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... :)