Gardens, finally

I've been meaning to do a quick garden post, since we intended to blog a bit about gardens, as well as books.

I recently hired the daughter of a colleague of mine to come and do some garden work. She's a junior in college. And I made her work outside in the 90+ degree weather! I am so grateful - she dug beds for me that I've been wanting to dig for 5 years!

We also dug a new rain garden. I'm obsessed with rain gardens. We don't have any water problems, but I think they are nifty. The point of them is to have a low bowl shaped area where the rain collects. The plants and low area help absorb the water, preventing too much runoff into storm sewers, parking lots, or houses.

I dug one last year, but we expanded it. Now I have the fun part of deciding which plants to plant. Unlike most of my gardens, I'm actually going to plan out the rain garden. Certain plants like to be in the low area (swamp milkweed and cardnial flower, both of which are barely visible in the background of this picture.) Others prefer to be on the edge, such as blazing star, lupine or little bluestem.

This is a picture of the newly dug area. The Japenese lilac is in the "dry" edge. I'll be filling in the wood chipped area this fall. More pictures then!