I like this photo as it shows a continuum of what we are doing with our garden.

flowers and grasses. there is some soil visible

The flowers are Black Eyed Susans and the grasses are Side Oats Gramma. Both species were started from seed in March 2020. I thought we had lost all the Black Eyed Susans but I didn’t realize they self-seeded as annuals. As I was reworking the garden this year, I started moving the grass and kept wondering what the little plants were with the fuzzy leaves. A quick check of my app showed them to be the missing flowers. After weeding out many of them, I then started moving the seedlings and interspersing them with the grasses. They are now blooming nicely and more seedlings are coming up. The Side Oats Gramma are also fascinating - look carefully at the the photo and you will see the oats literally hanging on the side of the flower stem.

The burgundy bush in the background is a Ninebark - beautiful colour all season.

The sticks that are visible behind the flowers are holding up tomato plants, started from seed this past spring. The idea is to keep the tomato bed weeded this summer to eliminate any perennial weeds like twitch grass. Next year, we will plant more Echinacea here and in theory, will self-propagate in a weed-free area.

The tall white flowers in the top right of the photo are radishes. We had a drought early in our growing season and then lots of rain. Unfortunately, the radishes struggled through the drought and then grew way too fast once the rain hit. I think we might have picked one or two radishes before they were over-ripe.