Freecycle bounty

I spent my weekend planting clippings....lots and lots of clippings! There was a girl that posted on our local freecycle that she had some plants to get rid of so I emailed her and went to her house on Saturday. She had this great yard - a lot of which she landscaped with clippings - and took me around with her snips in hand and went crazy. I got a BUNCH of stuff including:
3 crape myrtles (dark pink)
1 banana tree
a bunch of elephant ears
2 oleander
about 4 or 5 angel trumpets
begonias
about 8 iris'
indigo, mexican heather, and I don't even know what else...
Right now they mostly look like wilted sticks in the ground, but I am hopeful that at least some will take. I used the elephant ears and banana in corners of the fence...the biggest angel trumpet in the front yard, a crape myrtle is on the side of my driveway and the others are either in the bed or scattered in the backyard...Anyway - keep your fingers crossed!

Fall is coming...

Hard to believe the summer is nearly over. But with CJ starting kindergarten, a new soccer season underway, and the sunflowers nearly all picked over from the birds.... I guess that's something I have to accept. The sunflowers *were* quite amazing... well over the fence line. Think I'll have to move their location next spring, though. I think the neighbors got the best show. I haven't had the heart to pull them up yet, though. There's been so many little birds making the seed heads nod everyday. But I guess it's about time.

With the cooler evenings, the angel trumpet is starting to put on some buds. I'm happy. I was beginning to worry that I wouldn't see any this year. But the plant itself is getting quite big, all the way to the top of the fence. Maybe in a week or two I'll see the flowers.


I've been working on a new flowerbed. Haven't even finished adding all of the dirt and mulching... and I'm already thinking of my new projects. Guess that's the problem with buying a house from someone that wasn't a gardener. But, at least this way I'll eventually get everything the way I like it... not maintaining someone else's ideas.... Maybe, if I'm ambitious, I'll dig a couple more beds this fall... so they will be ready for some early springtime fun... or maybe I'll just take a 'fall break'.... ; )

mulching, mulching, mulching.....

So this weekend I cleaned up what Gustav left me with, planted some color, weed barriered, and mulched, and mulched and probably could have mulched some more if I didn't run out.

I am pretty pleased at how 'green' I'm trying to keep the bed. The edging is composite recycled materials, I used newspapers for weed barrier and Pine instead of Cypress mulch. Some cypress mulch is harvested from the Louisiana Coastline, which protects us from uh...hurricanes.... http://saveourcypress.org/index.php


Anyway, the crape myrtle looks a little twiggy, but I think it did ok with the storm - there are still buds on it so I'm waiting to see how it does. I went to Lowes today to pick up the mulch and see what they had for color - not many choices at all after the hurricane...I guess they all either died or something but I did find a few things to plant.
The new plants I added were:
2 yellow sunfire perennials
some periwinkle flowers
and some mini blue daisies




ps - it always seems like we need to cut our grass when I take these pics....I SWEAR we mow our grass AND weedeat regularly...I just have bad photographic timing. Next time I'll try and take the picture AFTER we mow... :)

new bed

Last weekend we got the bed builder dirt (1 yard and 1/2) and I reshaped it and here's what I did today....


After I visited the nursery, I realized that August is not the best time to start a bed....there are not a lot of plants to choose from, but I decided on some basics and when the spring rolls around I may move out some of the liriope and make room for some others. But for today, I planted:
1 crape myrtle
2 azaleas
a couple of agapanthus
a couple of iris's
a bunch of liriope

I know...I said a thousand times I didn't want a crepe myrtle - but again - not too many choices, so I picked a smaller breed that is different - it's white and has darker leaves so I think it's different enough. I still need to put down some mulch and weed barrier. I am going to use newspaper for that and thought it'd be easier to lay it all down after the plants were in the ground. We'll see.
I'm slightly concerned about the irises...I didn't have much luck with them at the other house, but the lady at the nursery assured me that they are native to Louisiana and should be harty and difficult to kill....hmmm. I think I'll fill in with some annuals....some kind of pretty flower just to add more color.

ps - mark mowed after I took these so the grass looks better :) And - if you look closely in the second pic you can see Sam keeping watch out the window.

