Working in the garden

It's 93 degrees out and sunny today, although the Weather Channel is saying that winter weather will be visiting the Northeast this week. I knew Texas would be warm, but I never imagined summer would bleed into fall as much as it does here.
I wanted to go ahead and start planting some of my plants today. I'll have to continue into next weekend, though, because I have way more plants than I should have bought. In fact, I only managed to put two plants in the ground today - my two gray globe mallows. I almost feel like it's still too hot to plant, but I know cooler weather is around the corner - somewhere. I think I might have gotten a bit of a sunburn.

baby gray globe mallow in front of a flame acanthus

Grady helps me out in the yard

I did manage to repot some of my indoor plants and put a new mint plant in a pot. I really want to straighten out the underdeveloped bed in the front yard - it's really just a mishmash of random plants, and I'd like to get in there and get some kind of order and cohesion going. I find it hard to figure out how to lay out that side of the garden. I xeriscaped the side of the yard between the driveway and sidewalk, but the other side of the yard is still grass with a few plantings surrounded by wood mulch. I'm wondering if I should use decomposed granite on the other side as well, to balance things out. 

I love that red oak - I planted it about a year and a half ago (?) and I received it for free through the Neighborwoods program with Tree Folks. One day they stuck some flags in my yard and told me I could get a free tree and plant it where the flags were. What a brilliant idea! I noticed a lot of new trees being planted in my neighborhood shortly thereafter. Too bad my neighbors didn't opt for a tree after their old one was cut down - we could use the shade since they are to the west of us. Far as I can tell, though, they have no plans to plant any other trees over there, so I have to do my part in my garden. 

Well, I have quite the list to get to next week - plant indian grass, barbados cherry, Mexican buckeye, two coral berries, big muhly, yellow bells (I still don't know where I'm gonna put that one). I have a kidneywood tree as well, but I think I might wait another couple of weeks before putting it in the ground.