New Garden

Here are some more photos of the side of the backyard. There used to be several indifferent seeming irises and daffodils back here. I dug up several, and meant to replant them, but forgot. I don't know if there's too much shade, but many of them didn't bloom. So I dug them up, and it's probably too late to replant them. I hear bulbs can't stay out of the ground for too long. 

Anyway, I put cardboard and mulch down to facilitate creating a new garden scenario back here. It's not super well-planned. It's quite shady, with some late afternoon sun. I placed some yellow Indian grass; we'll see how that does. I transplanted some coral berry from the other side of the back yard (see photo below). That stuff is a great groundcover for a shady spot, and it's spread all over my woodland, so I had to dig a lot up. I tried replanting over here, but it's not looking super perky, even after the 4 days straight of rain. 

will it survive?

I also transplanted turk's cap, which grows like gangbusters, so it'll probably take over within the next two years. I also transplanted a tropical sage, which was super easy to transplant, and two yellow columbines, only one of which survived. The rain def helped there.

I bought a Mexican honeysuckle and a beauty berry. I guess I'm aiming for a garden grounded with several large shrubs, and salvia, coral berry and twist leaf yucca for ground cover. It'll probably come out fairly eclectic, but I guess that's okay. That's more or less what I did in the front yard, and I'm enjoying that a lot.

Update on Woodland Path

I started placing the flagstones in the garden yesterday, once all the rain stopped and the sun came out. Here's my progress so far - about 1/3 complete. I understand the meaning of back breaking labor.

It was so muddy still, the stones are covered in dirt. It is hard getting those stones in place, and keep them from wobbling. 

The evening was so nice, and we had extra wood from all the pruning we've done, so we built a fire in our fire pit. Here's the view back towards the house with the gorgeous sunset clouds, framed by pecan trees. 

Sunset reflections

Ode to the late afternoon sun. 

The light and shadow 

play with the colors, highlight the pinks the blues the yellows 

rising above green foliage, 

yearning for the light and heat.

The sun and the flowers 

reach for each other. 

Scarlet beardtongue

Bee foraging a mealy blue sage 

Damianita on fire in the late afternoon sun

Woodland path

You can see my woodland in the last post. I wanted to make the back of the woodland more accessible, so I can weed and check in on the plants back there, as well as create a view to the beauty berry I planted two years ago (which was invisible in the earlier blog post).
So, I hacked away at the Turks cap and widow's tears, along with pruning back some of the rough leaf dogwood suckers that have grown in (buyer beware - it's a beautiful tree, but be ready for a thicket of suckers if you're not an avid and aggressive weeder).
You can see how I created some space here:

It's hard to tell in the image below, but there's a patio there (really just a concrete foundation from an old shed). It's covered in the plants I pulled, so it looks a little weird.  

I haven't actually laid the stone in the ground yet. Still playing around with the design, plus it'll take some work to get the stone dug in. I think once it's properly laid and some of the plants grow back in, it'll have a fairly natural look. 

Finally, here's Grady, nestled in her favorite spot in the front yard, right in the sun.

Woodland garden

This is my thicket.

We're looking at roughleaf dogwood, yaupon holly, behind that is dwarf palmetto, Mexican buckeye,  and somewhere back there is an American beauty berry bush. In the foreground, we have turk's cap (just starting to get some height, but no flowers yet), widow's tears taking over, and in the very front some cedar sage and lyre leaf sage. The cedar sage is blooming beautifully, but I don't see many blooms on the lyre leaf. So... what to do with all this? I'm thinking to scale back some of this growth. I'm just going to have to start curating and pulling up some of the self-seeded plants. I'd like to create a little garden path that I can walk on to get to the back and tend to all the plants in the very back. I guess I'll use some paving stones. This might be a summer project.

Zen garden

I'm trying for a zen feeling when you enter the backyard. This is the side yard next to the carport. I have a series of vines growing along here that I planted about a year and a half ago. There's Carolina jessamine (for early flowers and evergreen screening) and passionflower vine (for excitement and sexiness), mingling with Virginia creeper (that creeped over from our neighbors' yard). The jessamine is much better established than the passionflower, though I have big hopes for the passionflower. My wonderful friend Tamara has been taking cuttings from her prolific vines. She's given me several, and so far I only managed to get one to take root. So I need to add more to balance it out.

You enter the back garden into the gate, and you'll find the fence (which is falling apart, thanks to the overexertions of the neighbor's dog) with more Virgina creeper, and some native grapevine on the right. We purchased the Buddha fountain at Miguel's imports, and I got the garden stool from neighbors across the street who were having a yard sale last weekend! To the right of the fountain is a Japanese holly fern. It requires consistent moisture - fingers crossed it likes living under my (sometimes negligent) care. I typically go for plants that are solidly drought tolerant, cause living with me, there are no guarantees. But I'm taking a risk, so hopefully it gets what it needs to flourish.

So, I'm still waiting on the fountain pump I ordered to come in the mail. My main concerns now are how often I'll have to clean the fountain, whether any birds or other wildlife will appreciate it, and how to keep the other wildlife (ie mosquitos) from breeding in it. 

Here's the full effect via video. You can see the shed is a bit unkempt. I'm debating what to do there (other than clean it up, obvi). Considering another trellis with a vine. I want something vertical that doesn't take up too much room. Then again, I've always wanted a possumhaw holly. I shouldn't... should I??? No, I really shouldn't... 

Update: Finally got the pump, so the fountain works!