What a difference a few months can make.
Remember your first glimpse of the flower bed in front of our house? We had just cleared the weeds, the spring weather was just starting to roll in, and the spyrea looked like it hadn’t survived the winter.
She looks a little different now.
Let me update you on the progress to date, using the same number scheme. #consistency
1) Daffodils
Honestly, these never produced anything more than daffodil-esque leaves. I have no clue if that is even what they were. I’m going to call this one a loss.
2) Spyrea
I mean, come on! Look at that bad boy. He is gigantic and flowery, all at the same time. We figure we have to start pruning him this year, or he is going to take over the whole yard.
3) Tulips Black-Eyed Susans
So, we were super wrong about this one. Nary a tulip bloom in sight, but after leaving it be, it decided to become a Black-Eyed Susan instead. Can’t knock that choice, because my other Black-Eyed Susans did not transplant well, so at least I still have some of them.
4) Blanket Flowers
These do not appear to have survived the short move in the bed. Not one of these has bloomed, so I think they are all dead. And that makes me sad, because they are beautiful little flowers.
5) Hosta
Big change from the first picture. This guy was barely poking out of the ground the first time around, and now check him out: rivaling the spyrea for space consumption. Thinking this bed might become just the Spyrea and Hosta Show.
6) Rhododendron
Poor Rhodo. He had some kind of fungus on him, which we successfully treated and he bloomed up all pretty like. But he’s looking a little peaked, and his leaves are turning yellow again. I’m worried for him.
7) Rock
But you can’t even see it, thanks to Hosta being all greedy and whatnot. The rock is visible from the other side, but he’s fairly shadowed by those giant elephant-ear leaves.
So that’s the progress to date. We also have several other Black-Eyed Susans poking through the hosta leaves and beside the spyrea, so there will be some pretty yellow flowers any day now.
I think I will split that hosta this fall to give everyone else a chance, and to fill in another gap beside the front steps. But this time, I’m not planting anything else near the hosta. It’s deceiving when those little purple shoots poke through the ground and start out so small.
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