Shasta Daisies

Glistening from a Morning Rain

Glistening from a Morning Rain

Four years ago, we decided to dig up a corner area of our lawn and plant a sunny perennial garden.

We had no idea of the work involved–digging out the grass, making the heavy clay a bit more friendly towards growing plants by adding lots of black dirt and compost, designing the plants keeping in mind color, height, soil and watering requirements, and blooming times. And that was just the beginning. Then came the search for the selected plants, planting, watering weeding, mulching. Gardens are lovely and I love that I have a patch of bright color in view of the house, but they require a fair amount of dedication. And lots of hard work. Worth it, though. Well worth it.

We’ve added new plants each year. Each year a few don’t survive the perils of a prolonged winter, but more frequently they are nibbled to death in early spring by hungry and very determined rabbits. We’ve learned to spray a nasty smelling organic type of rabbit-keep-away on anything green whenever it rains, and that keeps the damage to a minimum, and I admit I’m happy whenever I see red foxes prowling the neighborhood.

This year we had a late spring, but we’ve had more than enough rain to keep the plants happy.

Many of the flowers are thick with blooms for most of July–Shasta daisies, purple coneflowers, balloon flowers, yellow coreopsis, lavendar, gigantic sunflowers–and they all merge together in masses of purples, whites, and yellows.

I took lots of photographs earlier this week, after the rains had nearly stopped for the day, so I’ll be sharing garden flowers for the next few days.