A Brand New Year - I'm back!

Wow, It's hard to believe it has been this long since I posted to this garden blog. My life has been so busy the past couple years that I hardly had time for myself. I love living in the Pacific Northwest. It truly is my happy place. The last several years have been spent working, working, and working some more and spending what little time I had to myself outdoors hiking, exploring, and of course gardening!

Even though I love where I live, after a decade of hard work, I realized that life was passing quickly and that if I didn't stop and look around a little bit, it would pass me right on by. So, this past year I made a life choice to take a sabbatical and spend some time with my family. It's the best decision I have ever made. I went to visit family I haven't seen in a couple years, I took a month long vacation to Yellowstone National Park and hiked over 100 miles of back country and boardwalks, spent weekends hiking in Mt Rainier National Park, ran many cross country miles in my state parks, visited the coast, learned to cook real food (how funny that I love to grow veggies, but never was a very good cook), completed a 5000 piece puzzle, learned to can and preserve all manner of gardened and foraged foods, and of course worked in my new garden I am building. I had some days where I just sat back and enjoyed the sun hitting my face while sipping an iced tea and reading a book. It was fabulous.

I feel as though my mind is finally refreshed and I'm ready to tackle this new year and whatever it may bring.

I knocked around the idea of changing the name of this blog since I haven't spent much time with it recently, but really, the name still applies. The sun french fries me when I'm out in it and I really am a pluviophile. So, the blog name is staying and I'm returning to frequent it.

Without further adieu, here is a pic of the backyard perennial garden as it was this last summer and I'll be back soon with more garden-y updates. Happy New Year Everyone!

There are many daylilies in this bed as well, but bloomed earlier in the spring. Here are the lemon lilies:

These bloom the same time and I think are hemerocallis dumortieri:

Here are the lilies all together. The neighbor lady who has lived in her house for over 30 years gave these to me when she was splitting the massive clumps of them she had:

On the sunnier side of this flower bed are the liatris, coneflower, rudbeckia, and hollyhock mallow. This is really the first year they have bloomed like this since I started them from seed. I think I had a couple coneflower the year prior, but that was it. Everything in this bed has to be rabbit-proof because, well, we are overrun with rabbits here. I tried to grow some giant allium in this bed, but the rabbits mow it down every year in early spring. So I gave up on those. Oh, well. At least they don't eat these!