First year sleep, second year creep, third year leap

This is the third summer for my landscape redo. Last year I wasn't very happy with how it looked, but now it is coming into its own. The perennials are denser and taller, the shrubs bigger and bushier, the trees leafier and branchier. I'm glad I didn't do anything drastic to change things up.

But there are some changes. I moved a few clumps of hairy beardtongue from under the reach of the Japanese maple to the backyard, around the ninebark. Some clumps of nodding onion are now near the serviceberry. The heuchera 'Electra' I purchased is filling the new gaps in the front bed; hope it will be able to compete with its wilder cousins. It's all an experiment.

Another experiment is to try to control the aromatic aster by cutting it back by half. The idea is to keep it from flopping. The seedlings are fairly easy to manage by pulling. (I wish the landscaper had provided me with instructions for caring for the new plants beyond "water them".)

The sand and topsoil that I purchased to fill in the wet areas in the back lawn got rained on before I could mix and spread it, so it was rather clumpy when I finally did so. More is needed, but next time I will keep it dry beforehand. I threw some clover seed over the clumps.

Then there is the neverending weeding. The front beds are getting dense enough to discourage weeds, so not so bad. Clover, dandelions, and quackgrass are creeping into the rain garden, though. Boo. Removing suckers from around trees makes things look tidier.

I'm not a fan of iris (other than to admire it in other people's yards), but some came with the house. I've given a lot of it away over the years, but there is still a colony on the north side of the garage where it always flops and rarely blooms. This year is an exception.

A catbird has been hanging around the nearly-empty sunflower feeder, chasing away the sparrows. And the other day I spotted a cedar waxwing in the (dead) tulip tree, a rare sighting.

While checking the plant list I keep on this blog, I searched on the variety of chokeberry bushes I have, Aronia melanocarpa 'UCONNAM166'. They have borne no fruit, and apparently they never will. I'm sure the landscaper selected this variety because it stays compact, but I'm disappointed there will be no berries. It also looks like they are trying to spread. That's two strikes against it.