The Colours of the Garden

At the birthday party, a friend noted that I tend to take closeup pictures of the plants. Yeah, that is true. The garden as a whole is still looking very sparse, because in a lot this size, you can throw a lot of plants in the ground and still have lots of room. I mean, that is why I fell in love with this house to begin with. Noel loved the inside, and I loved the double lot.

So, more garden honesty: here's the dahlia bed. Gosh, these gals are hard at work blooming for me. Most of them sprouted, though a few did not, and there was no real difference between the Home Depot specials and the expensive flower show purchases.

The Dahlias

Some of the dahlias up close:

Purplish dahlia

I can't remember which one the above is (maybe 'Lavender Perfection'), and the dogs destroyed the tags, the little bastards. But this one here is 'Minnesota':

Minnesota dahlia

In the middle of the bed I've added a delphinium (which has turned out to be the world's smallest delph so far, even given that it is only supposed to grow to 24" tall) and a couple of decorative corn. When everybody goes dormant for the winter I will tighten up the spacing on the bed and open the center for planting some taller plants, or perhaps for a shrub. From my reading I expected the dahlias to be much fuller and taller, and I think the bed looks a little too bare right now.

Here's the same bed from the entrance to the garden. The lilies are at the back, totally dominating the tiny stand of citrus trees, and the dahlias are in the middle. You can see that since we got the lawn sprinklers working, the grass has slowly been turning green again. That looks nice. The dogs prefer it, too, which I think has something to do with the feel of dry grass on their paws.

Looking into the yard

The tress are kind of silly looking at this time of year: they're young, so they mostly look like sticks with leaves, and there's not much more to them. They are, on the other hand, growing very nicely, so I'm not begrudging them their awkward stage.

Oh, and the hose is not marking out a pathway; it is running over to the blueberries, one of which is suffering from a bad case of scorch. That blueberry got uprooted by the dogs multiple times this spring, so I'm not surprised it is suffering, but I hope it can make it.

I took that picture above last weekend, and this weekend, here's how the grass was looking:

Lawn