transformation

I couldn't stand it anymore. Whether it was hormones, the heat or just the end of my rope, I was sick of our front yard garden plot. "It's so ugly!" I told Steve in a fit of frustration, even after we had worked to deadhead a wilting flower we had planted in a pot. The pot was sitting on top of where our tulips had bloomed earlier this spring. The tulips were long gone, their stems and leaves yellowed and wilted and finally chopped away (and overgrown with weeds), but we haven't had the nerve to plant anything over them — what if we destroy the bulbs? We could have covered everything with potted flowers, I suppose, but that only goes so far ...

So on Sunday, we decided to bite the bullet and plant some perennials. A burst of color in April is nice, but is it worth a summer of ugly? We figured we could salvage some of the bulbs, replant a few, dry the rest and maybe pot them. So we went to Linders and bought whatever caught our eye (and preferably was on sale in early July): elegant daylilies, delicate phlox, vivid pink coneflowers, colorful red and orange geraniums.

Here's the bed before we started planting:


Steve did the heavy digging, including removing the weedy hostas that snuck around the corner from the side of the plot ...


... and unearthed dozens and dozens of tulip bulbs. After we put the flowers in, we stuck a few of the bigger, hardier-looking bulbs back into the soil in unplanted areas. Maybe they'll provide some April color again after all.


And here's what it looks like now, on one side of the front steps, at least. The other side is smaller and has one lily and the phlox. You'll have to trust me when I tell you that it looks 100 percent better than it did before. Even better, it makes me happy to look at it.


Now, does anyone want some tulip bulbs?