the flower garden

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to the Gardener who planted and cared for this garden before we bought the house:

i am sorry, truly sorry, that i allowed your beautiful flower garden to come to this. if you ever saw the state of the garden you would probably close your eyes and run away blindly. if it is any consolation, i know how bad it is... i just wanted to focus on getting a vegetable garden going this year so i could begin to feed my family with fresh homegrown vegetables and herbs. now that that is going well i promise to focus on the flower garden. i will spend hours a day pulling weeds. i will plant more ground cover and perennials and i will make sure they can survive under the black walnut tree. and i promise, PROMISE to mulch next spring, and summer, and fall and even winter if there is no snow on the ground.

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well, now that i got that out of the way i can show some pictures of the progress. today i pulled weeds until i almost couldn't see what i was pulling out anymore. i did accidentally pull out a few perennials but hopefully i got them back in the ground before there was too much damage done. there are some things that i am just unsure of whether they are weeds or actual flowers but i will decide what to do with those tomorrow in the light of day. it was fun to uncover things as i went along. the hostas are beautiful and going strong. the ferns looked a little choked but hopefully will take off now that they can breath. those spotty plants (not sure what they're called) are everywhere and really pretty. and there is some pachysandra, which i was planning on planting beforehand thinking it would be a great ground cover. though i am a little discouraged by the fact that it doesn't seem to be covering much ground. i'm also planning to move some things around but that will probably take me weeks...and weeks. 

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on another note, the sunny flower garden doesn't have nearly the amount of weeds as the shady garden and is looking really beautiful. these are photos from a few weeks ago. the lilies are gone but the black eyed susans and purple coneflowers are still going strong.