There is great satisfaction and relief in rather hands-off gardening during a busy season of life. Not that I don't love gardening, but when your time is restricted, my to-do list oriented personality gets stressed.
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| These lovely white violets popped up in my shade garden |
Having perennials that just faithfully show up looking beautiful, and letting groundcovers take over to cut down on weeding, and leaving dead leaves/stems/debris in place longer (or permanently in less visible places) to avoid disturbing hatching bug friends AND recognizing many "weeds" as beneficial natives and letting them go makes for a significantly less amount of work!
Granted, it does make the beds look "messier" by many standards, but I'm hoping the neighbors forgive me when the flowers come into bloom....and come into bloom this year they did!
I don't remember ever having a year where the lilies were so spectacular!
Paired up with the multi-colored nigella and this new pink little foxglovey friend it was just a lovely show!
I found said friend (it's penstemon x mexicali - beard-tongue "Red Rocks") at a nursery in the natives section; skeptical, I did a very brief Google search and seeing that beardtongue foxglove are native, I did a "well good enough" on it being a cultivar. 🙈
Weirdly my daisy greens randomly sprouted up, dying off at the bottom, but then haven't bloomed...maybe in fall...? My hydrangea never bloomed either! Granted it was a very weird spring. Little rain and we entered summer in a drought, but with delightfully abnormally cool weather. Then the rain hit in droves and the heat soon followed. Plants and bugs and all the rest of us aren't quite sure what to do.
The tulip border performed nicely with the variety of grape hyacinth and daffodils soon followed by the few tulips that still come up...
One thing that was decidedly not hands-off, keep it natural, let it go were the deck pots! For the first time since before the pandemic when I showed up to the nurseries in May to find them cleaned out, so just planted some random native "weeds" and said oh well for this year...(and then I had babies, so yeah, no) I got annuals and filled them up!And was reminded a big reason why I'd stopped - gracious it costs a fortune! But ooooh so pretty.
My Dad came into town the first weekend of May and we made it just lovely...
I did leave some fleabane and plant some salvia, canna bulbs and black-eyed susans along with zennia seeds to help supplement the annuals. Everything is growing wonderfully and they've just gotten fuller and brighter and lovelier all the time...
And now mid-summer (whoops, I'm ahead of my spring theme 😜) they are glorious-er and glorious-er (yup, it's totally a word). I comment on them almost every time I look outside. Just so much happiness in bright flowers!
And one super fun pop of color are these yellow Kalanchoe that a former coworker brought me. I have several other colors all of which rarely bloom anymore and are tiny and leggy. I decided they're probably reaching for sun and what would happen if I took it outside....hmmm. Well it thrives! And when the blooms die off and you deadhead it, they come right back within a week instead of months between blooms indoors! It's the cheeriest pop of color out there!
One spring disappointment was confirming that the photinia is really not coming back. So very sad. It's a gorgeous bush that just bit the dust randomly last year, then made signs of possibly new life, buuuut not so much. No new growth this year shows it's really gone gone.
But! One exciting addition was baby nuthatches in our birdhouse!!!
One of the best signs of spring!
