New Flower Bed

Starting at a good clean square one:


First and foremost my thanks goes out to my Dad for cutting all of the sod out of the new garden bed and turning over the earth in the past two weeks. He even added several big bags of manure so my plants are off to a good healthy start. Today, I turned everything over, raked through, and planted. Easy Peasy!

I spent most of the day outside, from about 10:30 am until 4pm. It was very sunny and I was half smart and wore a hat. I was half stupid and now have a farmers' burn to show for it on my arms. But that is the extent of it thank goodness and hopefully it will fade to a nice farmers' tan. More green Aloe gel please!

Planted, watered and hopefully settled, square two:

Planted above are Hydrangea, Dragon Flower, Carnations, Coral Bells, and red lilies and white lilies.

I spent lots of time weeding the side bed, lots of grass had gotten in there.
Sweet peas I planted about 3 weeks ago are coming up nicely at the chain link fences and the little red lattice fence. I took out lots of wild violets that were trying to choke out about 5 sweet peas.

Morning Glory and Moon Flower seeds also went in at the chain link fences today. Also a smattering of 'other' seeds were scattered through the main bed seen above to hopefully fill in some of the gaps this season.

I felt like a tour guide when my parents came home from work....'Oh, what's this one? What will it do? What kind of flowers does it have?' I feel like if I give them the tour and they can look forward to seeing the future flowers, they will be more likely to water and keep things alive :)

I've already got them scared to weed. Even though I've shown them all of the plants and which one's are the 'keepers' they seem a little reluctant to try to identify them and pluck them when I'm away.