Flower Stroll

Sunday we got a good rainstorm so last evening I had to do a walk-around and spray the perennials with Repels-All to keep the deer at bay.  It really works, in conjunction with Milorganite, to keep the hosta and day lilies from being eaten down to nothing.  In fact, I was working in the garden when my husband came back and said there was a couple walking past on the road who wanted to know how we kept the deer from eating everything.  So I jotted down what I used and where I get it.  My husband told him "you have to do it almost every night until you get them trained".  

Few people have the dedication it takes to fight determined city deer.

Anyway, everything was so beautiful that as I sprayed, I took pictures.

When we put in the fire pit we relocated two of our outlying whiskey barrel planters over there where they would be enjoyed more often.  Before we relocated them I had planted my spare sweet potato slips in them because I didn't want to spend as much on annuals this year and I didn't want to waste good space on non-food items.  

So when we moved them to a main seating area, I really didn't have anything to plant in them and I'd already finished my main shopping for annuals.  So I put a fountain grass in each one to fill it out.  For awhile it looked like the sweet potatoes weren't going to cooperate, but over the past few weeks they have grown quite a bit.  There are also petunias volunteering from a color scheme I planted three or more years ago.  I have a plan for these planters next year, but my leftover odds and ends turned out pretty well.

Below is one of my two main garden planters of Sweet Potatoes.  

The plants look amazing.  I hope there are tubers under there too and not just plant!

Last fall I spread several hundred milkweed seeds.  This spring I also dug up and relocated several roots from the volunteer plants I can't seem to eradicate from the front landscape bed.  The rooted plants are stunted because milkweed doesn't transplant at all well but are taking hold.  And now I see that I have baby plants started from the seeds.  I hope to get the milkweed established in two or three places and out of the front plantings.  The darn thing spreads on roots like horseradish, and is apparently just as hard to get rid of!

Please excuse the variety of "weeds".  These are in a "naturalized" area.

Sometimes you just have to let nature do its thing.