Some changes....

Some house changes, some garden changes. First the house changes. To quote Roseann Rosannadanna "you know it is always somethin..." Today a leak, more on that another time.




Some encouraging garden changes. I bought a sight unseen pink daylily last week. Just the description of a pink day lily was enough to sucker me in. Always the dreamer and bait nibbler I bought a pink daylily for four bucks at the garden center. It took three weeks, but today it bloomed! I'm good with it. I think it is pretty cool. Soon it should have a giant red one blooming next to it, so they might show each other up very nicely. Here are photos of my new additon.

That was a worthy gamble. I am very pleased with this purchase! The coneflower opened yesterday and it has beautiful color and tons of flowers. There must be twenty blooms on there! Last year we planted three varieties of coneflower: white, white double and pink. All that has returned is pink. Too bad the others were pretty cool. You just never know which plant is going to thrive and which is going to quit. Some Campanulas, tall bluebell ones, started blooming this week too, and they bring great color to the garden beds. Too bad the rest of the daylilies aren't blooming at the same time. The species orange are blooming on one plant, and the red small short ones are blooming on another plant, but the majority of daylilies are not blooming yet. The Stella D'Oros are blooming everywhere. You can't beat them for color! The perennials are really leading the pack. The annuals are hurting for certain. The red Salvia are really wasting away, the dahlias haven't bloomed yet, and the portulacas are VERY happy. Its the first time I have used those in plantings and they are perfect for the hot dry sandy soil here. The unrelenting wind does nothing to effect them...as I said perfect for this place.




We also trimmed some bushes along the porch yesterday. It was feeling too closed in and we couldn't see the water from the table. It was time for a trim, actually it was time for a shaping. These hews are just terrible. Old, dirty, diseased, and overgrown, they needed to be properly pruned, thinned out, and trimmed in such a way as to encourage growth and to allow the center to fill in. I hope it is not too late to save them, so they are on evaluation. The poor Euonomous is looking scalped, it too has no center because of the way it had been improperly trimmed and pruned. Hopefully it will enthusiastically grow a new center. The good news of this whole operation is that now we can see the water while sitting on the porch, and we can feel the breeze and watch the hummingbirds battle.