Manley House

finally mounted on the front deck, my windowboxen show off my flower collection. as time and weather permits, i'm tempted to add two more, one on either side of the current ones, but that may have to wait until next spring.

the trunk full of strawberry plants i brought back from my parents' house are doing okay, i just need to be better about keeping up with the weeding. we're still debating on what'll be going in the other half of the raised beds -- either tomatos or rhubarb, and leaning towards rhubarb. after that, we just need to put the landscaping trim around the clothesline pole, and plant something in it. at this point, i'm thinking bulbs might be a good idea.

anyone interested in swapping rhubarb plants for hostas?

(updated by alyska)

last saturday was spent in search of some color for the yard. while the yard is in darned good shape, it's all very...green. green yard, green house...greengreengreen.

i wanted some color, so jeffreyp and i picked up a lilac bush for the back corner of the property, as i've had lilacs everywhere i've lived and love them dearly. (it's the green bush in the middle of all of the other green bushes.)

i've also been trying to figure out what our mystery plants are. the smaller one with the purple flowers smells very minty, but it's not catnip. it's groundcovering, and taking over much of the area by the back fence. the other larger tri-leafed thing is just a total puzzle. i know i've seen them before, but i don't know what they are.

so, as far as i got on saturday was planting windowboxes with kittyhelp, which now look pretty on the front porch until jeffreyp has time to make brackets so we can hang them off the front.

in future projects, i'm thinking of getting a bushy tree of some sort for the front yard where the sidewalk meets the driveway and transplanting some of our 70some hostas to make room for a raspberry thicket along the garage and patch the holes along the landscaping by the driveway. we still need to figure out how to fill the hole make by the dead yew bush out front, and i'd also like to put something by the clothesline pole in the back of the yard (a trellis for morning glories) and a raised garden bed along the fence by our neighbor's garage.

the raised bed would likely be garden space -- i definitely want strawberries, and tomatos would be tasty, too. possibly some rhubarb or carrots. jeffreyp set out some of our landscaping plastic by the pole in the back yard, but now i can't decide if that space should be garden (herbs?) or flowers if i put the morning glory trellis in there.

thoughts?

(posted by alyska.)