Well, summer is almost over. The scorching heat took its toll on most of our flowers and it's almost time to start cutting everything back and re-mulching the flowerbeds.  But you know -- it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

That's why I suppose it doesn't matter that every year we envision the most beautiful gardens in the world and every year we battle too much or too little rain and unbearable heat just to lose it all in the end.  Every year we get a little sad and swear that next year we just aren't going to bother....  But then that's what's so pretty about spring... No matter what we will be back in the gardens getting ready next spring... Just as we do every year.

In the meantime... here are some of this years highlights....
(Left) The shadiest spot in the backyard showed a nice burst of color during the late spring.




(Below) Heavy rainfall turned our back garden lush and lovely green -- but robbed us of some summertime color.
A freshly planted petunia... Ahh...
A few hours later....
The next morning....
In the meantime, our front yard flowerbeds turned out to be quite lovely.
This is our first year gardening at this house and we learned (the hard way, of course) that the backyard retains a lot more moisture than we thought.  The front beds seem to drain much better and gave us a much more vivid display.

However, the heavy rains eventually took their toll here too. We just have not been able to keep the nutrients in our soil from washing out into the street!!  Fair enough though -- it is, afterall, near the end of this season.
(Top) Aztec White Verbena, Wave Petunias, Lantana and a spot of huge Sun Coleus grace the front flowerbed.




(Left) Our side flowerbed was home to so many different plants it would be difficult to name them all... It all came together nicely though and proved to be one of the most striking areas.  It has also managed to hang on to some of its color even into these incredibly hot days of summer.
As usual it was lots of fun... and we're already looking forward to next spring.  Maybe we learned a few lessons this year (such as do not put off eliminating a cutworm until the next day....)  We definitely made plenty of memories with our trips to the nursery and got plenty of exercise weeding... and weeding... and weeding....        Return to Garden Pages

(Below) Although the back garden did not last nearly as long as we had hoped -- it still put on a good show...