planting

First of all, we have some birthday celebrating to do. Shalai turns 4 today! She still acts 100% like a puppy, but I'm betting she'll probably have a lot of puppy in her until she's 17. Happy Birthday Lazers!

So - back to our garden bed. On Sunday we went out and purchased a number of plants to start filling up our raised garden bed. We had no visions that what we bought would be enough, but our budget won't allow for buying that many plants. Plus, we've gotten offers for perennials from a master-gardener-friend this Fall, so we know we'll be rounding things out a little later this year. But we wanted to start somewhere, so here's what we got!

Three plants each of white snowcaps and.....a purple flower. You guys I'm so bad with plant names! I'll look it up and get back to you. I'd go check right now but it's early, I'm in my PJ's and I don't wanna. So.

Both plants are supposed to be good in partial sun, which is perfect for our fairly shady backyard.

Next? Calla lilies. These are the flowers we used in our wedding and I really wanted to have some in our yard. My mom actually gave us calla bulbs as house warming gift, but I killed them. They grew for a season but when we went to dig them up for the winter the squirrels had already gotten to a handful of them. And the rest of them didn't grow back the next year. *sob* Here's hoping we do a little better the second time around.

We want to get some ground cover going, especially around the boulders. We picked out one with a small purple flower (apparently we were really into purple on Sunday?) called "vinca." We have 16 of these babies.

I also snatched up two tomato plants. We'll be planting our vegetable garden inside the raised bed because a) we have plenty of room for it and b) the spot I plan on eventually having a veggie garden isn't ready for us yet.

These final (and favorite) plant won't actually be in the raised bed. It'll be in the opposite corner of the yard, but we finally decided to pull the trigger after talking about getting it for a solid year. A gorgeous hydrangea.

We went for the 3 gallon plant because we're using it as a "specimen" - a highlighted plant. It'll kind of be on its own in the corner for now, and I want to give it the best chance of survival. For me, that means starting with a bigger plant. Plus? Those two blooms really suckered me in. When we saw that the 3 gallon plant was only $7 more than the 1 gallon we were definitely sold.

Ok, so not pictured are two rhododendrons from Nick's parents. Their friendly neighborhood rabbits have been destroying their rhododendrons, so they offered to give them to us. We're not ones to turn down free shrubs, so those have made their way into the raised bed as well.

By the time we got back from Home Depot on Sunday we were on a tight timeline. We needed to be at my parents for my newly-married sister's gift opening, so we wanted to move as fast as possible and get some plants in the ground before we needed to leave.

First up? Moving hostas from their temporary location in front of the garage to their new home in the raised bed.

Then we had to go and it was late and dark by the time we got back. So, here we are at 10pm planting hostas.

"Hey Nick, what happened to this hosta?"

"Shalai sat on it."

Cool.

And that's where our photo tour ends! We didn't get nearly as much planted as we wanted to, and then we had other obligations last night and tonight. We'll be back at it, planting the rest of our collection tomorrow night.

We still have a long ways to go, so we'd still love to hear what your favorite shade-loving plants are. Especially if they grow like weeds and are impossible to kill. We all know I tend to kill things.

We're off to a slow start, but what do you think so far??

ps - we're talking seed vs. sod over at the Service Magic Connection. Come check it out and see why we chose sod for our backyard and let us know what you think!