An Autumn chill has crept into the nights and we have closed up most of the windows in the house to keep the warm daytime air in. The cooler weather is a welcome respite from the heat and humidity that has dogged us for the majority of the summer. On Sunday, after we waved goodbye to the grandparents, a tale for a different day, Shae and I set to work on planting fall perennials and spring bulbs around the house. Frugal Boy moped inside, he had a serious case of the blues and missed Grandma and Grandpa.
Before we rebuilt the porch, it was surrounded by perennial mums. A year and a half of construction had killed off the majority of the plantings surrounding the porch, so we picked up almost 100 bulbs plus 16 quart sized yellow garden mums from Menards. The home improvement store was running an 11% off sale that made the mums an attractive $1.11/ea. Tulip bulbs were 19¢ a piece and giant alliums were 20¢ each.
We spent a couple of hours relocating two dozen hostas from the front of the house to fill in other areas. Then we laid out a two row pattern of hyacinths and tulips for the flower bed in front.
Next Spring we’ll probably need to add in some Summer and Fall color to this flower bed.
Next, we dug a trench around the southern and eastern porch edges to plant giant alliums, tulips, hyacinths, and yellow mums. Mums are a fall perennial so my hope is that as one plant dies off or loses appeal, another will take its place. Experienced gardeners call this layering and know what they are doing. I took a more spray and pray attitude.
With any luck, everything that we planted will come back for years to come.
