Worked my tush (and my son/yard slave's too) yesterday. I love gardening. I've been doing it for as long as I can remember 25 something years.

It's kinda like rearranging the furniture in the house except its the yard and its plants and bushes.

I got inspired yesterday. Bought some plants last week, so between those and various ones elsewhere in the yard pulled together a new look for the front bed along our garagedrive coupled with the horseshoe drive past the front of the house.

Now I can't wait for spring to see if it looks as good as my planting makes me imagine. It had been a rather wild cottage garden look with varying pinks of coneflower and queen of the prairie with some culver's roots tossed in and bee balms with asters and turtleheads for latter season interest. I had kinda gotten smitten with the native plant thing about ten years ago. Now I'm switching to a palatte of pinks, purples and blues and yellow periodically. I added a couple varietes of phlox, new cultivars of coneflowers, a gorgeous yellow of daylilies, three different cranesbills, centuri montana's (great blues, I recommend to seek out, grown well) and also two bushes of blue indigos. Have to clean out a purple buddlea in another part of yard so my slave/child can dig this out for me.

Even got my mini rototiller going by pull start yesterday. I'm sure the neighbors (some who work at home thought "oh crap" I'm sure they were enjoying the almost three year break in the droning of my little machine) thought here she goes again.

Now I'm po'd. NOT AS PROMISED the weather gods have failed me AGAIN> I moved my ass bigtime to get this stuff in and watered well (just in case) and I periodically woke all night to hear not a drop. DAMN THEM!!!! I WANT RAIN!!!! I really don't want to believe in global warming but this drought summer is pushing me to my brink.

I still have more to move and plants to edit out of the plan but today I'm going to enlist my 75 year old dad (my mom says-please keep him busy! I'm sure he'd find a golf game somewhere) to help me go get a wonderful combo of compost from old horsemanure coupled with sawdust makes a good slow release fertilizer then I will add the compost then add mulch. Wish I had never told my buddy in master gardening about my secret stash in a horse country area. I think she's told every customer to master gardening ever since! And the best part about it is its free! No wonder they call it "gardener's gold".

This upper 80's weather is sublime when you're doing something like this. I am so used to crappy weather here in the midwest after labor day, but then we do usually get that "autumn summer" thing for a bit but the temps have been really good to keep stuff going and establishing plants to new areas so I'll water extra to help them along and quite b****'n about the lack of free water. More to do till the frost kick in....enjoying the break in this weather 'cept for the lack of rain as promised!! for now...