Watching Grass Grow....

I noticed that it's been about a month since I posted that big mud hole that was our backyard and I am encouraged by the improvements. The most noticeable one is the fence (yea!). The dogs are really loving the freedom that they now have to run and I think it's been great exercise for them. They've never looked so fit and trim. Also - I'm happy about the grass that's coming in. When we noticed that it was good grass back there we decided against hydroseeding and just thought we'd take a chance. I'm excited to see it coming in so nicely. Last week we supplemented the grass with some seed and it loved all the rain that Eduard brought us.

Today I did this:Phew - in 100 degree heat I about had a heart attack tilling, and digging, and weeding, but I'm anxious to get it going. This is about 2/3 of the way through what I did today. I tilled and weeded a bit more before calling it quits. I like the edging stuff I found. It's Smart Edge composite edging and was pretty easy to work with. I like that it's made of recycled materials but be careful with this stuff - it breaks apart relatively easily. It comes all rolled up and you have to let it 'rest' open for at least an hour, and when you are unrolling it, you can bend and break it. I'm speaking from experience. I may rework the side. I can't decide if when it has plants in there, you won't notice that it's kind of straight or if it should be curvier.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to building it up and actually getting some basic plants in there. With it being August already I'm not really sure what I can plant yet but I'd like to put some Agapanthus for sure - I love those....and I'm not sure what else. Lots of perennials. I'm open to suggestions...

Looky what I found!!

So I was looking on the internet to find some sort of planning tool to help me lay out the backyard and lo and behold...Better Homes and Gardens has this really neat garden planner that's easy to use and is FREE! You have to register with their website, but they only ask you for your name, address and email so I signed up and found this handy tool.

Here's the site:
http://planagarden.bhg.com/planagarden/

(ok, I just tried to do a screen grab and couldn't paste it here, but trust me, it's fun and cute).

My only qualm with it is, I can't get it exactly to scale. It'll only fit 13' long on the screen so I have to downsize all the trees and stuff. Other than that, I think it is a good tool to just plan a layout design.


ALSO -
In my quest to find trees, I bumped into the Arbor Day Foundation's website and did you know that if you join they will send you 10 FREE trees? And they're nice too AND no charge for shipping!

For my area, I can get
4 White Flowering Dogwoods
3 American Redbuds
3 Goldenraintrees

Or I could pick:
10 Bald Cypresses
10 Redbuds
10 White Dogwoods
10 River Birches
10 Eastern Redcedars
5 Crape myrtles
http://www.nationaltreetrust.org/shopping/memberships/memberships.cfm

Now I'm sure they're small to start with, but for only a $10 tax deductible membership fee, you can't go wrong. I'm signing up today!

I've got my work cut out for me

Stephanie's last post was so beautiful I hate to post this big ugly patch of dirt right after it, but I thought you guys would be interested to see my humongous backyard project I've got on my hands (yes - it is really THAT long....about 150 feet to that back fence).

We moved in to the new house last weekend and have had rain ever since but the builder was able to come back on Thursday to do some more dirt work, so he's just about done with that. The fence guy is coming on Wednesday to go over everything and will hopefully start on that soon after. We're hydroseeding the grass as soon as the fence is done.


I went to a nursery and talked to the girl there for a long time about trees. I told her that while I love everything about crepe myrtles (colorful, long lasting blooms, resilient, withstands the heat...) I didn't want those exactly because EVERY yard in Lafayette has them. She was so helpful...she took down my email address and offered to do some research for me.

This is what she came up with...any opinions?
Swamp Maple (red/orange)

Saucer Magnolia (tulip tree. I had one of these at the other house - they really are pretty, but mine only bloomed for about a month in the very early spring.)

Purple leaf Plum

Texas Mountain Laurel. ( Looks very similar to wisteria...I love that about it - wonder how long it blooms?)

Southern Crab Apple