Productive Saturday Morning

I was outside just before 7:00 a.m. and spent about 4 hours blissfully tending to my gardens.

I had to remove some Sedumn Autumn Joy from the front border and I used them to finish planting the topsoil garden. In late August I should have a row of pink behind the variegated hostas.

I did some weeding -- removing a lot of bits of grass that was just getting to the seed stage.

Last week we moved two large shrubs from the front border (to get ready for the new porch) and we replanted them.  I am happy to report that after a week, they are both doing very well:

We moved this huge Burning Bush to the back of the rockwall garden. You may remember that I am turning this area into a shrub/ornamental grass garden.  I just planted my first four ornamental grasses today.

See that little red/white tulip in the foreground? There are five of them. Here is a close up looking in the other direction:

I also planted three Cardinal Flower 'fan scarlet' toward the end of one of the Arbor gardens.

Cardinal Flower is a perennial lobelia that grows up to 3 feet tall with scarlet red flowers.  I will show them again when they flower later in the summer.

I noticed my first orange poppy ready to bloom way back in the wooded area.  I took these three pictures during a three hour period:

 It may have opened completely before three hours, but that is when I went to look again.

WOW! Even if you hate orange, you have to at least be amazed by the way Mother Nature opens these poppies.

So far I am having a great Saturday. I hope you are, too.