Landscaping (continued)

Dear reader, I must apologize for the appearance of yesterday's post. Either I have forgotten everything I ever learned about blogging with Google, or the program has become very uncooperative - or both. I suspect, however, that it is mostly the latter, since I can't get the program to let me edit yesterday. So, the answer is simply to write another post.

The main purpose here is to bring the blog up to date with some recent photos, like the following:

In these first two pictures, the lilies are still blooming (before the deer learned that they were tasty!), which means that the picture is several weeks old. The water shows that it was just after a rain.

The next two pictures below were taking today from our front porch. The most obvious change is how tall some of the grasses are. And on the left side of the picture is a six-foot tall plant with yellow flowers that one can only describe as a weed of unknown name and origin.

The last picture is a close-up of the unknown plant with yellow blossoms. You can see how much some of the other grasses have grown, behind the yellowwood tree, for example. The plants marked with orange flags indicate that those plants are intentional and not to be removed.

That brings our blog up to date. I'll be back when there is more to report (and I get around to reporting it!).
Take care!  --oc

Landscaping in spring and summer

When we made our last post to the blog, it was last winter - December to be exact - and the rain garden looked like the picture below.

The pile of stones at the top near the driveway mark the point where the pipe under the driveway brings in water that has fallen on the far side of the driveway. The two piles of stones on the lower right side mark where water flows in from downspouts. On the left are stones marking where water flows out of the garden when it gets full. In the middle is a pipe leading to an underground storage cylinder filled with gravel; water stored there eventually seeps into the ground, along with the surface water seen in the middle.

When spring came, the service berry by the porch steps was the first plant to bloom. Directly behind and near the driveway is the bare yellowwood tree, which is just beginning to leaf out. On the right side of the picture is the sweet bay magnolia, an evergreen. Below the zoysia sod, which was brown all winter, is beginning to turn green, as seen also in the next picture.

The picture below was taken from the driveway a little later: the blooms are now gone, the yellowwood has more leaves, and the grass is greener.

 Still later, the grass is more solidly green, more plants in the rain garden are turning green, and the sweet bay magnolia is blooming.

 Below is a close-up of the magnolia blossom in the sun.

With all the rain we had last spring, it was not hard to find the rain garden fulfilling its purpose of catching rain. Lilies have also been added in the following picture.

Then we had even more lilies blooming. The picture below also shows the dark compost in the bottom of the garden; it was acquired from the Clarke County landfill.

Below is the same view from the driveway.

Here we see the lilies blooming in the sun.