i used to have some sort of pine tree in my front yard. it was pretty small & squat when i bought my house, but then all of a sudden it seemed to double in size. i didn’t find it attractive, and the roots were starting to interfere with my water line. so in late summer of 2010 i had my dad cut it down. and then i did nothing with the big bare spot, which is in a nice-sized rectangle (it’s bordered by the front sidewalk, the neighbor’s driveway, and the walkway to my front door).

summer of 2011 rolls around and i still have that bare spot, and there’s a stump in the middle. i think about putting in a rain garden. but i do nothing. i eventually called a nice old guy to came over and grind the stump into wood chips. then i think about reseeding the whole area. or maybe i should put in a perennial garden? it’s south-facing with lots of summer sun. but still, i do nothing, except for cover the entire rectangle in landscape fabric at the end of the summer and decide to wait until next spring to figure out what i’m going to do. my front yard looked so trashy… 6 months of landscape fabric that would break free from its spikes and flap wildly in the wind…

spring of 2012 arrives and i realize i really can’t put this off anymore. so i pull up the landscape fabric during one of the unseasonably warm weeks in march, and then i do nothing. finally, in june i pull the weeds that have come up, and decide that yes, this spot will be a perennial garden. my friend jean dropped off some plants. the local nursery has their 50% off sale (because summer has already been here for 2 months) and i stocked up. and last weekend i finally redeemed the gift certificate for a nursery a friend gave me last year. here’s what i’ve planted:

dwarf coneflower echinacea ‘avalanche’

yarrow achilleea ‘saucy seduction’

black-eyed susan rudbeckia hirta

blazing star liatris spicata

butterfly flower asclepias tuderosa

stonecrop sedum ‘dazzleberry’

pincushion flower scabiosa caucasica

there are some empty spots. i’ll worry about them later. also, i have a pile of cedar edging in the backyard. i bought it 4 weeks ago. i intend to put it in this weekend. but knowing how i tend to put things off for months, i’ll be really surprised if i get it put in before snow falls…

happy weekend!

this entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2012 at 5:36 am and is filed under garden!. you can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. you can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.