Last year, I posted about my gardening efforts often.  This year I haven’t found the time.  I’ve gardened, though, and I’ve taken pictures.  And as fall approached I thought it would be fun to show you the progress I’ve made this year.

Here’s what the area that I refer to as the “cool” garden looked like in March.  My plan, if you can call it that, is to expand this part of the garden by a couple of feet every year until our front yard is all garden and no grass.  The neighbors with their manicured shrubbery and polite rows of liriope no doubt think I’m some kind of loon, but I don’t care.

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You can see where I dug out the newest part.  Just look at all that rocky red clay!  I have so much to work with!  After I dug it up, I just started by sticking the early spring annuals (pansies and violas) in there until it was time to buy perennials.  I’ve been at this for two years now so I expected the perennials in the rest of the garden to pretty much fill all the available space.

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Within a week or two the phlox and dianthus started to pop, along with (I think) the blue lobelia:

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Here you can see the echinacea (purple coneflower) coming up, along with that purple stuff which I love but cannot remember the name of:

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Next the azaleas (I have three so far):

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The salvia is just amazing!  I have little baby ones this year that I have planted all over the place:

garden from the back

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I am a terrible gardener–I can’t remember what those blue things, which were new last year, are called–but they went crazy this year (just starting in this picture):

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In all, quite a change from the first picture above:

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Meanwhile, on the other side, this is some of what was starting to happen in the “hot” garden.  It’s constrained in size by the walkway, so I’m contemplating making another bed just across from it.

Here are lilies, a gift from the neighbors across the street, starting to come up although they don’t bloom until late summer:

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Candytuft:

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Gazanias:

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And when the roses start blooming over there, WOW.

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Here’s where things really started to fill out on the other side:

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Back on the hot side, the daisies below got WAY bigger than I thought they would:

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I cannot even remember what most of this is or whether it is perennial or annual! We will have to see what happens next year!

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The flowers I have enjoyed the most this summer are zinnias that I sowed from last year’s seed.  And when I say sowed, I mean I just kind of threw seed wherever.  I didn’t bury them or anything.  Just look what happened:

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The purple coneflowers are also spreading by seed, although none of the “babies” are blooming yet:

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A few final shots of the cool side of the garden:

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The real gardeners among you will surely have noticed the crowding and lack of proper spacing above.  The plan is for a lot of transplanting to take place this fall.  I’m going to dig out a couple more rows in front and then separate and rearrange almost everything.  I did a little of that last year and most things handled it find although they did not grow as big as they had the year before.  I’ll come back next year and let you know how it all worked out.  For now, here’s the transition from beginning to middle to end of six months in the garden:

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