Under-the-window Garden

When we moved in, I knew that I wanted a flower bed under our dining room window, but we didn't have time to dig the bed out in the fall, so Kelson planted the bulbs in the middle of the grass. Come summer, I hacked out all of the grass around the plants we had put there. Lamest job ever, considering that our yard has enough rocks to open our own gravel pit. The end result was a beautiful flower garden, though, and it was worth all of the work.

Cute miniature tulips that are hot pink with dark blue centers. 

Early summer plant babies

When they built our house, they demolished a landscaping island in the backyard. We found the pink rosebush somehow still growing in the middle of the yard even after being bulldozed. It is now thriving in the flower garden.

One of Sarah's garden jobs is deadheading. She loves cutting off all of the dead flowers. She might get some live ones occasionally, but that's okay.

Million bells (which looked amazing!), cinquefoil, coreopsis, and wallflowers. We bought a huge load of landscaping rocks and flagstones at a yard sale, which gave me lots of interesting things to put in my garden.

Everything getting bigger! Some of the things you see here are petunias, lupine, marigolds, daylilies, Mexican shell flowers, asters, verbena, and black-eyed susans.

Like in the center garden, we had no idea what half of the things were coming up in this garden. One of the things we were waiting for was a Chinese lantern flower. When this came up, we thought it was it and let it keep growing. It turned into this, which is definitely not a Chinese lantern. It was 3 feet tall with unattractive yellow flowers when we finally pulled it out. I have no idea what it was. Maybe a weed.

lupine

daylilies

Mexican shell flowers

strawflowers

We found these weird bugs on the strawflowers - like a miniature praying mantis. They were eating the little bees that were pollinating the flowers. We didn't like them.

Then we found two of these - big praying mantises. They appeared in September. They were too intriguing to look away from. We saw them catch bees and butterflies. We thought Sarah would freak out, but she found it totally interesting and always wanted to go look for the mantises, which hung out in this plant for a few weeks.

Chris: 1 Year Old!!

I can't believe that our little man is a year old. There have been some parts of this year that have certainly gone slowly (like the months when he woke up 10 times a night and screamed all day), but mostly this year has zoomed by. I put off taking these photos for a couple of weeks in hopes of getting a photo with no bruises, but I'm afraid bonks are a major part of this boy's life right now.

 Chris at 1 Year:

• Constantly on the move. We thought he would be an early walker, but he has decided to be lazy. He crawls around like lightning and is finally starting to stand on his own, but he hasn't attempted any steps yet.
• He has recently developed a love for music and likes to dance.
• Takes his job as a little brother seriously. He steals Sarah's toys and drives her crazy on a regular basis. 
• Mama's boy. He has been very clingy to Mommy lately.
• Not sleeping well at night at all. It's a good thing he is cute.
• 5 teeth, with more on the way.
• His nightly lullaby is "Edelweiss" from the Sound of Music
• He loves reading books and dives off my lap to grab a story at bedtime every night.
• Babbles all day but not really saying any words yet.
• We love him so much!

The other flowers in our yard

To top off the chronicling of our 2017 flower garden, here are a few more random flowers from the yard.

Our pink lady apple tree blooming and being visited by a honey bee. Such a happy spring moment!

I bought this old toolbox, painted it lime green, and filled it with petunias, zinnias, marigolds, salvia, and vinca. It turned out so happy! Unfortunately, I took it to my parents' house over the 4th of July and it got decimated by earwigs. It never quite recovered.

I think these are called apple blossom petunias, and they are some of my favorites. 

We planted nasturtium seeds all along the border of our garden, but they did not grow well. I think we finally got 2 or 3 flowers. 

On the back side of the garden, we planted giant sunflowers. The tallest ones were at least 8 feet. It made me so happy to look out my window at them. It was also hilarious to watch the birds trying to figure out how to perch on the flowers and eat the seeds. We harvested the flower heads after they faded and dried the seeds. 

One of the best things about having so many beautiful flowers in our yard this summer was having plenty to cut and put on my kitchen table. This little bouquet was from the front yard.