Happy Saturday!

This week was such an odd week due to the holiday on Monday and driving back from Regina's on Tuesday. Even though it was a short work week, it was a week from hell with so many people seeming to suffer from HUA Syndrome.*  And due to Friday being the first day of the new month, I had to stay until 7:30 to get all of my new assets set up. My company's fiscal year end is June 30th so June should fly by though with all the year end things that will need to be done.

When I got home last night, I wanted to curl up and knit with the pups, but I forced myself to try and clean and straighten until 10. Once I started, I couldn't stop! I just have my GO and sewing machine to bring upstairs and I will be all unpacked from my trip. I even got pictures of things that I brought home with me so that I can show in another post.

Thursday night, I got a couple of bags of mulch and spread them around the flower beds. Living in a condo with landscapers, they usually lay out all of the mulch in April (this year March due to the mild winter), but since they removed a tree, they didn't mulch that area. Since I got everything planted and have been watering, the ground has been splitting and cracking and I thought that mulch was needed. I got the mulch spread with about an hour to spare before the rain started Thursday night and lasted through most of Friday.

This morning, I took my pruners out and cleaned up some of the plants and I took my camera for some pictures. When I got home from NY, most of the blooms were gone so there is a lot of green while I am waiting for new flowers to bud and bloom.

This is the new bed where the tree was. There is a butterfly bush in the center with a couple of perennials and annuals in the outer part of the bed.



This is the area to the right of my front door. There was a large evergreen bush that my neighbors and I pulled out a couple of weeks ago. It has made a huge difference in the appearance of the whole area! I planted a delphinium and a sky pencil as the main items in the bed and got a bit of coreopsis (I think) from my friend at work. There is a bare space in the bed and what seems to be an empty hanging basket where I put snapdragon seeds. They were just sprouting when I came back from New York so I am hoping to have some actual plants in a couple more weeks!



This is the area to the left of my front door. The large bushes are burning bushes and will get a trim in late June or July by the landscapers - I really hope that they don't do a lot of damage to the flowers when they do this, but it is usually inevitable. :(  I have 2 new astilbes at the top left, a couple of spider plants, fuchsias, New Guinea Impatiens and dianthus (lower left corner).



I love the fuchsias!! My neighbors probably thought I was a little nuts crouching around the flowers in my night pants! lol The fuchsias and the impatiens are blooming like crazy so I am happy that something it working out there!



I have Gerbera Daisies in the new round bed. I was going to get pictures a couple of days after I got everything in the ground, but something came along and ate the flowers off one of the daisy plants and it still doesn't have any new blooms coming up. The other one had 3 flowers when I planted it that finally died and now 2 more are open and growing.



When I was looking for filler, I found these little plants that were pink instead of a green. Of course, I snapped them up! I love them!! I have them in the beds and some in the pots, too. You can see how pink the leaves are in the pot picture.



And lastly, I got these little plants with a soft pink flower and as the flowers age, they turn a bit of a salmony color. There is also plenty of red, purple and cream salvia (back left in picture), but most of the plants are between very good blooms. I trimmed off spent flower stems this morning so I am hoping that will help.




Sorry about all the pictures! I couldn't decide what to leave out!

Right now, I am going to start some laundry and throw the Doodle Bugs quilt on the frame.

* Head Up Ass