Trees

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October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came.
The Chestnuts, Oaks and Maples,
And leaves of every name.

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The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

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The Chestnuts came in yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses maple
In scarlet looked their best.

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All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by;
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.

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The leaves are changing early this year.

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Views from my yard yesterday and today, poem is “October’s Party” by George Cooper.

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A Wider View

I have a lot of garden areas here and lots of well-established flower beds in the front yard and around the house. These beds are all well-established with mostly perennials and I have to do very little to them other than watering during dry spells and deadheading. However, the one area that I do have a lot to do in and the one we’ve worked on the most this year is across the driveway where the yard meets the woods. This entire sloping section of land used to be nothing but trees and shrubs.

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Over the past few years, we have had many trees taken down and have slowly cleared more and more of it and now have quite a large area of flower beds, lawn, and a creek bed that goes through the middle of it. I have smaller flower beds planted alongside the creek and a new garden “entrance” here over a small bridge. This is also where the gazebo is, right at the edge of the woods, along with the “Stump Bed”, the “Slope Bed”, and the “Secret Garden” is also here (though not visible in these photos).

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Obviously, nothing is formal in our yard, there are no straight lines and everything is in the “cottage garden” style. (Meaning every bed is crammed full of plants with every color in the rainbow!) We use rocks as edging for everything because I like the look and we have so many of them. Everything is on a slope. We live in the mountains and there is very little flat land here! :) It’s far from being finished, and I’m sure I’ll be enlarging the existing beds and even adding more flower beds and borders eventually, but here are a few photos of the progress so far on just one side of the creek.

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Gazebo and Coleus Bed

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New arch over bridge and creek into garden area

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This is part of my spring bulb bed. I mulched over it, added a few plants, and some containers for summer. This is to the right of the arch and bridge, the rocks are a natural outcropping.

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Another angle of same view.

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Left side of arch (sorry for the crooked camera angle)

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From pathway behind gazebo.

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The Slope Bed. The pathway goes through the secret garden (not visible), around the gazebo and slope bed and then into the woods. It eventually winds up and around the mountain and back down into our back yard on the opposite side of our property.

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There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything we want to do in our yard, but we try to do one small project at at time and eventually, we will connect them all and get the gardens the way we want them… I hope. :)

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A Shady Spot

This is a shady spot in the woods behind the gazebo, it’s a new favorite place to sit and watch the birds… lately though, it’s too hot to stay for long, even in the shade of the trees.

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Bench in the woods at gazebo pathway

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Redtip and Dogwoods

The woods are filled with white clouds as the native dogwood trees reached peak bloom this past week. The one in the front yard blooms above a redtip photinia shrub. The new red growth of this evergreen shrub stands out nicely under the white blooms of the dogwood tree. Click any photo to enlarge.

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Redtip and Dogwood

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Dogwood blooms up close

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