A months worth of evening gardening since and a few hours of rototilling donated by my husband, we've completely transformed the lower area. First we cleared the area next to the house and garage.
Then, we cleared the area past what will be the dry creekbed and spent hours flattening, weeding, rototilling and compacting the middle round patch for Patrick's lawn. It works well in my design, so I like it but it is definitely Patrick's lawn (he has to mow it).
This picture was May 30th and carefully examining the seeded patch every night after work, we found sprouts on June 6th.
This is Eco-Lawn grass seed that we bought from Annie's Annuals which is supposed to be less thirsty than a regular lawn. Also, from pictures around the web it does look like it will be a pretty grass left long. That besides how soft and thin the blades seem to be.
By June 8th we had grass that we could actually see a bit from a distance. And as of tonight, it looks like the picture below. The only bit we're disappointed with is that the one bag of seed we bought wasn't enough for this small bit of grass. Maybe it should have been but we still have a bunch of bare spots so we bought another bag over the weekend and seeded those spots again.
Now to the details. The foothill penstemon has been in bloom for some time now. I'm just in love with its beautiful blue. The one I have planted is a bit scraggly this year but I'm sure next year it will be much fuller.
My wildflower patch with wrinkled apricot poppies, five spots, and tidy tips were at their height a few weeks ago.
But are now acting floppy and not shining so much. On the plus side, I'm starting to collect seeds for next year. Below you can see what tidy tips seeds look like. Apparently, the tidy tips seeds I separated out from the mixed bag last winter were the ones I thought were yarrow. Oh well, I prefer tidy tips and next year I'll have thousands it seems.
While the wildflowers fade away, the two Agastache I planted next to them are in a wonderful full bloom that should only get better in the coming months.
Agastache Rupestris
Agastache aurantiaca 'Coronado'
Then we have the gorgeous ladybird poppies. God, I've wanted these for two years, ever since I first saw them at Annies, they are so beautiful. And finally I have two of my own. Sadly, they are supposed to be annuals so I'll do my best to try and collect seeds from them.
Behind the first picture, you can see some blue flax, now in bloom as well. Almost all of these planted only a month ago.
There's one other big change to the lower garden. In just a couple of hours and after one swipe of rototilling by my husband, I cleared the area next to the garage and created a small planting bed framed with some redwood 4x4s.
Hostas and lady ferns (a bit sun bleached but this is the shadiest part of the garden just now)
Some Astilbe, finally sending up flower stalks after two years.
And for our two trellises, we're trying Nasturtium (Tropaeolum peregrinum) "Canary Creeper" which started out too short to attach to the trellises.
But with just a month, they're halfway up the wall. There are also quite a few other plants along the garage but I'll go into that later when I have nice pictures of them.
And finally after sitting on our back steps for two or three weeks, I went on a planting spree this Sunday and put 10 of the suffering little guys in the ground. There are some Gaura that had reseeded in my parents Antioch yard that I rescued, two blue gentian sages, two more foothill penstemons, a milkweed to hopefully bring in the Monarchs, Galvezia speciosa "Island Bush Snapdragon", a Monardella villosa "Coyote Mint" and lastly my second Ceanothus 'Dark Star'. I feel bad for leaving that one so long; a lot of the leaves had gone yellow, but I'm sure that I got it in the ground within enough time for it to recover.
