Today I worked on the shade garden against the north side of the house. It was much easier to use the fork to lift the top layer of soil and to unsettle the weeds than it was to pull the "weedlings" out by hand. Although I had mapped out where everything was supposed to go, I only loosely followed the plan and altered it when I thought it would look better. Some of the seedlings that went out are

Arctic Primroses
Drumstick Primrose
Johnny Jump Ups
Pansy Plentifall

I forgot to add sweet woodruff. Hopefully I will remember to add them tomorrow. I also added some of these to the culinary shade garden that I worked on yesterday.

To my surprise, I found that the bed had already been edged with large red bricks now covered over with grass. The bricks appear to be heavy and well worn, so maybe it was installed a while ago. I had brought some edging material, but the bricks would look so much better. After all the work with tilling the soil, working in a bag of compost and planting, I was too tired to clean up the edges. Maybe tomorrow I will have a bit more time.

I also have to look into getting larger plants to help landscape the bed. I hope to include some ferns, hostas, astilbes and azaleas. Bowman Hill Flower Preserve is holding their annual plant sale through this weekend. I think I would like to go and pick out a few plants: some ferns, baptisa, bleeding heart, Jacob's ladder.

I haven't added the mulch yet, so maybe I will do it this weekend.