lovely leaves

Flowers are usually the main attraction where plants are concerned, but leaves are really even more important.  You can count on flowers to provide the razzle dazzle for a few weeks at most, but leaves are there for the whole season, and they add their own charm.

With this geranium, the orange flowers are not even noticed.
It's all about those leaves in white, maroon, red, and green.

The feathery texture of these ostrich ferns are a great contrast with  the more solid  hosta

Variagated with silver, this lamium is stunning even without the purple flowers

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I nursed this Blackie sweet potato vine through the winter, and it is a  great addition to a planter.

Leaves from the purple smoke bush are a great contrast with the creeping Jenny and the wild strawberries.

This rose is old - I brought it with me from Ontario 18 years ago.  It always seemed healthy until this year.  The leaves look sickly, like something is sucking out their insides.
But within a few days, this plant was covered with pink flowers, so I guess it's ok.

a rainbow of irises

Bearded irises are in their glory in my garden at the moment.  Check out this rainbow of colours!
Each flower lasts only a day or two, but a lower bud is waiting in the wings, ready to dazzle us all over again.

How many other brown flowers are there?  This beauty proves that brown isn't dull..

Two-tone purple, with velvety falls and a yellow beard

I bought this one last year.  It was already in bloom, which forced me to get it.

This is an older cultivar, more transparent and not as vibrant, but still lovely

this one has leaves striped with cream and it smells like lemons

This is a Dutch iris, which grows from a small bulb planted in the fall.

a beautiful dark blue, dusted with white

before and after

It all started out when I noticed that the tiny white pines I dug out of the back woods a few years ago are now about 15 feet tall and casting a shadow on all the plants that once looked so good around them.  I had no room to put these poor light-starved plants in a better spot, so I started digging to make more flower bed space.  Here's the before:

Here's the trapped plants:  iris, day lily, and other sun lovers that stopped blooming:

As I did the back-breaking labour of taking off the sod and wheeling it away, I found buried treasure.  An arrow, shot at least 10 years ago by my son Dylan, had been covered like archeological ruins.

After days of digging out the sod and shaping the curves, I had an expanded bed with lots of space, which was quickly filled by transplants from my other bursting at the seams beds.

I'm pretty happy with the result.  Who wants all that grass anyways?