Warm weather and occasional rain is doing wonders for my garden. Just a couple weeks ago, I was staring at the tiny yellowish balls covering this tree/shrub and wondering what they were all about:
Today, I stepped outside to a million tiny white flowers — they look a lot like spirea, although I’m not certain about that:
I love how there’s always a touch of color around the garden. As one flower fades, another is always ready to show itself off. We rent our home, so we didn’t do any of the planning or planting — I just do my best to identify and care for these beauties.
In the front garden, some red valerian (Centranthus ruber) had taken over a section underneath the window. It was there when we moved in, so up to now I just left it, thinking it was intentional.
Today I was finally brave enough to trust myself (and my discovery that this is a weed that grows everywhere around here if you let it) and take it out. I figured that if it looked terrible, I could just wait a few months and the red valerian would undoubtedly be back. I’m pretty happy with the result — you can really see the pieris that was hiding on the end before:
Both of those shrubs are looking pretty scrawny, so I’m hoping the extra space and light will help liven them up a bit. We also did quite a bit of similar work in the back garden, cutting back shrubs and hedges that have grown an astounding amount in the past year and a half, and uncovering smaller shrubs that were mostly hidden. There is still more to be done with that, but I’ll be sure to take some pictures and share them once we’ve made more progress.
Expat Linguist 