Coral bells and half a girlie!

This is a pretty shade plant called (if I recall correctly) "Coral Bells." We have a few in the front called "Foamy Bells," which I think must refer to the flowers. This backyard guy started flowering about three weeks ago. The front yard versions (four from the nursery, two from the farmers' market) haven't shown any inclination to flower, but they are newer.

In the foreground is a kid, pure ham.

Ripening!

We're picking a few tomatos every day now, and the cool ones - the yellow ones, the heirloom ones, the little bitty grape ones - are so much fun. If we could get Peter and the squirrels to quit picking the big, luscious green ones, we'd be set.

Tiger lily success!

Earlier in the spring, on the first 90+ day of the year, we went to the house of a woman in Homewood who had posted on Craigslist that she had plants to give away, on a "you dig" basis. These tiger lilies were among them. We transplanted seven; one died right away, one died after a couple of months, Peter lovingly pulled the tiny buds off another, but the remaining ones have been looking promising for a while. And today the first one bloomed! I'm so happy that they like the sunny bit of garden I picked out for them, which got much sunnier after Mike and his dad took a chainsaw to a dying maple tree soon after we moved in. The chainsaw stopped working when the tree had been reduced to a five-foot stump, which they took out - with the additional help of our brother-in-law Scott - over Thanksgiving two years ago. (We women and children for the most part remained sensibly in the house, because it was cold, and children don't mix well with Chainsaw Fun.) Sadly, we have no photos of Chainsaw Fun, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Before and after in the back yard.

So that's Gracie hamming it up the day of our home inspection. You can see the backyard a bit behind her. We've added plants between the sidewalk and garage to make a shade garden, and we took out the shrub that's directly behind her and to the right in the first picture. That's where our veggie garden is now. I just transplanted the peony you can see behind Grace in the second picture to the front yard, along with the rest of the peonies, which were clumped in the shade at the south end of our yard. To put it nicely, they were not happy to be transplanted. They practiced passive resistance that would have made Ghandi proud, and they look - mostly dead. But mostly dead is not all dead! I hope they'll come up again in the spring, and that the new, sunny location will be better for them.

Daylily roundup.

They're a very common flower, but they're still really beautiful. Ours are blooming very well.

Before and after pictures of our yard.

So the picture with the empty yard, but for half a dozen hostas and some very tired mulch, is the "before." The ones with tidy brick border, the fresh mulch, and the *plants* - those are the "after." When we moved in almost exactly two years ago the front garden was basically bare. We added shrubs the first fall, some perennials last summer, did a ton of transplanting last fall, and spent this spring and summer adding more perennials.

Oh, my gosh...

sunflowers at last! (Peter, quoting from one of our favorite picture books, "The Sunflower House.") Not technically *sunflowers*, they're Black-eyed Susans and purple coneflower, but we're happy anyway. The former actually (mostly) came back as perennials are supposed to, and we bought the latter at a yard sale for $2. At any rate, they bloom.

The first big tomato!

Lots of hue and cry about this one. Grace picked it, Peter was given the right of first fondling, and they carried it triumphantly into the kitchen, where Grace washed and dried it and settled it in a small bowl with a paper towel for cushioning before deciding it would be better in a larger bowl with its cousins, purchased from the farmers' market. Then Peter dressed up in his knight costume (sans sword: that was just trouble) and proceeded to take orders regarding tomato defense from Grace, clearly the mastermind of the project. I am in no way exaggerating: we take these milestones very seriously.

Tomatoes are getting ripe!

Our cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen - we've eaten about half a dozen so far, and they're excellent. We have just one regular tomato that's close to ripe, but the next two weeks should be prime tomato season. The vines are getting huge, and we're staking them with brightly-colored pipe cleaners - easier to use than string, and *so* bright and cheerful.

Hopscotch alongside Marsha's garden

The kids were in sidewalk chalk heaven at our friends Marsha and Lee's house (they are parents to our friend Renata and grandparents to the fabulous Dorothy!) Grace and Peter were very taken with the (quite audible) baby birds and the beautiful roses. Grace observed that Marsha's garden is *much* more fully in bloom than ours is. Sigh, she's right. :p

Historic Kentucky garden...

We visited friends in Kentucky recently and while we were there we went to an ice cream social at an historic home. There were also some historic gardens, which we wandered through while waiting for our turn on a carriage ride. Although it wasn't clear how historic the gardens were in terms of plant selection or arrangement, the only staking materials were wood, and the vegetables were huge and well-tended. It looked more like a cutting garden than a formal garden; there may have been formal gardens closer to the house but we didn't get that far from the ice cream.

Suburban randomness.

This is a family of ducks on their second pass through our yard. The first time Peter and I saw them they were headed determinedly for 183rd Street, which is busy, and we were a little worried. But they either took wing or reversed course, because we saw them again a few minutes later, still intact. The small ducks, recent babies, all had their adult feathers but were much smaller than the adult ducks, the presumptive parents. I'm not sure what the duck maturity timeline is but it was cute to see the big ducks leading the littler ducks in a perfect straight line, off to polish their duck education and (hopefully!) to avoid getting squashed by cars.

What's in bloom!

Our first daylillies bloomed yesterday, and the hydrangia is in its full, wee glory. The salvia (most of it, anyway) has come back from its transplant shock and is looking like it will continue to do well. We're excited for more lillies, both the tiger- and the day-.

Rocks, redux.

We decided to go back to the rock depot/garden center to buy some flagstones to make a little path by the hose bib in the backyard. (Such great words for outdoor water: spigot, sillcock, hose bib...) This place also sells an infinite number of stone figures for the garden - very Narnia-under-the-White-Witch - including this cute Mr. Frog. As we were leaving the house, Peter decided he needed to wear a tutu, despite what you might think about the practicality of such an item. We picked out nice flagstones, tucked a couple of butterfly bushes in, and headed home. Stay tuned for pictures of the finished project...