As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Archives
  • Links
  • About
  • Join GTS Meme
  • Guest Blogger
  • Contact

You are here: Home / Archives for flower bed

Tidying up the garden beds

by Tricia

Join Green Thumb Sunday
Join

Last week I said that it was such a nice day that I thought I’d go out and start cleaning up the front garden beds. Well I did. As much as I could anyway, given that there was still some snow on the lawn and in some of the beds:

IMG_3323

Now do you believe me when I say we’ve got a small front lawn? Look at that, the grass area which is still covered in snow, is smaller than our compact car! It’s actually a good thing that the front boulevard was covered in very deep snow most of the winter because it was really a sight for sore eyes once the snow melted.

IMG_3324

In case you’re wondering the boulevard was still full of hard woody sunflower stalks and the stakes that held the tall flowers up last year.

A few hours in the increasingly cold afternoon and at least three yard waste bags later and the front boulevard looked like this:

IMG_3387

I didn’t take after photos of the front garden beds, but they and the back garden beds were a lot tidier too with most of the leaves that had blown on them removed and some of the old dead foliage cut down.

We even took about 45 minutes and ducked out to Home Depot where we bought the stone edging for the front boulevard. That will help keep grass from growing into the flower bed. I also purchased several new spring plants to fill up some empty shady areas in the garden which I hope to plant later today.

By Tuesday all of the snow was gone and any growth that we’d discovered in the front and back garden beds when we were cleaning on Sunday had pretty much doubled or tripled in size.

Most of our crocus’ are happily blooming away now too:

yellowcrocus

Have you been busy cleaning up your garden and perhaps even planting new plants?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!






Filed Under: Green Thumb Sunday, Home and Lifestyle, Photography, Recreation, Spring Tasks, The neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: Beds, bloom, blooming, boulevard, busy, cleaning garden beds, cold, crocus, flower, flower bed, flowers, foliage, garden, garden bed, garden beds, gardener, Green Thumb, Green Thumb Sunday, grow, growing, GTS, help, home, leaves, life, melting snow, new growth, new plants, old sunflower stalks, photo, plant, planting, plants, purchased, remove leaves, shady area, snow, snow melted, snow on lawn, spring, stalk, Sunflower, tall, winter, yard waste, yard waste bags, yellow

Crazy Squirrel

by Tricia

Earlier today I was upstairs and I happened to look out the window at my garden. Much to my surprise and amusement I saw a grey squirrel running around doing some strange stuff.

You see, yesterday evening I was cleaning out our freezer and I found some disgusting frost bitten hamburger buns. Instead of just throwing them in the garbage I decided to crumble up the bread and threw it on the lawn in the backyard for the birds or whatever else was out there to discover.

I had actually expected the bread pieces to be gone this morning since there are raccoons in the area – but it seems they haven’t been coming into our yard as much as they used to, so most of the bread was still scattered across the lawn this morning.

So, anyway, I was upstairs watching this grey squirrel. He’d run into the backyard and carefully select the piece of bread he wanted. Why he chose one over the other I’m not sure, but he was being selective.

He’d take a piece of bread, run through the back garden flower bed and climb the short fence. From there he’d jump onto the curved wooden trellis we have had clematis vines growing on. In front of that trellis we have this huge ugly silver wire that supports the tall wooden electric pole in our neighbors backyard. I grow a honeysuckle vine on this eye sore of a wire and it disguises it somewhat.

Well, the squirrel climbed up and stuffed his piece of bread between this wire and the the entwined honeysuckle vine. He then climbed down to select another piece of bread and repeated the procedure.

I guess he was storing his bread for later. Like a bird or another squirrel wouldn’t find his stock pile?

Later in the day I saw the same squirrel in the garden. There was still some bread left and he was back to selecting his favorite pieces but this time I think he was storing them in the Rose of Sharon tree or the fence behind it. I couldn’t see clearly, but the branches were sure moving around a lot. I suspected he was stuffing them in the crock of a branch.

What a crazy squirrel. Have you ever seen a squirrel do anything like this? I’m certainly used to them digging little holes in my garden beds to store bread, nuts, peach pits and so on, but I’ve never seen one stuff bread between vines or branches!

