circle, etc.), so planting was surprisingly simple. Our trapezoid most closely resembled this long rectangle, so that's what we used as our guide:

They looked so tiny!

Here is the garden again that June, three months later, with everything a little bigger:

By August, the time of year when we usually kill all our plants due to our inability to water them, the garden was still looking happy and healthy. We even had some cardinal flowers!

And then last fall, they still were holding on well into November:

Let's fast forward to 2026. Here is early June, with the golden ragwort in bloom:

And now it's July and we're headed back to cardinal flowers! Here's to keeping our garden alive!

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!

Giant Willow

I'm so excited to come inside and tell you some big plans we have for the house, but I feel like I can't leave the yard yet until I document a few more details there. It has been pretty uninspiring, but bear with me. So in on our back rock garden, things have progressed beautifully  this year. All the things planted there appear to be happy and growing. After the landscaping crew installed all of the things in the linked post, we made a few changes, adding some cardinal flowers and, most notably, planting a fast-growing willow hybrid in place of one of the red chokeberries, to provide some privacy from the parking lot in the back:

They were not kidding when they said it was fast growing...here is a picture of it in March 2022, right when we planted it:

Here it is again in June 2022, three months later:

Fast forward to August of this year, and it has long surpassed the shed height and is giving the trees a run for their money:

I feel like if we watch this tree for a few hours, we would *see* it growing...

I mentioned the cardinal flowers, so I can't get away without showing a picture of them--here they are with the rest of corner, looking all pink and pretty:

And a close-up, because they are so lovely. More important, the pollinating bugs love to hang out on them:

A short distance from the rain garden, next to the shed, another garden is blooming. First--a blast from the past, when D. put pavers around the edge of the shed to give it a bit more protection from splashing mud and just to make it look nice (you can see this picture is from before we had the rock garden):

Then this spring, after we'd taken down the vegetable garden and returned it to grass, oldest kid asked "can I have a garden?" So we made her a little one, cautioning her not to bother with veggies because, as we'd all learned, lots of animals will eat them unless they're well protected. So she opted for flowers. D dug up a portion of the grass next to the shed ramp, put in some brick edging, and added some soil. The rest was all child labor. Lots of annuals and a few perennials planted, and even regular watering:

It started filling in and looking great:

Here it is in early fall, with some very happy zinnias and a new iron border as well to help frame it. We definitely plan to pair it with another small plot on the other side next spring:

We still have a quick fall plant recap to go and then we move indoors for a while!

The path less traveled

This update is a bit more of a slow burn - no big reveal or anything. When we had the patio redone last spring they redid the walkway that leads from our driveway to our backyard (of COURSE I forgot to get a before picture - imagine uneven and cracked pavers, many partially sunken under the ground, not as evenly spaced and many no longer close to square). It looked great, but what little greenery we had been able to grow in this area fully shaded by the garage and surrounding trees was just dirt by the time they were done (this was also the path they used to bring all their heavy machinery into the backyard, before they re-laid the path). The company that did the patio put down grass seed (you can just barely see it in the photo) but we were pretty convinced that wouldn't work. And with every rain, we could see the topsoil washing away.

We decided to take a different approach and try moss! We weren't optimistic, since we had moss on our stone wall next to his bare patch of dirt that never spread to it, so presumably the conditions weren't right. But moss does love shade and low-traffic areas, so it seemed the perfect place.

We showered common spaces in the neighborhood, asked neighbors, and ended up getting a few good bucketfuls to lay in place:

You can see in this picture how dramatic and quick the process was - just unfold and lay the moss and suddenly, it looks beautiful! Right alongside bare dirt:

We weren't sure if it would take hold, but the immediate effect was beautiful! We kept it watered and made sure to stay on the stones when walking into the backyard. At a minimum, it stopped the topsoil run-off right away.

Checking back over the spring and summer, we saw that some of the moss remained and other greenery had actually started to grow  in as well. Some of it is clearly weeds and not grass, but we aren't picky. Anything with roots to hold the ground in place and create a green space was fine with us.

And finally, here we are this fall - it looks like weeds overtook the moss, which is only just barely there. But I guess in the end, we managed to keep the dirt in place long enough for our natural landscaping (weeds, because we've given up) took over. I wish we could have maintained the soft, mossy look. But I'll take this too, I suppose.  

