The Yuccas are about to bloom

An other heavy flood rain today with tornado warnings. Actually this much rain made all my plants grow like crazy. Both of my yuccas are about to bloom shortly.
The Yucca filamentosa will get spectacular. The stem of the bloom is fat and full of buds.

I can't wait to see it's full beauty. This will be the first time that it blooms.

And the Yucca parviflora is almost ready now. It only has a single stem, because I separated the plant not too long ago and made 7 of it, But it's getting huge!

Yard under water

This is what my yard looks today after we had continous rain showers since over 3 days now. I cannot remember since I live in Alabama to have seen that much rain in a row.

I cannot wait until it stops raining and am prepared to pull weeds the next couple of weeks. My banana trees grew already to an amazing size of 3 feet after all the rain, but the weeds did as well :(

Project: New beds, shade and partial shade

An other project, where I removed big portions of grass was on the left side of the garage. where you enter the back yard.

After I removed all the grass, I used old bricks and rocks that I found to border the beds. I will buy nice border stones later, when I have everything finished. The bed on the right is almost full shade all day long and I had to find different plants that grow in deep shade.
Here is what I planted so far.

In the left bed I mostly planted seeds, so it needs a while until they come up.

In the shade bed I have 2 Philodendron, this deep pink one and

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this pale pink one.

Here is a dark pink Azalea, that has already bloomed earlier this year.

These are Black Cohosh plants (Cimicifuga racemosa), that are 1 year old. They get up to 5 feet tall.

This is a giant Liriope that looks a bit measly right now. The reason why it's still so small after a year, is because it was planted in full sun before and is actually a shade plant. I hope it will recreate now, that it's in the shade bed. It's supposed to get 3-4 feet tall.

I also transplanted a couple of my Albo marginata Hosta.

And bought a couple of ferns This is an Autumn Fern.

and this one a Ghost Fern

Here we have a small Camellia

and a ruby Fringeflower bush, that also has it's blooming time already passed.

Last but not least I planted the ground cover Bowles Vinca with tiny blue blooms, which one cannot see on the picture.

On the other side I have half sun, half shade and could be a bit more creative regarding flowers.

Closest to the fence in the background I have planted some kind of Asparagus, notsure which one, as it popped up vuluntarily last year somewhere in the yeard. It looked quiet nice and got 6 feet tall and very bushy. Smelled a little bit like Fenchel. Actually I am not really sure, if it's an Asparagus at all, but I found it worth to keep. The cauple taller plants you see along the side of the fence are Hollyhocks, just starting to grow. And in the foreground I have planted Four o' clocks. Like you can see, we had lots of rain the last couple of days and everything is soaking wet right now.

Beside the pot above I planted row of Red and green Castor Beans.

This is the first seedling that popped up over night.

On the other side of the bed I have planted some Pallida Irises, Nasturtiums and a little Sabal Palmetto, that I grew from seed 3 years ago. It is still in the seedling stage and not to see on this picture, but I hope this year more palm leaflets will come up. the 2 Palms in the pot are Majestic plams that I had in the garage over winter with only minimal light, that's why they suffered a lot and I had to cut them back. But they grow already back and I hope they will give a bit of a tropical look in this bed. The walkway will be covered with river rocks later on, when I buy the borderstones for the bed.

The oasis is slowly getting in shape

This is one of many pallida Iris beds that I have. Their smell is awesome and fills the air with a sweet tropical cloud of perfume. It reminds me when I was in Jamaica, these strong sweet tropical smells intoxicate all your senses.

Close-up of Pallida Iris. I think it's a princess Beatrix, but am not sure.

Here we have a Red Yucca bloom emerging. Actually I had to separate the Red Yucca, that I got last year. It grew so dense that I could get an other 7 plants out of it by dividing the root ball. Most of them are now getting blooms.

In this shady corner right beside the steps I have planted some Albo marginata Hostas. They also made 10 new plants from one that I got last year.

This is my Blue Ravine Clematis just starting to grow and bloom. I have 2 plants beside an arch and hope they will climb up very soon. They both are still very small and just getting shoots.

My pink butterfly flower, aslcepias incarnata is emerging from the ground also. I planted them last year from seed. They die back in the winter and grow stronger each year. In the back ground you can see one of my 2 syringa vulgaris, french lilac , they have bloomed last year the first time, but I probably cut them back too much. So far no buds yet :(

Here is one of the 2 pineapple plants that I grew last year from the end of a pineapple that I bought in the grocery store for eating. I just laid the cut-off ends on the ground and they developed roots. Got them potted up after a few weeks and kept them indoors during the winter. They both grew to this spectacular size in the winter months. Yesterday was the first day, I brought them out, because they are tropicals and cannot tolerate cool temperatures. I had to repot them in bigger pots, so strong was the root system. Isn't it amazing that this bautiful plant grew from just a pineapple piece that most people throw in the garbage, when they eat pineapples?

