In which we do yard work. And by we I mean my brother.

My knee is still acting up. I did one one hour class on Saturday, half step and half interval weights, and am still regretting it. :-(

Jack has been over here a lot. Bruce and I discussed it, and as long as he's not actively using we're fine with him being around or sleeping on the couch at night. He eats a lot, but I am certainly getting more than my money's worth out of him in yardwork. The backyard here is huge, it runs right down a slope to a drop off and dad has done no yard work in about the past four years. All the flowerbeds were overgrown, everything needed new edging, and it just looked horrible. And, as usual, I forgot to take "before" pictures. So here are the afters:

As much of my backyard as fits in one picture:

The top bed to the right of the stairs has the birdfeeder, and now has seven foxglove plants. One my grandmother planted when my parents bought a house forty years ago and the other six I bought.

The lower bed on that side has all the shade plants and groundcover: pachysandra, hostia, and three new bleeding hearts that still need planted.

The other side of the backyard from the porch:
(We painted the fence and the stair railings. They had been sustained a really ugly dark brown about 10 years ago, and just looked old, tired, and junky. This was a huge facelift, and hopefully should help the wood last a few more years by keeping the damp out.)

The next two pictures are of the other side taken from the backyard, facing the house. There is a huge old-fashioned purple azalea which is always been there (We had to remove a volunteer offshoot from the upper bed). Next are five dwarf phloxes: pink, white, purple, white with pink centers, and fuschia. The far end of the bed has reblooming daylilies. Two clumps of gold Stella d'oros and three mauve with purple centers.

These are almost before pictures, because you can see how the upper bed is completely overgrown.

And here are in progress pictures of the upper bed. I got one apricot Rose, two Silvermound artemisia, and three ice plants. Two of the ice plants are the regular magenta, but one is supposed to be bright orange. Not that I've seen any flowers on it yet.

And I found these little cuties at the nursery today. They are called balloon flowers, are only about 8 inches tall, and are so cute I want to pinch their nonexistent cheeks.

So flist, do any of you garden? I am so new at this.

What kind of flowers do you all like? I am finding my taste is pretty old-fashioned. Apparently foxgloves, phloxes, delphiniums and the like are not what the cool kids are planting.

Any suggestions for what else I should do in this monster yard? I did plant an old-fashioned Lilac bush on the far left facing away from the house, near the neighbor's fence. There is a big clump of gold and maroon irises about halfway back in the middle of the yard as well. Before my dad and brother cleaned the yard out about eight years ago that was all woods and the iris rhizomes were ones my mother had dug out of the yard and thrown back there to get rid of.

I don't do annuals though. Life is too short.