Saying goodbye

By far the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life was make the decision to put our dog to sleep. He was just too sick, we tried everything we could to save him and in the end (after dropping half of his body weight) we knew it was time to say goodbye. So April 29, 2010 Druppy, Chris and I enjoyed one last snuggle in bed, laid in the grass and watched the clouds pass by for the last time and shared one last piece of pizza.

And then that was it. He was gone.

Maybe someday I'll stop breaking down in tears when I think about him.

He will always be our first dog, our first baby, our first little buddy.

We will always miss him.

He will never be replaced.

Ha may not have the best dog in the world, but he was ours and we loved him.

He was a daddy's boy, that's for sure.

And he loved being dirty!

but at the end of the day, his favorite spot was right at our heads on the back of the couch.

My yard...through April 10th

So the frequent updates didn't happen as I had hoped

That just means this post will be full of more pictures, and so will the next one! :)

April 1st

This is the part shade bed, on the West side under the Cherry Tree.

There's not much to see now, but be paitent :)

This is the front (north side) of the house towards the west. In the middle is a white azalea and right by the bird bath is a leucothue

And this is the east side of the front of the house, again...not much to see...yet!

Here are 2 toad lily's emerging.

These are really cool plants for a shade/pt. shade area...they bloom in the fall which is rare.

Chris and I laid out the veggie garden

April 4th

Pt shade bed and lilac bed.

Gaura came back, liriope is looking a little sick but the daffodils are starting pop

Brunnera

New growth - Astilbe

Another astilbe returning

East side perennial bed

Cherry Tree, lilac, daffodils

April 5th

creeping pholx from my neighbor.

I had no idea what this was, I didn't figure it out until it started blooming

Brunnera and Daffodils

April 7th

Daffodils, Brunnera, creeping Phlox and wild violet

Daffodils, Rose Bush, foxglove

Azalea buds

Waldsternia, barren strawberry

Weigila leaf buds - I thought this was a goner...so excited to see life! :)

What a difference a few days make!

So glad my mom spotted this one - it's Frittileria, checkerbloom. I planted 14 bulbs last fall, this is the only one that bloomed :(

April 10th

Winter sown jugs that have germinated and transplanted Hollyhocks and Alyssum seedlings

Lilac bed with campanula, gaura, liriope, lamb's ear (transplatned from the yard!) and Brunner in the middle by the hose

Toad lily, Azalea, and bleeding heart

Astilbe

I finally spotted new growth from my Tiarella!

New growth from the Blue Star Amsonia

Moving through March

I really want to get caught up this week - so here we are in the middle of March.

This is the west side of my house, from the front look to the back (to the south). Once the Maple tree (to the right just outside of this picture) and the cherry tree (right side of the photo) leaf out this shade is pretty dense.

This is the sun at 1pm

View from the backyard looking to the front (the north)

The two shrubs you can see are Leucothoe axillaris and an unknown azeala. I'll have more pics of these later but they were shrubs that one of my co-workers (Pam) got for free from Home Depot. Last year in June (I think) she had gone to the garden center and they had a bunch of shrubs on this rack that they were going to throw away and she convinced the manager that she would "take them to the dumpster for them" *wink wink, nudge nudge* Well Chris had decided to tear out the old yews from the front of the house around the same time I heard of Pam's good fortune (she couldn't use all the shrubs she got) so I said tear the ones on the side out as well and I put in these guys (plus one other leucothoe that is hidden by the azeala in this photo) in my new shade garden. I can't wait to see what color blooms the azeala has!!

Just before the 1st basement window I found this...

Dicentra spectabilis - Pink Bleeding Heart.

This is from another co-worker Amy last year and I transplanted it after it bloomed and it was pretty warm out. I read that they can be hard to transplant and don't like being disturbed so I had no idea if it would be back or not...so happy to see new growth. and I found it interesting that the white bleeding heart (see previous post) had new green growth and the pink bleeding heart came back red.

Let me pause and say that if it were not for Pam and Amy sharing their perennials and their knowledge with me over the past 2 years I'd either be divorced for spending too much $$ at the nurseries or I'd have one hell of a sorry ass looking yard.

Moving on, I found this little guy starting to strech his legs in the shade bed.

Polemonium reptans - Jacob's Ladder

I picked up this up last year from Point Phillips Perennials. They have decent prices, are very close and very knowledgable and Pam and Amy are close with the owners (so naturally I want to follow their lead, you can get some good deals when you become friends with nursery owners!)

Moving into the back yard and my full sun bed (I'll probably alternately refer to this as the sun bed, backyard bed or lilac bed)

It's not much to look at now, but I'm setting the stage for later posts. (the right side of the picture is a lilac shrub from my parent's friend's house and a liriopie (evergreen grass from my mom).

In the left side of the picture I think I found the beginnings of a Turtlehead

Chelone glabra

I was so afraid I killed this plant. I got 3 of them on my trip to Russells last May and waited ridiculously long to get them in the ground. I tried my best to make sure to water them (they love water!) a lot but I never got them in the ground because of our pesky sewer/backyard make over project that never really got finished. Specifically I had to wait for the retaining wall to get built and filled in. Chris had me scared that I'd end up having to move these plants when we finished grading so I never planted them. Poor excuse because I could've moved them, but alas I hope all the fretting was for not as I think/hope/pray that this means they will return this year. They have such a cool flower, I really hope they spread!

And this is where it all began! This hill on the east side of our house was such a bear to mow that the first year we moved in I started tearing the grass out. This is where the aforementioned plant sharing from Pam and Amy saved me. They pretty much gave me every plant in here and I'm so grateful!

So as of March 16th there really isn't a whole lot to see. Mostly everything in here is an herbaceous perennial (dies back to the ground every winter) I leave most of the dead stems up all winter to let the birds pick at the seed pods and add some winter interest when the snow covers them. I had just cut them back in the beginning of March. So things are just starting to poke their heads up. What little bit of green you can see is tulips and daffodils.

in the far lower corner I did notice the Obidient Plant was starting to sprout

Physostegia virginiana

Just up from that is the catmint

Nepeta xfaassenii

And continuing across the bottom of the bed I found the yarrow sprouting (fern-like leaves) with the yellow chrysanthemum (soft grey/green leaves)

Achillea millefolium - Yarrow &  Chrystanthemum

Moving long the bottom of the bed towards the front of the photo

Hemerocallis - lemon yellow daylily.

One of the few things I bought for this bed. I'm not a real fan of the stella d'oro daylilys (they typical golden yellow ones) probably because so many people have them. I like this softer brighter color yellow. It makes me happy :)

And these...

These are purple asters from my little old neighbor down the street. she offered them to me while she was clearing them out of her bed, she was sick of pulling them up every year and I was rescuing planting anything I could get my hands on so I took them. that year they did great, really deep purple flowers, I was so happy. Last year they did nothing for me so if they don't bloom this year they're all goners.

And in the back yard Chris made me this lovely retaining wall.

haha. in all seriousness, we have some big plans for adding a deck or patio back here that would cover this so I was okay with him using broken pieces of our concrete sidewalk to hold back the dirt from washing down the sidewalk.

This will make a lovely new full sun bed and I can't wait to see flowers covering up spilling over the "wall" :)

And here he is, relaxing after all that hard work :) and a view looking down from our deck of the little path I threw together. This path leads through the new bed, through the "lilac" bed over to the west side shade bed.

Okay so techincally the path leads to the bird feeder pole in the lilac bed, but that's just splitting hairs I think :)