Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I created and published a lengthy - and winding - post about a potential front-yard garden transformation that is anchored in conifers and contains a potential 'path' through the middle.  In that post, I talked about using a berm in part to create some elevation change and I also sort-of came to the conclusion that I would certainly NEED to start in phases as the project is a multi-year planting (at least for me).  In that post, I concluded that based on some inspiration, I could (in theory) start down by the sidewalk with a small bed and expand from there.   One of the dependencies is the creation of the berm and the location for said berm.  My current thinking is that the berm is created if-and-only-if, I do some excavation for the pizza oven.  I would haul the material that I excavated from the back out to the front and build up a little berm on the driveway side of the front yard, down near the sidewalk.  I bring this all up, because I recently came across a pho

Fall planting continues with a few more plants that required me to 'step out' a little bit from my gardening comfort zone with another flowering perennial.  Yesterday, I shared the three dark-foliage, flowering Midnight Masquerade Pentsemons that I put IB2DWS - extended and talked about how I was drawn to them because of the dark foliage, but bought them based on Roy Diblik's "Appropriate Plant List" .  'Midnight Masquerade' is an improved habit of a few varieties that are included on Roy's list, so I had confidence in adding them to our garden.   I was walking the nursery tables at The Growing Place during their 50% off end-of-the-season sale and found a few things that I've decided to add to the garden. The first one was the Cardoon that I posted about earlier this week.  I noted that I wasn't sure it was going to be hardy for our zone, but my plan is to 'mulch it in' pretty hard with biosolids and leaves and hope for the best. The s