Garden Mystery Solved

We moved into our house on August 1 a few years ago. Every day, every week I wandered around to see what we had in the garden, what had come with the house. I freed two big azaleas that had been overrun with a wild rose. I cut down vines that were choking the trees. The next spring brought daffodils, peonies, flowering quince, crocuses. Bit by bit, I'm working at making it mine. I ripped out a pachysandra bed where I wanted a kitchen garden. We’ve moved shrubs here and there. I love working with the existing "furniture" but moving it to better please me. I can't imagine having ripped out the mature rhodys, the huge and shapely burning bush, the whimsical persian lilac standard.

The house is on a hill, and the bed below the house and above the flagstone patio had been completely overrun with wild tawny daylilies, a nice small leafed hosta, and the insufferable bishop's week. Last year, I ripped out about 25% along the bottom - discarding the weeds, and repurposing the hosta (everywhere) and the daylilies (across the street on town property in my personal neighborhood beautification project). This year, I've tackled the next 25% - I'm working my way up the hill. And it's finally starting to look like something!

The pictures are of those new perennial beds on the hill. The first shows the alliums I planted last fall - and didn't even remember that I'd done so until they were up sort of enough to identify them. The second is a fancy peach colored iris that my brother-in-law gave me last spring. It's surrounded by a crane's bill geranium, some alchemilla, and some nepeta that isn't blooming yet.

Bit by bit, we push back at the entropy.