The Underground part 2

Just when you thought it was safe to dig in your yard...The cloth EMERGES from underground.....

OK, so I'm trying to channel a spooky Halloween vibe here, but the point is that after digging up landscape cloth from a huge chunk of our yard close to the shed last fall and this spring, we found another giant swath of it. Yet again, we started with "hm....the grass really isn't growing very well here. Time to turn over the soil and try again." It's fall, which is a good time to get grass to grow. Except what was supposed to be a "15-minute project while the kids watch cartoons" for a weekend morning turned into this:

So much cloth. It was everywhere, about 2 inches underground, and so hard to dig up (I say this like I was helping but I think I was still in pjs with a cup of tea at about this time).

Here's the overhead view of how much lawn (well, weeds) had to get dug up--how much soil had to be turned over just to get rid of the landscaping cloth. Now it is seeded and covered in fertilizer and hopefully will grow back thicker and happier now that the roots can extend deeper into the ground.

We are still totally confused what the previous owners were thinking. And every time we think we find it all, the landscaping cloth comes lurking back...

Bunnies!

With a title like that, this post could really go in a couple different directions. So I'll warn you now, rather than get your hopes up, that this post is not about how adorable these fluffy little angels are. Oh no. These evil jerks, after being allowed to nibble clover in our "pollinator lawn," have gone full Peter Rabbit and are destroying my garden and even some tree saplings. This family is out to get us and clearly does not feel threatened by our sad attempts to chase them away. Let's look at some of the damage and how we are (ineffectively) combating it.

This year's garden started out well in the spring:

We got some beautiful Royal Purple radishes that I will most definitely plant again. It was a bumper crop, coming up just as the snap peas were starting to flower.

And then, suddenly, we started noticing the tops of some radishes getting chewed. Which was weird because we have a fence. Then the radishes themselves. And then, horror of horrors, the bottoms of some of our snap pea plants got snipped right at the base! We were puzzled until one day when I stepped outside and saw the cutest baby bunny. IN OUR GARDEN. It was small enough to hop through our fence (as I watched when it saw me) and had been feasting in there on our greens!

We cleared the dead snap peas and I planted some pumpkins in their place (the dark circle at the front of the garden). After a trip to Home Depot, we were ready to turn our garden into Fort Knox for bunnies. No one gets in here. 

Or so we thought. Until the following week when we saw a very tiny bunny INSIDE the wire-coated garden. And almost all our snap peas murdered. (You can't really see it in this picture, but almost everything tall in this picture is actually no longer attached to their roots.)

We have no idea if someone left the door open the tiniest bit or if the bunny was able to slip under or between wires. However it got in, the bunny was so scared that it had a lot of trouble escaping as I approached, and I did have a pang of sympathy watching it panic as I tried to flush it from the garden. I'm not actually heartless. But all those snap peas ruined! 

Another victim, beginning last year, seems to be our Black-eyed Susans, which have stopped coming up in our front garden and seem to keep being snipped. We thought it was a deer but I've since become convinced that this is also the fault of bunnies:

The few that are coming up are buried in other plants, so our thinking is that those are more protected from bunny predators:

And the latest victim, from earlier this week, of this willow oak that we planted in April. It went from being a stick to a hearty, leafy little tree. We were excited that it was thriving and that we might end up, one day, with a giant oak tree in the middle of our yard. Here it is in April, a little twig:

And in July, just a few mornings ago, when I walked out of my house, I saw it leaning on the tomato cage we'd installed around it to discourage animals (and make it easier not to mow over). Here it is, propped on the cage. See how happy it was? As if to rub salt in the wound, the bunny who almost certainly committed the crime was right there nibbling, inches away. So if nothing else, it proved that the bunnies are to blame.

And despite all this, we can't resist follow the ins and outs of the bunny family, which numbers at least four members, but likely more, including an adorable baby (probably a second litter? since the one that got into our garden over a month ago is probably bigger by now)

One of the adults, up close:

This is not our house but it is nearby and where I managed to grab a picture of baby bun:

So what do we do? Generally I'm fine with yard wildlife but they really do seem to be decimating everything we plant. A quick search online suggests things like bone meal and black pepper. I'm curious if anyone has experience with something that works.