Front Porch Plants

At long last, we finally started planting live shrubs in front of Chesterley instead of only ripping out all the old overgrown stuff. Moose posed in a few of the photos I took last weekend. Thus far we've installed two azaleas, two boxwoods, and, as of yesterday, the yellow daylilies (how do you SPELL that?) that were sitting in the ugly black pot in these shots. We still have a way to go: adding purple coneflowers in the gap between the lilies and the boxwood on the left, and we're considering a border of lariope around the edge. Not sure about that, though. Mulch will be added when it's done. So, it's a work in progress, but we're glad it's in progress.

There were several tortured pine shrubs (tortured by being shaped into odd little shapes) which were sitting in a bunch of old mulch. When we cleared out this bed, we removed the mulch to find trash. I'm not kidding. Garbage. Literally. The original owners must have smoked cigarettes with the plastic cigarette holders and simply dumped them into the shrubs. We also found a gazillion old plastic toy soldiers and cars. A real treasure trove, lemme tellya. In addition, they apparently had low-voltage lighting because we found wire and even a couple of light bulbs. Our next-door neighbors have lived here over 20 years. I asked, "Do you recall there being lights in that flower bed?" and a look of recollection came over their faces: "Yes! Must have been at least 10 years ago!" I showed them the worn out old lights and the frayed wire that was still in the bed, and we all had a good laugh.