Karen To The Rescue!

I know I've written about her before, but I have this friend, Karen. In addition to being my bestest parenting friend and confidant, she is also a Master Gardener--very useful for someone like me, with the absolute opposite of a "green thumb." Anyway, when Sophie died, we put in a garden for her--simple, a tree, a stone with a plaque, some flowers and, that fall, a handful of bulbs. Now, three years later, the phlox have completely taken over, filling over half of the space, the strawberries that I had thrown in so the girls would have something "from" their sister are completely covering the back half, and if someone had told me what a handful of forget-me-not seeds would do...well, I probably still would have put them in, but at least I would have been warned! Anyway, add to all that the fact that I couldn't really tell the weeds apart from some of the plants (I told you, I'm not a gardener!) and the fact that we have lots of clover on our lawn, and you can imagine what the garden looks like now.

Until today. When I went down to Augusta to attend a homeschool used curriculum sale, I met up with Karen for lunch as well. In her car, she had dozens of beautiful plants along with, I kid you not, two incredibly detailed drawings of Sophie's garden and the front of our house. The location of each plant was labeled so that even I could figure out where each thing went! I got home that afternoon and grabbed a shovel. Standing in Sophie's garden, I hesitated...what if I screwed it up? What if the phlox never bloomed again? What if moving all the bulbs around killed them and I never had color here again? What if I killed all the wonderful things Karen gave me? In the garden, shovel in hand, I called Karen. With the patience of a saint, she assured me I wasn't going to mess it up and even if I did, plants in general and bulbs specifically, are very forgiving. So I did it. We did it. Chris and I dug up virtually everything. We put bulbs around her plaque, moved all the strawberries to a different garden, planted a few annuals, and put in coral bells, hostas, and irises. We moved a few things I can't ID (but there are a lot of them in the garden!) and pulled out all the forget-me-nots (those I'm sure will come back again in the spring!).

Even better, we did all this in the pouring rain. Very fun. As we were digging, of course, Evan was getting soaked and muddy, Megan (wearing a princess dress) was riding up and down the driveway on her bike, going through puddles as fast as she could and Erin was fully enjoying her new Latin Dictionary by shouting words out the window to see if we knew what they were (not really!). What the neighbors must think, I can't even imagine!

Here is the new and improved garden.

I know it doesn't loot like much, but believe me, it will. Oh, and if you know what this is:
...let me know. I have a bunch of them and I'm not sure what to do with them all.

Thank you, Karen!