I've always felt the perfect garden should be interesting year-round. That's pretty tricky to do—even my “three-season” garden really only has much going on from April–September: a mere six months. During spring and “fall” (late summer really) the dominant colors are purple and yellow, with touches of white.

So when these pictures were taken, the Japanese anemone, perennial sunflowers, and rudbeckia (black eyed susans) and goldenrods were going full bore, the ironweed was at peak or just past and the new england asters were starting to peak. (Now, exactly two weeks later, they're at peak.)

Last year we had a drought, which was lovely for sitting on the deck and doing beadwork, because there were hardly any mosquitoes. This year we had so much rain I didn't have to water until I started transplanting, this fall. The garden got very weedy 2010–2011, and this year I accepted that I would have to get very aggressive to get things under control—so pretty much all the really weedy spready stuff is out.

More perennial sunflowers (which I'd like to replace with grey-headed coneflowers...someday), framed by red monarda (beebalm) seedheads and some early blooming new england aster.

But I took pix first;)

This mound of stuff is supposedly my rain garden—the trench I dug on the north side of the property to keep all the water from spring storms from pouring into the neighbor's property. Ze reported it worked reasonably well, but the acid test will be next year. This was all very pretty, but some of the less agressive stuff, such as the veronica or milkweed, was lost in the shuffle.

In fact, the Japanese anemone in the last shot now really gets too much sun, since the neighbor removed some large shrubs, necessitated by the new fence (which is very handsome, and means I can get rid of the dorky concrete blocks and utterly stupid ‘farm fence’ on my side.) This lot, however, gets almost exactly the right amount of sun, seldom needs watering. They're just overgrowing the astilbes and woodland geranium, that's all.

Because of the unusual levels of rain, everything grew (and flowered) spectacularly this year. (Well, except the hugelkulture/produce mound-garden, which was surrounded by sunflowers, and eaten up by groundhogs.) Next year will be the real test of my various rearrangements. New for 2014—plans for large sections of garden that are not two-meters-plus in height! Seeing how stuff will come out is what makes perennial gardening so endlessly fascinating.

18jul20: repaired cation on 2nd photo; added lensbaby tag

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn