The yard...now don't be too shocked!

Thought I would share the perennial bed on the right side of our yard.  In Canada, we call the back garden the "yard". I know that in some other countries that term does not relate to blooms and boughs...at least not in the sense of them being still alive and growing!

This side of the garden shares a fence with Lisa, the friend that I scrapbook and card make with on Wednesday evenings. You can see another one of DH's projects here. Lisa's husband (who is very handy and a perfectionist at any project) and my DH replaced some panels on the fence. It will be my job to sit and paint it after we have had a couple weeks of hot, dry weather. DH was very glad to have Ken's help as DH is not handy that way.

This is the sunnier side of my garden as the two story garden shed and a couple of really tall trees provide dappled shade over on the left side of the garden that I showed you a couple of days ago. As you can see, the extra sunshine has this side full of blooms at the moment.

This is the last almost spent blooms of the forget-me-nots but I like to leave of few till the bitter end so they drop their seeds for next year.

Here is my favourite plant in the garden...a black hellebore. Sadly, it has faded too and now looks a dusky dark purple...but the blooms were black for many weeks.

We had started to lift and divide the perennials on this side too, but had to stop as the plants grew too big to continue. We will resume our project in the Fall.  Just thought I would show you an example of how the whole garden beds used to look. Here you can see a poor daylily growing up through another plant that is about 3 1/2  feet (or more) across and 4 feet deep. Other plants are even growing right up to the edges of that huge one. The whole garden was like that on both sides so we have removed a lot of plants. Some that we have put aside for my sister are they're size of garbage cans!

Now I do like the kind of garden where you hardly see any soil...I like the foliage tips to be almost touching. DH on the other hand likes a good separation between the plants. It is a lot of work every year or two to maintain that almost touching look and  I used to do all of that.  Since my arthritis and my back got really bad and then the car accident,  I just haven't been able to keep up the task. DH is doing the bulk of the garden work so  I have taken his lead and agreed to try his style. So far, I have decided I quite like what he has planned.

We will be taking out a bit of the bed and extending the lawn on this side too. Slowly but surely, the bed sizes will get reduced. This one is about 12 deep I think and I not sure how long...maybe 25 feet or more...too much work for this aging couple!
Down at the bottom of the bed, we had this silly area that jutted into the patio area. It was hard to water and had to be done by hand. We have removed all the plants completely and integrated them into other areas. For now DH has set a bird bath on a cement circle and thrown down the cement rabbits  that the grandchildren love. We have left it like that till we decide if we will put in a water feature there.

It looks a little weird and bare, but hey ho, it will do for now. Well not quite bare...that is a hen and chicks sitting on top of the bird bath! We had 2 couples over for lunch on the patio on Wednesday and they brought me that little beauty as a hostess gift...lucky me! The pots on the hot tub slab are for the plant sale...sadly there is not hot tub...but a girl can dream...right?

At the far back on the left of the yard, you get another peek of the garden shed and the houses behind me. Luckily there is a canopy of tree branches that obscure most of them when we are in the seating area. In fact, I think you can only see the one on the left side from sanding at this spot...the previous owner built the shed 2 storieshigh to block them out from the dining area!!!
But what is all that stuff behind the shed? And why are there empty pots hiding at the back?

Well...it's the leftover plants from our toils...part of the 300 we dug out..And a couple of pots we were too tired to fill...hahahaha

Well, maybe only 250ish now...we had friends take a few, a bunch went to the garden club raffle last night and the rest are going in our plant sale this Saturday. My sister is taking whatever is left over on Sunday...she has fingers crossed for rain and no buyers...teeeheee
Here is a shot of some more of the  pots. I tucked them into the shaded beds under the trees...till that space got used up and then tucked them behind the shed where they got a little shade from the fence.Others are even tucked down the sides of the house! DH will be moving them all into the front garden today to set up for the sale...don't envy him that job!

I must say that posting all these pictures has really pointed out how much we need to work on our lawn...it is in a bit of a sorry state!
Well, that's it for me today. Hope you enjoyed the tour...
Off to finish writing up the name tags...150 done, 100 plus to go!!!

4:30 pm and a wee update...DH set up all the plants out front, while I sat in the garage with the door up and wrote more tags. While we were doing that 2 ladies from garden club dropped by and bought 18 more plants...Yay! The numbers are slowly dropping...Fingers crossed that tomorrow brings us lots more buyers!!!