Gardening Before and After

On the weekend we bought this at the garden store. 

When we got it home, I had second thoughts about my ability to get all this planted, because in order to get it planted, I had to pull out gobs of weeds.

Three years ago, the top of the “hillside” looked like this:

Last week, it looked like this.  The effects of a very warm spring, I guess.  I refuse to attribute this to the laziness of the gardener.

After working all afternoon in the blazing sun (sweating but not complaining), I had it looking like this. 

 

I planted more phlox, which has been known to grow in other areas of this hillside.  I’m in favor of planting things which will grow.  It’s hard to plant things here because the soil is so poor, and the land slopes.   I pound the shovel in, and likely as not I hit a rock.  There are also all those weeds, and the front and back door of the resident Angry Chipmunk and Snake to contend with.  So perennials are best in this area.  It's surgical strike gardening in this spot.

The forlorn-looking red flowers on the lower right came home without a label, but I think they are called rudbeckia.  Black-eyed susans?  These are not black-eyed.  As a science experiment, I planted one here in the part-shade, and another in full sun.  

These yellow mystery flowers come back year after year.  I bought the bulbs at a preschool fundraiser.  We've been done with preschool for a long time, but the flowers live on! 

I also put in these impatiens, surrounding my husband’s hydrangea stick of blessed memory.  In a fit of unjustified hopefulness, I planted the hydrangea stick deeper, rather than just pull it out.  The tall green stick serves as a marker.  We were going to get an actual hydrangea bush with actual leaves on it, but we had a big argument at the garden store about it, reached an impasse, and decided to wait another year.

Now all we need is some rain.  

What's growing in your garden these days?