Here are is a “before” photo of what we call the square garden:
This picture was taken in late July–I had put the “Thelma rocks” there ready to build a nice low wall. The garden needed more compost added; low flowers in the back were hidden by a wall of tall phlox and echinacea that seeded itself there without my help. I also wanted fewer but wider paths. Some plants I wanted to move out of there altogether, such as iris that invariably flopped and some overgrown patches of short daylilies. Yesterday was a good day for working outside, so I got all my gardening equipment out and did nothing but work on this garden all day. First I got the wall built: 
But I still had the garden itself to work on. Here’s a picture from the west end, standing on the stone bench, just before I started in:
Not bad, but a bit of a jumble, plenty of grass, no real back edge. And two stunning daylilies, newly planted last year, were blooming but lost in the back. This is a photo I took yesterday of one of them, called “Orange Tremor”:
The other is called “Elizabeth Salter”, and it’s just fantastic. Here’s a photo of it from the internet, and mine looks just like this picture:
This image is from the Oakes Daylilies website. That’s where I got both of these lilies, and they deserve a front row position.
In addition to moving some plants around in the garden and moving some out, this morning I bought two shrubs at the wonderful nursery Willow Tree in Potsdam, and planted them right away. One is a new weigela with pink in the foliage, called “magical rainbow”:
and the other is a “Pinky Winkie” hydrangea:
After all that digging and weeding, here’s the garden, again taken from atop the stone bench:
Conveniently, it’s been raining on and off all day today, and the newly planted shrubs and the transplanted flowers will get watered.
It looks a little bare and shocked, but it will fill in, I’m sure. And there is plenty of room for tulip bulbs!
