mi jardín, mon jardin, my garden

Finally I am posting about my flower garden!

The story:

Dustin and I moved to our new apartment on April 30 this year.  We basically love this place.  It is way bigger than our last place, about 80 years newer haha, with a dishwasher and washer/dryer and spare bedroom, 1 1/2 baths....I could go on, but that is not what this post is about.

This post is about the one thing I hated about our new place--the bushes out front.  All the buildings on our cul-de-sac are the exact same white 4-plexes, and all of them have nasty juniper bushes outside the end apartments.  Since we are apartment 4, ours had the junipers out in front.  I hate junipers!  They are ugly and prickly and grow out of control and provide excellent homes for bugs and mice and such.  Did I mention ugly?  Our bushes were even more of an eye-sore because the previous tenant decided at some point that she didn't like walking around the bushes to get in the apartment, so she hacked a path through the middle of them.  Ugh nasty.  Unfortunately I never got a picture of our apartment when we moved in, so I can't show you thie hideousness. 

This obviously isn't my house.  But the junipers---are you appreciating the overgrown horror?

Even trimmed up a bit, they still look awful.  Mine looked more like the above than the below.

I really thought our place would look much nicer with a pretty flower garden instead of nasty junipers.  However, I wasn't sure if I could ask the landlords to rip them out.  What if they really loved junipers?  Finally, I just got up the courage and asked the landlord's wife one day when they were over cutting the lawn.  I don't remember exactly what I said, but it probably went something like this: "So, how much do you love these junipers?"

Happy day!  She hated them!  They were planted by the previous owners.  I told her that if she would take care of ripping them out, I would plant a nice little flower garden in their place.  Less than a week later, the landlord came over and voila!  No more bushes!

(Take a minute to imagine this cute little apartment with horrid overgrown junipers in front, where the dirt is now.  Don't forget the pathway hacked through the middle.)

They even tilled up the earth where my garden was going to be.  So I started planning which plants I would plant there.  It was already mid-June by this point, so I was worried aobut getting the plants in the ground in time to blossom and grow.  I quickly learned, through trips to the local nursery and online searches, that starting up a garden is sort of expensive.  Like, it was going to cost us around $100 to get the plants and fertilizer and things I would need.  What a bummer!  We couldn't afford that.  So for weeks the dirt sat unplanted.  How depressing.  Every time I looked at the bare, juniper-less spot in front of my house, I'd get all sad and depressed.  I wanted a flower garden!

Finally in July I called my dad and asked him if there were ANY flowers and plants lying around the botanical garden where he works that I could plant in my garden.  I had originally planned all the types of flowers I would plant there, very scientifically and whatnot, but now I was desperate.  I just wanted something there.  My wonderful dad said he could find me something at his work, and the next weekend I went down to visit my family and came back with plants for my garden!  Yay, finally!  I was so excited.  He even gave me some fertilizer and let me borrow his shovel.  I love my dad!

Look at those cute little planties!

Okay here are pictures of the individual plants.  I don't know their names, sorry, except the first one is a canna lily.  It is the only annual, the rest are perennials.  My dad did tell me their names, but I forgot them. 



They were all so tiny and sorta fragile when we planted them.  Honestly I half expected them to all die in a few weeks because I do not know how great of a gardner I am.....

We wanted some sort of border around our little garden to make it look nicer, but of course we don't have that kind of money.  So...we, um, borrowed some big rocks from the construction site behind us.  What?  I highly doubt they were going to sell those rocks or anything.  Probably just chuck them somewhere.  Whenever we went on a walk we'd pick up a few rocks and add them to the border.  I must say, I really like the way the rock border turned out!

The stump in the middle is a slice of log Dustin brought home from work after they cut up a bunch of downed willows in Willow Park after a wind storm.  It works great as a stepping stone and I think it really makes the garden look cool. 

I was so happy to have something nice in front of my house.  Little by little, we started seeing more growth and a few more blooms on our plants.  Then, all of the sudden a few weeks ago the flowers just sort of exploded!  They all really just took off, and now the garden is bigger and prettier than ever!  Our lily even bloomed!  I just love having the pretty flowers outside my house.  Look at them now!

This bright purple one is my favorite.  It usually has way more blooms but they only show their pretty faces in the sunshine, and it was a little overcast the day I took these pictures. 

Lovely Garden!