Bushes do grow...

The blue hydrangea is big enough that most of the perennials planted closer to the porch are nearly completely obscured. That's about 4ft of shorter perennials...

And a lot of these guys are good to be split and/or moved out. This is on the NE side of the house - so light shade most of the day. The iris needs moved (and squeezed some more to try to kill more of the baby iris borers), the foamflower will be low - but I love seeing it there in spring, so maybe the hosta should move & be split (I only have one other that color). Lillies are staying, phlox needs thinned to reduce powdery mildew, snow on the mountain (bishop's weed) needs to be removed from the part of the bed by the porch, and the peony just needs the creeping charlie pulled out...

And the white edged hosta is hiding my white hellebore - I think moving the hellebore might be easier than being careful about the hellebore while moving the hosta.

Ever notice that it takes nearly as long to figure out how you want to renovate a bed - as to actually do it?

Garden 'til your arms fall off.

I spent this afternoon edging my perennial flower beds. This means using the edger to pop up the grass about 2 inches out from where the bed is, try to free as much soil as possible from the sod - throw the sod in the cart, and continue until your arms are about to fall off.

The amount of time it takes to remove the soil from the edgings is well spent contemplating what the perennials are about to overtake their neighbors and who needs moved or divided. And the front center bed has a few challenges there. First - it is getting too wide to easily access the center to weed it. Second - it has irises, peonies, lillies, and a shrub in it. Third - most labels are gone from the bed - and I'm seeing a lot of little seedlings that may be a volunteer or a weed. Also my tree peony in this bed, is a lot bigger this year than last - so the perennials I placed halfway between it and the iris - are being overtaken by the tree peony. And there is also a cluster of non-orange daylillies quite close to the peony that will have to be moved. (I need to remember to label the daylillies this year when they bloom.)

The iris are starting to bloom.

But the Merit doesn't seem to have wiped out the borers - even though I applied it much earlier this year - I'm starting to see spotting on the leaves. And I'm wondering what it does to earthworms. So... I guess when my current bag is gone - perhaps I'm done with this method, though my irises have survived better with the Merit - I was hoping that they would be free of problems with an early application...