As Sweet Flowers: Covered Porch Flowerbed

Even though this weekend was insanely windy, Kevin and I got a lot done in the yard. We planted about 70 of our mail-order perennials, including two of the pre-planned gardens I ordered online. In order to do that, I had to finish weeding the beds, then Kevin rented a tiller from Home Depot and we mixed in compost with our flowerbeds to get the soil ready to plant.

So this is the bed I'm most hopeful for, and it also took the most work. This flowerbed is important because it's in our backyard next to our covered porch/patio, so that's where our new bistro dining set is, and that's where we'll spend a lot of time this summer when we're outside.

Here's the "before" picture:

This is before I weeded the bed. It was full of tiny blue flowers that spring from pea-sized bulbs (that's not grass you see in there--it's bulb flowers, about two strands per bulb). In order to weed it and get the bulb, I had to dig in all 120 square feet with a little trowel and sift the dirt away from the bulbs. My advice--never plant little tiny bulb flowers.

Here's what I hope it looks like when we're all done. This garden is called "August Afternoons," because it will bloom through August (longer than most flowers in the desert), but Kevin and I like to call it the "Afternoon Delight" garden based off of this Arrested Development episode.

This garden didn't take up the whole bed, so I planted some additional coneflowers. We're also going to add a little rock path and two dwarf lilac bushes. Really, I have high hopes about this one.