...for two years I had my Asiatic Lilies planted under two trees near the road. Each year, most of them were eaten off by Bambi and his lot. (Mmmmm...venison...)
So, last year I decided I'd plant daffodils where the lilies have been and move the lilies to a spot next to the house, behind our small soon-to-be-drained pond and our small statue of Mary. (Mary, who will need to be painted and really needs a little house.)
Anyway, the results have been great! Deer don't like daffodils, so they all bloomed just fine. However, I noticed a couple weeks ago that I missed exactly two lilies, and today I noticed that they are suddenly shorter than they were a few days ago. But the ones near the house are flourishing, which makes me glad! I'll move the other two lilies (maybe I'll try when I am planting the phlox and forsythia that just came the other day), and this fall I'll get a couple of boxes of grape hyacinth bulbs to naturalize throughout the lawn. Thank goodness that Sam's Club has those big boxes for such a good price. After the chipmunk ate every one of my specially-ordered-from-Holland crocus bulbs I decided to forget trying to get the bestest bulbs possible and settled on getting ones that wouldn't be so dear to replace.
Other goings on in the gardens (which are getting completely over-run by dandelions - why are they so dang numerous this year when we dug so many up last year??) are the beautiful irises. They have started to open, and the ones we moved two years ago have recovered nicely this year to form a big, tall bunch under the window near the computer. Last fall, as Hubby built a slide tower for the girls, he also dug out the base of the hill next to the ladder and created a small garden area. When we felt it was safe to move them, we dug up about 1/3 of the irises next to our driveway and moved them into this new garden. They are all coming up nicely, and I expect them to be even better next Spring when they've had a chance to fully recover from the move to the back yard. In a few years, they'll make so many more new ones that I expect the garden next to the slide will be just stunning!
My roses are also doing pretty well. I've managed not to kill them, which makes me happy. I had such poor luck in my Florida garden that I was sure I had a brown thumb. Turns out that I wasn't taking into account that when you plant stuff near the base of a block-construction house, you have to take into account that the soil's acidity will be affected by the concrete. I wasn't fertilizing things properly, that's all! Hooray! (Hooray, I mean, because I am not a failure in the garden - just inexperienced.) The blooms can't be too far off. There's so much new growth on the bushes that I hardly know what to think of it!
And, lastly, my lilacs. I know they are a few years from being really beautiful, but I was heartened to see these blooms, tiny as they are, on one branch. More buds are on the bushes, and I must look into how to prune them properly so that they get nice and bushy and huge. And with lots of flowers. Yes. Lilacs are some of my favorites, and one of the first things I said when we knew we'd be moving here was, "Oh! I can get lilac bushes!" I bought these two years ago as (I think) two-year plants. In any case, they were only about 18 inches to two feet high. I really did nothing but water them in really well with a drip line when I planted them. I haven't pruned them back at all so far.
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