Gardening

Among other projects we worked on this weekend, we finally ripped out an overgrown shrub and planted flowers in its place. This took a couple days to complete.

Sal worked really hard to unearth that stump and rip it out. We have others to pull as well, which you can sort of see in the first image to the left of the steps, but we may end up hiring someone to do that work (and probably not until next summer).

I told Sal that it doesn't look like old people live in our house anymore. Those particular shrubs saw their rise in popularity 30 years ago and are now passe.

We still need to add mulch to the flower bed, but it's already greatly improved. We planted a couple begonia, marigolds, petunias, and salvia. I've had good luck with salvia in the past so I'm hoping my track record continues. I also planted some gladiolas bulbs. We made the deadline for those by just a few weeks. Gladiolus are the flower for the month of August, my birth month, so I've always loved them for that reason.

I'm hoping between the gladiolus and salvia the flower garden will have some height. I have other ideas for next summer, but this set-up will do for this year.

What isn't shown is the sunflower border I planted off our patio in the backyard. That will be another post.

UPDATE: The sunflowers didn't make it. You can see a few pictures of the blooming gladiolus here.