Growing Flowers

Its favorite things Friday!  One of my favorite is growing flowers.   I may be the only one, but I actually enjoyed the quarantine earlier this year.  Yes, I missed seeing friends, and family.  However, I loved the slower pace of life!  My husband, who has a crazy long commute, thanks to COVID, now has a commute up the stairs.    It’s wonderful to have him home more!  And he’s so thankful to not have the long daily drive.  Like so many, we used our extra down time to tackle home projects.

 

Spring Clean-Up

We spent a lot time of doing outdoor spring clean-up like never before.  Cutting down dying trees.  Burning the new cut trees,  old wood piles and  leaves.  Things that have needed done, but we didn’t have time to get to before.  I even improved my log splitting skills!  Every successful split made me so proud!  I love cleaning and organizing, so I thoroughly enjoyed this!  As spring went on the flowers in my perennial flower beds started sprouting up, that’s always so exciting!   We  have flower beds bordering our house, and this year I thought it would be great to add a bed to our backyard that we could see from the kitchen.

 

Planning

It’s been years since I planned a flower bed!  Years ago, when life wasn’t quite so busy, we started numerous plants from seed.  I’d pour through the Bluestone Perennial catalog, plot out flower beds and order the seeds to start all the gorgeous flowers.  Starting from seeds saves so much money and you get an abundance of plants!

 

This spring it was too late to start plants from seed.  However, it wasn’t too late to transplant flowers that needed thinning from other flower beds.  I searched online for perennial garden plans that contained several of the plants we had.  Pinterest is a great source for this, as well as the Better Homes and Gardens.  In the end, I drew up my own plans loosely combining some of the others and modifying it to fit the space we wanted to fill.

 

Prepping

We marked off the grassy area we wanted to convert to a flower bed.  Joe sprayed herbicide on the grass, and we waited.  And waited…..  Finally, the grass was yellowed and dried!  Joe tilled up the entire area.  Then improved the soil with rotted wood debris from an old wood pile, and the fertilizer from the chicken coop.

 

Planting

I was so excited I could hardly wait to get started!  We used many plants from existing flower beds, but we did purchase a few plants.  I knew I wanted 3 Russian Sage plants for the back of the garden.  The guidelines I read said start with the biggest plants first.  So I had to find some Russian Sage before I could begin.  I didn’t think this would be a hard plant to find, but apparently I was looking a little too early in the season.  Finally I  found some  in Muncie at a large road-side shop.  While there, I also purchased a few other plants that were significantly marked down.

Then the fun began!  I planted the Russian Sage, a butterfly bush, foxglove, black-eyed Susan’s, Autumn Joy sedum, butterfly weed, garden phlox.  Some other favorites I included are , Columbine, purple coneflowers, and peonies.   I had a hydrangea bush in the front of our house, that was nothing but a tiny stem.  Since we  moved it and it has grown so much!   I think I am most proud of that plant!  Hopefully next year it will bloom!

 

Enjoy a few highlights from our new garden this spring and growing flowers in others over the years.

An old one, but still one of my favorites!   Yellow swallowtail butterflies frequently visit our purple coneflowers.

 

Orange day lilies were here when we moved in years ago.

Of course we see bumble bees too.

Beautiful spring peonies!!!

Occasionally we’ll spot a few praying mantis, too.

Our front porch planter…. Amy at Stuaffer Farms is a gem!  She patiently helped me select plants to put put this together!

Yarrow and Stella D’oro

Quick cell phone pictures of several of the flowers planted in our new back yard flower bed.

I finally took my camera to the back yard flower bed.  Butterfly bush.

Yes it needs mulch!  It probably doesn’t look beautiful yet to anyone but me, but it’s growing so much!  I love the little splashes of color that it already adds to our back yard.  !   A few annuals are sprinkled in to give some color for this year.   Look at the yellow blacked eyed Susan’s.  They were tiny when I brought them home!  And the garden phlox has started blooming since I took these pictures. 🙂

I am loving the Russian Sage!

Look at this little hydrangea!  It was a tiny nub this spring when we transplanted it!

On of my favorites I made into a print years ago.

 

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