Let's Try This Again

Clouds come and clouds go, but last spring when I created this flower bed, the clouds had come, and they'd come to stay.

Perfect conditions for gardening, I thought.  Not too hot, and not so blinding.  I knew just the place to transplant some of our shade-loving perennials in preparation for the septic installation upheaval.

Then the following week the clouds departed and the strengthening  sun blazed forth, clearly illuminating the boundary between shade and not-shade.  To my horror that area, so deceptively close to our neighbor's tree canopy, in reality bakes in the sun for most of the day.

I did what I could to save the poor, limp transplants by creating a true shade garden directly under the tree canopy, but the old not-shade garden lay mostly barren and cracked all summer long.

But not this year, Lord willing.  My Renaissance man started some flower seeds back in March, and today we planted the SUN-loving flowers in the sunny garden bed.  If they survive, and if they bloom, then we've just achieved another gardening first: starting flowering plants inside during the winter in plenty of time for us to actually get blossoms before fall returns.

So here's what we planted:

- Perennial wall flower, 12 to 18 inches with small orange blossoms
- Perennial Cupid's Dart, light purple, and Coreopsis, golden yellow, both 18 to 24 inches
- Annual Cosmos, pink and white mix, about 24 inches

But then there are also some clumps of something we don't recognize or remember from last summer's crusade against the invasive bittersweet but which overwintered nicely in the compost pile, plus another plant which produces pretty little orange lilies.

So we could potentially end up with a lot of different colors blooming at once.  How is that going to look?  I don't know.  I'm hoping it at least stays green this time.

Oh, and what's protecting the soil?  Why, the leaf mold we started a year and a half ago.  It's not fully matured yet, but it will do nicely.  And I mustn't fail to point out the watering can staged in the photos below.  It was part of my birthday gift last year.