Time in the garden in is time well spent. . . a garden tour.

For my Sunday play day, I decided time in my garden was the way to go.  I really wanted to be crafty, but my garden was in desperate need of love and it was a beautiful day, so I spent the whole day outside.  I am paying dearly for it today as I think I used muscles that have never been used before, but it was well worth it. I managed to get all of my beds weeded and about half of them mulched.  It would have been easier to mulch a few weeks ago before everything was sprouted.  My whole front bed is all hostas, hydrangeas, and coral bells.  The hostas are getting so think I had to dig a few up and split them.  I still need to get to the garden store to get plants for my washtub and pail.  I am thinking of going with mostly pink bedding plants in them this year. The other front bed is filling up nicely with more hydrangeas, miniature hostas, and Solomon's Seal. My little side bed is looking a little bare.  You can't see it, but there is a new small hydrangea planted there to the right of the large one on the left.  I have been saving the open space for planting another hydrangea this year to mark mine and David's 10th anniversary.  Almost every single hydrangea I have has been planted for one of our anniversaries or to mark some other special occasion. On the other front corner I have peonies and siberian iris coming in.  The peony on the left is from my grandmother's garden.  She passed away before I was born.  About 12 years ago the area where my grandmother lived flooded and the homes were condemned.  My mom got permission from the city to go on the property and dig up some of her mother's plants that were still there.  My mom, aunt, sister, and I all now have her peonies growing in our gardens.  I will have to share a photo of it in bloom.  It is absolutely beautiful.  The neat thing is that none of got the same variety, they are each different and very lovely. The curved area just beyond the bird bath is my trouble spot.  I had the bright idea a few years ago to plant an ornamental grass to hide the gas meter.  It went crazy and I have been pulling that stuff ever since!  The area near the sidewalk was hit particularly hard with it.  I have been battling wild violets in that spot forever also.  I decided to just start from scratch there so I dug up everything that I wanted to salvage and sprayed weed killer all over the rest.  I am going to dig it out a bit and then fill it with a low ground cover, maybe more Creeping Jenny (the yellow ground cover just beyond this patch). Here is another problem child, my honeysuckle.  It is almost 10 years old.  We planted it on our first anniversary and was able to dig it up and move it when we bought our current (and forever) house.  That thing has a trunk as big around as a half dollar!  I cut it back drastically last year after it got so high it started growing into the overhanging Red Bud tree.  You can see that it rewarding me by growing like crazy.  Just think, if it is this big in April. . .  so the big problem with it is that my metal arbor under it is rusting badly.  With every big windy day I am sure it is a gonner.  If and when it gives out, I am going to have a mess to contend with. Right now, I think the most breath taking thing in the garden is this tree, it is a Kwanzi Cherry.  It is so packed full of blooms that it looks like a bing pink pom pom in the back yard.  We planted it 5 years ago in honor or mine and Emma's birthdays.  It never fails to come into full bloom the week of our birthdays.  It is like a gift. Ahhh, the aforementioned honeysuckle.  It sure is pretty and oh how the hummingbirds love it! I call these Virginia's Irises because we inherited them with the house.  The previous owner (who lived here 30+ years is named Virginia) had a huge bed of these.  If you remember from a previous post about my garden, you will remember that I thought the bed of these needed thinned and moved from behind the garage so I dug them up and planted, and planted, and planted more.  They rewarded me greatly until every single bed was over run with iris.  I feel bad pulling up plants and throwing them out, but finally I did, I had to.  Three trash cans and a wheel barrow later, I had removed the iris with the exception of a few clusters of them.  I clearly did not get them all from the areas I didn't want them since I had them popping up in every bed.  They are very persistent! Okay, and finally, the dogwoods.  Spring just isn't spring until the dogwood trees in our front yard bloom.  This year they were a little light on the blooms, I am thinking one of those late cold spells got to them, but still, the blooms that came are so pretty and smell so good!