Butterfly Bushes

I dug out my Garden Journal & found out I bought 3 of these in Nov 05. They were gallon size & so nice & small when I bought them--who knew! I love these things, but oh my, the work! Every mid winter I prune them to 1/3 the size they are now. That's not a huge job, but because we recycle all my pruning, I cut everything in small pieces. Each of these bushes takes about 2-3 hours to completely prune. These bushes truly live up to their name---I see all kinds of varieties of butterflies all during the blooming season enjoying these bushes. Last year there was a butterfly migration through California. I didn't think much about it & didn't really read the article in the paper. One day I looked out my window & saw at least 100 butterflies flying by. It was spectacular---so once again, well worth the work.

The Circle-Part B

Well-I didn't get all my pics posted yesterday. Just flat out ran out of time. Here's the rest of them. Wow! AMBER! How exciting to see a comment on my blog---lol! Thnx, sweet DIL!

The Circle in parts-A

Today I just want to post several pics of different areas of The Circle. That's it!

Block & Dirt Project

Two years ago I decided our front yard needed "something" so I went out with my chalk & string & made a circle. It seemed like it would be a simple project. By the time I finished enlarging the circle & adding a smaller inner circle---wellllll, as the way of most things I do, the visual is different from what I had in mind! Here's what it looks like today
In the 2 years that this has been completed it has undergone several changes. A wonderful dance friend gave me lots & lots of day lilies from her yard which I planted along the inside of the larger circle. The first year, they were beautiful!! This year they were taking over so out they came & FOUR barrels full went to my next door neighbor. During THIS project I managed to get my first bee sting---but that's another story. I'm still wanting to put some kind of a path out to The Circle, but that's for another time.
So why is this called the Block & Dirt Project? My husband teaches Algebra & Geometry & gave his students the assignment to figure out how much weight he & I hauled in doing this project. I'll get the figures from him & post those in the next post.
My friend in Los Angeles, Lisa, says her husband can't understand how I can possibly let that poor "lawn" look the way it does. We live in California about 100 miles south of the Oregon border & have high triple digit temps for several weeks in the summer so it's either the pool or the "lawn" that gets the water!
Tomorrow I'm going to post pictures of the specific parts of The Circle, as I call it, because I know the cold weather is soon going to take many of those plants to bed for the winter.