I can't believe that it's been a year since my last post. That's really inexcusable, is it not? So here it is April 21, 2012 and really lots of things have happened over the last year. Maybe I will be able to get to some of it and maybe I can keep this posting up. And I know I have probably said that every time I post after a long period of silence.

So let's pretend I've been posting all along and this is just another entry in a blog that I know you have been enjoying reading daily.


In all honesty, I do find it difficult to keep up with some regularity, but I enjoy it when I can. Today was a beautiful day and I got a lot of things done outside. It started off with a visit to the yearly plant sale at the Grayson County Master Gardener's sale in downtown Sherman. They had a great selection and the prices were really good.

This is the selection of what I got. Each one was $1 and I thought that was a good price. Most are very common for this area and are easy to grow. I have Canna Lillies, Four O'clocks, Aster's, Shasta Daisy's and a few others. I have a definite location for most of the plants and am looking forward to getting them situated in their new home.

One of the big jobs today was to clean and prepare a rather large bed on the northwest side of the house. This side gets about 4 to 5 hours of sun and in the summer, the heat can be brutal. Here is a picture of some of the construction of this bed. This construction took place about 18 months ago.

Several years ago, I created a small retaining wall at the corner of the house with block. I didn't really want to spend the money on more block, so I decided to continue the wall with railroad ties and try to make it look half decent.

Unfortunately, these are the only "in progress" pictures I could find, but you can see there was quite a big of work to be done. There is actually a pretty good slope and I had to back fill quite a bit. Just for reference, this was May of 2010.

Now fast forward to April of 2012, the raised bed has been long finished but I never put anything in it, and it became ugly and overgrown. So this year, this was one of my "to do" items. I didn't really know what I wanted to put here, then I found out that a teacher friend at school has kids who are selling plants as an FFA project. They had several different species to choose from, but what caught my eye was lantana. I have found out that these are easy to grow in our yard. And once established they are big and fill in a large bed nicely. So that's what I decided to plant.

 These two pictures are of the bed and the lantanas all in there home. There is more than I need in this bed, I think, but once I see just how much space they will ultimately take up, I will probably move some to another area of the yard.

 We have talked it over and will add some iris's in the back. They bloom early in the spring and will provide a nice bit of color before the lantanas really show off. Then, the iris's will be done for the summer. We will also put some low growing plants in the front.

Here is a nice close up of one of them.