Too hot and humid even early in the morning today to do much outside, but I did get a good start on cleaning up the new Dry Garden (the "mirror image" to the Winter Garden). That new area is mostly blank (except for weeds now!), but I did plant a swath of Dutch iris down along one of the big exposed rocks and a weeping form of Rose of Sharon. Plus some clumps of Garlic Chives which are flowering now and looking very nice. I also put in a couple of clumps of iris. As well, there's a fenced off section containing my pepper plants. I was able to get a lot of the weeding done along the north and west sides and along the rock face where the iris are, but then the heat drove me inside. The weeds I removed from this bed were just too full of seed heads to put in the hen run for compost, so they went to the brush fence. I'd rather not risk composting weed seeds...you need a really hot pile to make sure the seeds are dead and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to achieve that.
I'm really looking forward to getting the entire Dry Garden cleaned up and then doing some planting. I have several pots of red flowered achillea and several pots of silvery leaved artemisia that I'd like to put in there, as well as a lovely big wormwood and, of course, more iris. I'd also like to get some yucca in as well...there's yucca in the Winter Garden and I think having them mirrored in the Dry Garden will really tie the two beds together visually even though they feature completely different "themes."
My dahlia patch is blooming...as I expected, most of the dahlias are the pink Tequila Sunrise types, but my Bishop of Llandulf opened and I have a lovely deep deep purple one blooming that must be one of the rescued tubers from the clearance table at Wal Mart last year. I'm hoping to see a couple of yellows and maybe a white that I remember bloomed last fall right before we had a killing freeze. This year I'm armed with plastic bands to mark the plants ...and I'm going to do that this weekend, banding anything that's in bloom so I know what it is once it's all died back.
I'm hoping to place an order for four new dahlias this weekend. I'm still debating on the colors I want... I'd like to use these in the Driveway Bed, and I'm not sure if I should try to pick up the colors of the flowers that are in there now (blooming in August) so that the color scheme is extended into the fall or go with something totally different that will have real impact in Sept/Oct. I'm leaning toward the latter...
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