My Garden in Mid Spring

Images from Prairie Nursery

Today I'm going to start with some pretty pictures of plants I ordered.

These first two groupings of flowers are not pictures from my garden, they're product shots from Prairie Nursery where I made my order.

I think these native North American plants should do well in my garden and the butterflies and hummingbirds should like them. I already have some New England Asters that grew so well even in partial shade and some monarda that looks so pretty and smells like lemonade according to Anri. The blazingstar I planted last year is a different variety. This meadow blazingstar (liatris ligulistylis) I ordered is a little more wild looking, but look at those butterflies clinging to it!

Images from Prairie Nursery

Now I'm going to show you some very straightforward shots of my backyard as it looks today on May 30, 2013.

Usually I take pictures when things are blooming, at least for my blog. And I also like to take closeups and crop out anything that looks not-so-great. But I've decided I'd like to keep an online journal of the way things are progressing. That way, I can look back at how it filled in the previous year and maybe I won't feel so impatient. I think I keep shopping for plants because while nothing is flowering in my garden yet, the plants at the nursery or online product shots are already full of flowers.

While I wait for my plants to fill out I have a ton of work to do... set that brick edging in place and pull TONS of weeds. That dark stuff you see on the lawn is grass seed. I started some about a month ago and had success. I just wish I filled in all the bare spots at the same time, because it took about three weeks for the seed to sprout.

Lots of things are growing in pots and planters: strawberries that have already been eaten by the rabbits, bulbs, petunias and in the old galvanized tub (with holes in the bottom for drainage) I have a little herb garden with basil, curry plant, rosemary, parsley and nasturtiums.

The raised bed I planted last summer with sedum, yarrow, monarda, goldenrod, rudbeckia, butterfly weed and blazingstar is looking good, although the butterfly bush is taking forever to come back. Is it coming back? And now that I think of it, where's the blazing star?

In case you're joining me late in this post, that dark brown stuff is grass seed (surrounded by a ton of weeds that I'm slowly dealing with. Along that north wall of the garage there is bugbane, hostas and astilbe popping up.

 One of a few baskets with annuals.

 That's the first bed I planted when we moved in a couple of years ago. I had all this extra topsoil sitting around and had to do something with it. I'm so glad we didn't glue the bricks together because it turned out that I needed to shorten it a little. I kept tripping over the pavers every time I needed to get to the hose. I still have a little bit of repair work on those pavers in the back. And how do you like those weeds growing alongside the front edge? I just spent a few minutes pulling all of those up. 

So that's how things are looking at the end of May in zone 5b Wisconsin. Last year was extremely hot and dry and while things were really early to bloom, I lost several new plants. Looks like we're about a month behind last year's growth. I guess this is more of a typical spring here.

Sitting on my back patio and staring at the plants isn't going to make them grow any faster, so time to get back to weeding!