Nature is no match for my hoe

Today began my annual fight to conquer nature by trying to enforce order in the garden. We went out to Pemberton's garden center and got a whole bunch of leafy stuff and bags o' dirt, and spent much of the day digging holes and filling them with plants that will, with luck, survive more than a week.

So we now have, in the front yard: Lavender (winter survivors!), azalea, daylilies, liatris, asters and pansies (plus what I suspect are the gladioli I gave up for dead last year, plus the hardy chrysathemums, now three years old, plus the spiky purple thing whose name I forget, plus, I hope, rudbeckia).

At the previously ignored side of the house: a new rhododendron, along with a newly dug border (The Boy's work) filled with wildflower seeds that I'm determined to germinate, plus lilies-of-the-valley (because they grow fast), plus a couple of elephant ears (to disguise the piles of rubble left over from a cowboy paving job), plus yet more wildflower seeds.

In the back: a cinnamon fern (an Easter gift from my parents, along with the liatris and one of the asters above), and a bunch of plants in our raised-bed herb garden--sage, rosemary, curly mint, lemon thyme, greek oregano, and space for the lime basil I'm starting indoors.

Oh, and a strawberry plant, which I hope will survive both birds and the upstairs neighbor's kid.

Next week, we pick up tomato plants.

Which means future eating.