Gardening Vers. 2.0

Our first go at a summer garden produced mixed results. Our impatients and dusty miller are doing really well, as are our boxes of petunias - but the squirrels have decimated the rest. We've completely given up hope of ever producing usable herbs. And our begonias and New Guinea impatients received pretty rough treatment as well. We're left with only one remaining begonia.

With guests arriving soon, we both felt that our garden was an embarrassment. It looked positively empty. So off we trotted to the nursery to see what we could find to fill it up.

There wasn't much left in terms of annuals, though. So the choice was pretty much made for us: we needed to try our hand at perennials. We scouted around quite a bit to find some flowering plants that would thrive in our partly shaded flower beds. And after much looking we finally found a few that suited our needs. We picked up:

• Bugbane - a taller plant that flowers in the early fall. The tag that came with the plant promised "great fall colour" and that sold us.
• Yellow Waxbells - which we've planted in front of the Bugbane. They won't grow as tall and they flower in August/September with a pretty yellow flower.
• Two varieties of Heuchera - one is called "Tiramisu" (which has a greeny/yellow colour) and one is called "Pinot Gris" (which has more purple to it). Clearly we chose those plants based on food preferences. Just kidding - there was a nice lady at the nursery who recommended them to us for shady areas. They grow only about 1/3 as tall as the others and they also flower between August and October.
  

And of course, the best part is that, being perennials, we'll never have to re-plant. We spoke to the people at the nursery and they told us all our choices were hardy plants and they told us what has to be done before snowfall (very little) - so we're good to go. Along with our existing hydrangeas, we should have a nice recurring garden come the spring... assuming we can keep the squirrels at bay.

To that end, we picked up a bottle of  Critter Ridder - not a poison, just a substance they don't like. Take that, you blasted pests!