Well our Autumn Flowers category is up, there goes summer!

It seemed like a longer summer to me, I think because of setting the clocks for daylight savings time earlier this year – which was lucky since I had new gardens to dig. Well, what is summer after all if not for ane herb garden and a few tomato and hot pepper plants?

When I moved to Affton last fall I brought from my city garden

the lavender, rosemary, marjoram and some thyme.

Also dug up those crazy Indian “stink” lilies and Kent’s Yarrow.

Dug some quick holes and plunked them all in the first week of October last year. When we had those warm days in March I started digging, just got the little 3 X 6 foot patch under the back porch windows done before the freeze came back – luckily my precious transplants made it through that snap!

First there was the clearing of the sod to create the herb garden – have you ever dug a bed in a zoysia lawn? Oh my that’s some back breaking work –

When the end of April brought warm weather again I started digging in earnest . . . probably cleared a 10 x 12 foot patch which somehow came out in the shape of Missouri. Thank goodness my digging spade had just been sharpened!

Picked up a few herb plants at the wkf greenhouse and then hit some local herb society sales for some unusual herbs and hit some estate sales for some (ahem) unusual “things”.

The doll heads on the sticks keep me from poking my eyes out when I bend over to prune or sniff. The folks in the houses on either side of us wondered what kind of wackiness was going on until I explained.

A couple doses of Miracle Grow and before long you couldn’t see the toys for the fullness of the plants. My lemon grass got to 6 feet tall!

Finally, as we close in on the fall season, I have everything pruned back
and under control – soon I’ll be pulling the annuals out and giving everything
a good mulching and spend the next 4 or 5 months planning what shape I’ll
make the bed next year as I intend to make it at least twice as big. Perhaps
I should do Texas.