Videos from David Hawkins about the private life of plants

Here is the first one about traveling. Enjoy!



Second one, growing



Third one, flowering



Fourth one, Social struggle



Fifth one, Living together



sixth one, Surviving



You can bookmark this page and come back later, if you can't watch them all in one day. I hope you like them as much as I did.

Some more plants, I grew last year

This is a Yucca filamentosa which I planted from seed a few years ago. She grew very quickly, once sprouted and this year I separated her and got 5 more plants out of it, simply by dividing the root ball. I am waitin anxiously for them to set blooms this year, hopefully.

I also found a lot of rain lilies, here and there, even growing on the grass. But once the beds were manicured, they popped up everywhere. I got them all out and transplanted them into one bed, so they can bloom all together.

In my front bed I planted some tropical rose dwarf Cannas, which also mulitplied quickly. One day, when i moved the rocks and stones around, I almost got bitten by a black widow, that was sitting under a flagstone with a few huge eggs hanging on her belly. Ughhh! It scared me to death and i run into the house, got my spider spray, and sprayed her heavily until she didn't move any more.

Isn't this a nasty beast? She was huge! It took me a while to get over this shock, but in the summer they are everywhere here. Basically under each rock, so I always need to be careful and wear gloves while working in the yard.

I also had a voluntary Japanese Morning Glory popping up on my front porch which grew all the way up on the posts. This year I have hundreds of seedlings there, which I need to pull out all the time so they won't over take the bed.
I'll post more pictures tomorrow, but didn't want to miss to insert some videos about the plants secret life from Dawid Hawkins. They impressed me very much. Although very long, they are every minute worth to watch. It gave me an entire new impression about plants and I am now sure, when you talk to your plants nicely, they will recognize it and grow prettier.
I will put the videos, 6 all together into a different post for better finding later.

Some flowers and plants that I had last year

Last year, when the yard was a work in progress, I planted a lot from seed, just to have some color to look at. I knew it wouldn't be permanent, as I had to make a plan for how I wanted my yard to look like in a few years from. I ordered small plants from online nurseries and also bought a lot in local stores.

I got some cheap Gladiolus bulbs in the Dollar store

This is a Lilium crinum, which I brought with me from my old place. It was only one bulb, but it multiplied in less than a few month that much, that I could plant them along the street around the mailbox.

I also planted some Teddy Bear sunflowers from seed in the backyard as well as the tall Autumn beauty sunflowers

What you see in the background on the left and below are Castor Beans

Introduction

When I bought my house in September 2007, there was nothing but grass surrounding it. The first thing that crossed my mind after closing was how I could transform this lawn into my own personal garden oasis. I had thousands of ideas in my head, and soon after I moved in, I began to remove parts of the lawn along the house with my own hands, a shovel and a hand tiller. It was hard work, but eventually there were beds all around the house, which I bordered with flagstones that I bought. I planted ornamental grasses, Cannas, Palms, Banana trees, lilies and some succulents. After weeks of removing the grass, I figured, if I want to get the yard in a shape that I could enjoy, I would have to hire a company that removes the grass professionally. I also had 2 trees in the front yard, which I didn't like, since they took all the sun away and made my living room dark. There was also a huge fig tree right on the side of the house, and I had to remove that one also, because the roots grew already under the slab of the garage and I was afraid, they would crack the foundation. The company that I hired, installed me a privacy fence in the backyard and removed big portions of grass with a sod cutter around the fence and in the middle of the yard, along the driveway and on the right side of the driveway in the front yard.
Once, everything was removed, I hired an other company that bordered the beds with cement curbs. Looked really good and all I had to do now was to fill it up with top soil, sand, riverrocks and mulch. I ordered several truck loads full of soil, after I had laid down a weed barrier. On top of the soil I had a layer of sand, and riverrocks on the left side of the front yard, since that was the bed, where I wanted to get a desert-like appearance. Everything else was covered with topsoil and black mulch.

The front yard was the first that I worked on, because I wanted to look everything nice from the street. This is what my forntyard looked like in the first summer.

Banana Basjoo, Cannas and Lilies

Purple fountain grass, Cannas, and Japanese Morning Glory climbing on porch posts

Pampas grass in the middle of the lawn

Purple fountain grass and Hollyhock on the right