Flowers

I have always been thankful that the original owners of our house must have had a green thumb!  We have a nice variety of flowers and shrubs that add color to the yard from early spring all the way through summer.

Every year Brad threatens to rip these up and burn the hole they come out of.  And every year I tell him that you can't kill a Crepe Myrtle so it would be a wasted effort.  I like certain varieties better than others but these are high maintenance.  We have one on each end of the house and all summer long I'm constantly cutting on them to try to make them look right.

I think Gladioli are another high maintenance flower.  Mine just fall over and lay on the ground.  I'm not sure if I have weak ones or what, but I am not going to the trouble of staking each one of them.  So I try to catch them at the right time and cut them to bring in the house!

Roses are not my favorites but we have two rose bushes that I actually like.  They bloom all summer long and don't take a lot of maintenance.  Probably about once a week I prune them and that seems to keep  them looking ok.  We have a light pink one and a coral colored one.  I like the coral one the best.  It's smaller and requires less overall pruning. The pink one will grow as tall as the house if I let it.

I love our Hydrangea bush!  Unfortunately, it is in full sun and is almost impossible to keep from burning this time of year.  It would be so pretty if it were in a more shady area of the yard.  In the spring I like to cut these and bring them inside.

I think my favorite plant in the yard is our giant Elephant Ear.  I love this thing!!  It doesn't like the heat and must be watered at least once a day or the poor thing will just hang over on the ground.  I've never been able to get a good picture of it and these two aren't any better.  It's so big, it's hard to get a good shot of it.   

I like the Crepe Myrtle behind it better than I do the pink ones.  I don't have to work on it all the time and it looks more like a tree rather than a giant shrub.