It's That Time of Year Again...

Yes, that's right the blog is back!  And I was so addicted to growing things, that in the winter when my garden was on hold I grew this bad boy!

Oh Yea!

Alright, as cool as beards are lets get back to the garden... I realize now that I completely neglected posting pictures of my garden as it grew the rest of the summer last year (perhaps mostly because I didn't weed it nearly enough, oops), but now I can't help but show how much bigger the plants are!

Just look at that butterfly bush! 

These things are pretty cool!

Another view to show the size of the butterfly bush 

One of the new guys!

Close up on a hummingbird flower

And the white one as well

Just compared to my last post which was 11 months ago there is a night and day difference, so I can't wait to see how much the garden grows this summer.  As you can see, one of the plants grew very large (the butterfly bush in the smaller garden) and many of the others are a lot bigger than they were even at the end of last summer.  In fact those tall plants with the bell shaped flowers didn't even bloom last year, so this year they were quite the surprise!

However, there is some bad news... a couple of the plants didn't quite make it and aren't back this year.  About 3 have left some gaps in the bigger garden, and none of the plants up front survived. :/  But, I planted some seeds of lavender in one of the bigger gaps in the big garden so we'll see if that sprouts up at all.   I've never tried to plant with seeds yet!  And I got some hostas for the front of the house so those should do very well as it's a pretty shaded area.  Also filling up some of the gaps are some little guys that have sprouted up from the seeds of one of the taller flowers I have, you can see a picture of one of them above.  There are a TON of them!

Side of the backyard along the fence

WAY back of the backyard

All of the trees taking over... 

Hopeful site of a raised vegetable garden!

There are still a lot of projects I never got around to from last year that I hopefully will be able to complete this summer, as well as some new projects to do!  As you can see from one of the pictures above, I hope to create a raised vegetable garden in the corner of my yard near my peonies.  Also, I would like to dress up the side of my yard shown in one of the other pictures above.  Possibly just plant some hostas and whatnot as it is a very shaded area, maybe find some colorful plants that thrive in the shade.  One of the bigger projects this summer will be to clear out the area in the far back of my backyard as right now it is just storage of the dead trees and the bush I cut up last year and has been overgrown by trees as well.  Hopefully I can clear all of that out and plant some things that will thrive in that shady area as well.

Inspiration for my pergola

Obviously the biggest project yet to be completed is the pergola/lattice structure/umbrella/shelter/whatever I have promised in the past.... As much as this project has changed should show how indecisive I am in what I want to put up as a structure over the patio.  But I had a stroke of genius/inspiration not too long ago and now I think I know what I WANT to do, so we'll see if this actually happens.  What I have envisioned is a pergola that is open around the edges (like a regular pergola) so the vine I have can grow around the wood and create some shade.  But in the middle I would want to do some sort of rain shelter, so I would put some sort of bamboo shade up with a clear corrugated plastic over the top of it to create a cheap roof that would still provide both rain protection and shade.  I should have scanned my drawing of said structure, but I posted a picture of my inspiration for it.

So what should you look forward to seeing in future posts???
- Pictures of my plants as they bloom later in the summer
- Perhaps some pictures of the hostas in the front of the house
- The cleaning out of the far back of the backyard
- Maybe some new plants along the fence
- VEGETABLE GARDEN!! (I'm excited about that one.  Can't wait to grow some peppers!)
- And maybe, just maybe... FINALLY a post about a pergola going up... but we'll see.  I need some $$$$ first.

Adieu.