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Pets and Wildlife, Recreation, The neighborhood Tagged With: backyard, Beds, birds, branch, bread, buns, cat, Clematis, feed, flower, flower bed, food, garden, garden bed, growing, honeysuckle, honeysuckle vine, my garden, neighbor, neighbors, Raccoon, rose, Rose of Sharon, squirrel, tree, Vine, window

The Color Purple

by Tricia

Join Green Thumb Sunday
Join
My garden is made up of many different colored flowers, but when I look at the photos I’ve taken it seems that there are much more of some color than others. I thought I’d show you a few of my lovely purple flowers today.This flower is grown from a bulb. It’s formally called Liatris and more commonly known as Gay Feather.

Liatris

In my front flower bed I grow a small woody plant called Pervoskia Little Spire. I believe it’s a form of Russian Sage. I think it was a little windy when I took this photo and the flower stalks in the center moved closer to the lense as I shot the photo so the center is slightly out of focus.

If you can’t grow lavender you might try growing Russian Sage or even a nice Salvia as they are similar in appearance (tidier I believe), but they don’t have any scent.

Pervoskia Little Spire

Finally, here’s the common but ever so lovely purple petunia. Need I say more?

Purple petunia

How many purple flowers do you grow?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Filed Under: Blooming today, Green Thumb Sunday, Home and Lifestyle, Photography, Recreation, Summer in the Garden Tagged With: Bulb, flower, flower bed, flowers, garden, gardener, gayfeather, Green Thumb, Green Thumb Sunday, grow, growing, Liatris, my garden, nature, Pervoskia Little Spire, petunia, petunias, photo, plant, purple, purple flowers, Russian sage, salvia, scent, stalk, stalks

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Next Page »

Subscribe


Never miss a post
Subscribe to our RSS feed!
It's FREE! rss feed

Free Newsletter

As the Garden Grows
by Email - FREE!



Follow me on Twitter!

Suggested Sites

Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Top Three Tips For Choosing The Right Patio Furniture For Your Home
  • The 4 Things To Know About Perennial Garden Design
  • Painful Plants: Five Houseplants That Can Cause Injury
  • An Outbreak Shouldn’t Mean A Break Out: 3 Insect Repellants Gentle Enough For Your Skin
  • 5 Ideas To Make Your Garden POP
  • 6 Simple Ways To Make Your Home Eco-Friendly
  • How To Redesign Your Garden To Make It Safe For Your Children
  • Starting A Career As A Professional Gardener
  • 6 Time Saving Tips For Gardening
  • Top Tips On Redesigning Your Garden For The Summer

What they’re Saying

  • Rodhe Stevens on Landscaping Tips On A Limited Budget
  • Edmund Wells on Benefits of using mulch on the garden
  • Surjith on An Outbreak Shouldn’t Mean A Break Out: 3 Insect Repellants Gentle Enough For Your Skin
  • Pamela on The 4 Things To Know About Perennial Garden Design
  • dog on The quality of your pet food is important

Pages

  • About
  • Archives
  • Become a Guest Blogger For As the Garden Grows
  • Blog
  • Categories
  • Contact
  • Disclosure
  • Do Follow Bloggers Blogroll
  • Green Thumb Sunday
  • I am Canadian Blogroll
  • Join GTS Meme
  • Links
  • Privacy Policy
  • Q & A
  • Toronto Bloggers Blogroll
  • What’s Growing

Search

My Garden

Member of
Garden Voices

Tags

backyard Beautiful bloom blooming blooms Bulbs cold Entertainment and Rec flower flowers garden garden bed garden beds gardener gardening green Green Thumb Green Thumb Sunday grow growing GTS home Home and Lifestyle House In The Garden leaves my garden photo photos plant plants purchase rain rose roses Shopping snow spring summer Toronto water weather winter Wordless Wednesday WW

Site Ratings


Visitors since 2006


Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Connect with me

  • Facebook
  • Google Plus
  • Pintrest
  • Twitter
  • RSS

Copyright © 2026 · News Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in