Starting Over in a New Garden #3

Now that I am done with school...I have a lot more time to work in the yard.  You might remember last week I showed a picture of my stick-tree, my brugmansia.  You can see it has leafed out quite a bit.  I can't wait for the big beautiful blooms.

One of my nasturtium starts I bought at the master gardener sale is really taking off.  My DH calls them 'button-weeds'.  It is sending out little creepers across the pavement.  I am trying to get it to go to the side, instead of in front of the garage, so it doesn't get run over. 

I finally got my hosta bed expanded...I added in the new edging, and put in new mulch around my hostas that I added to the old hosta areas.  You can see most of my hostas are little, compared to theirs.  I also have some very vigorous coral bells going in there.

The sun bed is finally taking off.  My perennial sweet pea vines are up to 6 inches tall.  I hope I get some flowers before the frost comes in the fall (being sarcastic).  My hibiscus are really starting to go, some of them are 18 inches tall now.  Because everything got moved this spring, my stuff is really behind where it usually would be in this warm of a year.

At last week's farmer's market, I bought a century plant.  I put it out in the sun, since it is actually from the desert.  The lady I bought it from said she brought it back with her from California.  Since I was repotting all my aloes yesterday, I put this one in a pot too.  I have to be able to take it inside in the winter, since there is NO way this thing would survive outside in Iowa. 

Here is the jungle...I have never grown potatoes before.  Are they supposed to get so big?!!!! The plants are huge, and they take up a lot of room.  However, I hope to have a lot of potatoes, so we will see if it is worthwhile in the fall.  I worked on weeding my asparagus bed today.  It had gotten a lot of grass in it, and that is pretty much what I will be working on most of this next week, is getting caught up on the weeding.  With all the rain we've had, I haven't been able to keep up at all.

The pea pods are fattening up. Probably in a few weeks I will be harvesting peas.  I love to just go by and pop a pea pod open and eat the peas fresh from the yard. 

I am really surprised how fast the zucchini is growing. They are already 3-4 inches long.  Of course I will probably be cursing the zucchini in another month, but as for now, I am excited.  I just did one zucchini start this year, to try to keep it to a minimum. 

I love all the lilies that were already here!  There are so many of them.  They are huge and fabulous colors. 

The colors are so intense...my favorites are this orange one....

and this fuschia one....They are actually a little redder than the picture shows.  There has to be several hundred blooms, if I counted all the ones that haven't opened up yet. 

The latest addition I've done is adding to my living fence.  I put in three blue willow bushes, and a holly bush.  In between are sunflower seeds and zinnia seeds.  I think I have 5-6 varieties of zinnias this year.  Plus 3-4 kinds of sunflowers.  I need to use some fertilizer on my grasses so they grow faster.  However, even the living wall of grasses won't block out having to listen to my neighbor's horrible rap music.