We have many stories about the owners before us; I cannot count the number of ‘full sun’ perennials I found planted in...partial to complete shade. Sometimes there would be two or three plastic markers in a given spot, little grave markers counting up the failures to learn. These tree peonies only really took off this year, after two years of sun granted them by the necessity of removing two large, ant-infested silver maples. I particularly loved the striped specimen.

This guy was into ponds, and left a little mosquito breeding hole at the back of the property. But as the groundhog that's been eating my echinacea and coreopsis had the [mis]fortune to drown in that little pool today, I'll think I shall have to splurge on some plants for a little water garden for it. And that makes two things he did right. Sort of.

There are three tree peonies on the property; magenta, white, and magenta and white striped. I quite like this one, though it points up a weirdness with my new camera, which tends to drop out the right most 25% of the histogram—hmm, there's something to learn here besides the use of Gimp's color curves tool to brighten highlights (useful as that feature surely is...)

I managed to transplant a few things from my old garden, including purple iris, for which I now have enough sun. Yay!

I wasn't too certain about tulips, cuz of all the critturs; but I planted them very deep (in my central raised bed, which looks like a leafy compost pile) and bracketed with daffs. Seems to have worked. This shot was made approximately a week or 10 days before the others; the orangey red tulip (not to mention the grape hyacinth) showcased here was done by the time the yellow and red stripey, below, showed up.

I specially liked these dramatically striped tulips—not bad for a cheapie test bag of bulbs, to see if I could defeat the critturs. Now my next project is to finish catching the groundhog kits (they're being released in some nearby woods) & block up that burrow underneath the shed before another beastie moves in.