Gardening update

This is my new hobby--gardening, or rather "flowering". Hopefully I will soon have more blooming flowers to show, but so far most of them are being rather slow.

This season we have focused on trimming down our bushes and shrubs, adding bark mulch (Tim was a huge help on this), and getting some perennials started. Oh, and trying to control all the bugs and weeds. I can't figure out why the bugs just won't eat the weeds instead of feasting on my cute little new plants! I've faithfully sprayed all my flowers and roses and treated the new bark mulch. Then last week I was checking this ugly bush/tree in our backyard and it was completely infested with bugs-aphids, black and yellow caterpillar/worms/bugs/beatle-ish things, ladybugs, spiders, ants, you name it! It was not worth spraying, considering its ugliness. So today we cut it down and I'm hoping to get it to grow back healthy and pretty, with some help from some savvy pruning and good bugspray. But it might take a few years.

The first rose blossoms.

This is from April--after I trimmed the shrubs, pruned the roses, and cleaned up the weeds, but before any of the good stuff started growing or any of the flowers were planted.

Here is the same area last week--hopefully more of the flowers will start to bloom soon, thanks to the recent rain. It's hard to see, but I have roses, daisies (not blooming yet), petunias, zinnias, violas, phlox (done blooming), and dianthus.