Last year, I posted about my gardening efforts often. Â This year I haven’t found the time. Â I’ve gardened, though, and I’ve taken pictures. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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.

You can see where I dug out the newest part. Â Just look at all that rocky red clay! Â I have so much to work with! Â 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. Â 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.



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

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

Next the azaleas (I have three so far):

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


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):



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

Meanwhile, on the other side, this is some of what was starting to happen in the “hot” garden. Â 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:

Candytuft:


Gazanias:


And when the roses start blooming over there, WOW.

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



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

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!

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




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



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








The real gardeners among you will surely have noticed the crowding and lack of proper spacing above. Â The plan is for a lot of transplanting to take place this fall. Â I’m going to dig out a couple more rows in front and then separate and rearrange almost everything. Â 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. Â I’ll come back next year and let you know how it all worked out. Â For now, here’s the transition from beginning to middle to end of six months in the garden:


