Cleaning Up and Expanding

Small stints of gardening continue as I spend about 20-30 minutes outside in two or three intervals during the day. I’m making an art of working in short timespans. I work until my body gets achy and says it’s had enough, then go inside and work on another project.

You can still see remnants of the gray driveway stone
that got plowed into the driveway this winter.

I began edging the main lily garden last Friday and it continued through the weekend. This section is on the north side of the driveway and is lower than the house. The ground here is harder. I want a better definition to the garden and perhaps create a shape. It’s not working out as I would like and it looks messy … but it will eventually come together.

This is the tiered lily section near the garage on the north side.
The green is the hyacinths.

I also started an area begun last summer -- better clearing of what I’m calling the coneflower bed. (I eventually want to come up with nicer individual names for all my little gardens.) The Echinacea plants were discovered last summer in front of a few big rocks that were placed when building up the land to put the house back in 2003. The slope changed a bit with the addition of the garage last summer and later in season, another lily garden was planted in two tiers on the side of the walkway going down towards the edge of the property. I had also extended the coneflower bed to the east in front of a couple more rocks and planted rudbeckia. Now it’s time to pretty it up more.

This oldest section in front of the rocks, the coneflower bed,
has now become the lower tier. I'm still trying to remove grass.

Now, there is still an older section of ground between the lilies and the coneflowers, and it’s this section I’m trying to clean up and the grass clumps here are horribly tough. It’s not even nice grass! I worked it a little last summer when I discovered the Echinacea, but gave up. I removed a lot of the briars (blackberries). There is also one tulip leaf and a couple inches away, a daffodil (neither bloomed last spring nor this). 

I love rocks and it is my intention to have the flowers and rocks accentuate each other. At this point, I’m wondering if I’m going to have to ask for help. Today I’ll take another go at it.

This last photo is looking down from the top tier
(the walkway along side of the garage). 

This last photo is looking down from the top tier (the walkway along side of the garage). 

It's all guesswork as to the design. I'm just trying to make everything look better.

With another year of water issues (between the drought and the old dilapidated water system in the district), I'm not sure how far I can take this. All I know is that flowers make me happy and are one way to pretty my yard and home.

Hopefully the rain barrels will help again. This year I may attempt pumping water from the brook as long as it doesn't dry up.