Plants for Butterfly Garden

I went to Logan's last weekend and bought several plants for the butterfly garden. So far it has a blue Butterfly bush, a yellow/orange Lantana, red gaillardia, and yellow coreopsis.

They're small plants now, and they need a little extra topsoil and some mulch or other soil conditioner.

The second photo has a monarch on the butterfly bush in the back, hard to see. It's just wonderful to see the bumble bees and butterflies all over the plants that have been there only a few days.

The new garden has dirt!

I know I sound abnormally excited about dirt, but you can't plant without it, well, not without a pond. I put down 6 bags of top soil, 5 large bags of Black Kow, and another 6 bags of top soil. My back ached before I started so it's pretty sore now. I raked the rich brown over, but didn't mix it well. It's glorious stuff. Anything would grow in it.

My dear neighbor Ann is digging up some extra plants from her flower garden for me. She has a lot of what I was planning to plant, and more lillies than any normal person could handle. Dan loves lillies, and we're making room for some and will probably move them to other gardens later.

It's so nice to have a little strip of dirt in the yard dedicated just to flowers. The vegetable garden is going strong. The bell peppers are weak but sweet and jalapenos are doing beautifully! A cucumber that was scrawny before Hannah blew through is now the size of my forearm! The zuchini's aren't doing as strongly as I thought. Two small fruit started to rot due to too much moisture. I should have mulched as my friend Rah told me to do!

Hopefully I'll have photos of blooming flowers soon.

New Garden!

Our flower garden is well on it's way. By "garden" I really mean "a row of bricks." But we've done the hardest part. Dan got out the mattock and broke up the dirt. We trenched a space for the first row of bricks. We made sure the curves we wanted would fit, and the flat side would line up with the side of the house. Of course, we had to make adjustments....

After packing paving sand in the trench we laid the first row of bricks, and I went through and leveled each brick. We had to level each one with the brick next to it, and test each individual bricks with a 3 way level.

The next steps are quite easy in comparison. I'll slap on a few more layers of bricks, using adhesive on the top layer. I'll empty many bags of top soil and composted manure and mix them in. Finally, I'll plant some plants that'll attract flowers and butterflies.

It has been an exhausting day, but it's nice to make some serious garden progress for a change!