Nice views

For the past several weeks I've been doing little jobs in the garden. Moving pots out of the garage, potting up new plants, weeding, dragging potted bamboos around, cutting down last year's dead growth, pruning -- you know, gardening.

All of a sudden yesterday I realized that depending on where you gaze, the garden is starting to look pretty nice.

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So I thought I'd take a moment to look around and show you. I'll start on the south side of the house, where what may or may not be a 'Fourth of July' climbing rose is becoming impressive:

Looking at the same rose from the front, toward the backyard:

This bed is looking pretty nice right now, but starts baking later in the summer:

Moved into the backyard now. The patio (shown in the first photo) is to the right of the Japanese maple:

There are two spots where yellow will catch your eye and hold it in my yard. The first is this patch of Pleioblastus viridistriatus bamboo in the southeast corner of my yard:

I don't want to get too close to the pond right now, as I always end up standing there for 10 minutes whenever I do:

This next one is taken from the same spot as the above photo, but looking to the left instead of right:

Moving a few steps forward, standing just to the left of the pink-bloomed 'Nearly Wild' rose from the above photo and turning to the patio on the left:

This is probably my favorite spot in the garden right now, so it's worth a closer look:

The "prairie" bed isn't too impressive yet, but there's plenty going on with the bamboos and the ninebark (both of which will be featured in their own posts soon):

Like how the deer prune those two roses for me? At least they're tall enough to flower on top now where the deer can't (or won't) reach.

The second patch of burn-your-eyes yellow is compliments of this barberry in the northeast corner of the garden, which is starting to attain some size:

There are a few tasks to finish up in the garden, but at least now I know why I spend so much time just standing around looking at everything. (I thought I was just being lazy.)

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