The Corner Lot gets a corner garden

Just when we thought we thought we were done with adopting my mother's plants, we somehow ended up with two more pickup loads of them.  I always figured that our perennial beds would expand, but this was a little like drinking from a fire hose.  Luckily, my mother can't keep herself away when it comes to building gardens, so she lent us her considerable expertise and shoveling experience.

No, really - she used to be one of Stephen King's landscapers.  Gabe just really likes his books.

We started with a big rock on the corner - Betty had it put there when she realized the snowplows and school buses were shaving off a tiny bit each year.  We enhanced it a little over the past two years surrounding it with wild roses, irises, and daylilies transplanted from various overgrown places around the property, plus a bunch of daffodils and tulips to liven things up in the spring.  It really wasn't much.  Then came the two pickup loads of a wide variety of much more exotic daylilies, a bunch of other stuff I'm sure I'll get educated about eventually, and several kinds of hosta, including this monstrosity:

No, that is not a miniature wheelbarrow.  That is a hosta with elephant ears.

It was a two-weekend process.  Week one involved killing the grass, procuring another pickup load of composted horse manure, a bit of procrastinating, and gutting the dining room.  Weekend two involved a lot of sod removal and digging.  We started at the aforementioned rock on the corner....

The stop sign is a common element of corner lot garden design.

...and expanded it in both directions....

It's tough to get it all in one picture, but now we've got this!

What we really need to get is a new camera that doesn't take blurry pictures.

It extends from almost all the way to the tree behind the street sign, around the corner, past the tree in the front of the lot, to a little beyond the rock steps we built into the bank which will eventually enter a path to the front door.  Boom.  Garden.

I think that's enough garden expansion for one year. This summer is going to be about the inside, which in the past we haven't been able to get around to until fall.  I am determined to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner in a newly-drywalled kitchen (cabinets...we'll see...) and eating it in a completely finished dining room.  There, I said it.  Wish me luck.