Cleaning Up the Daisies

We took a couple hours on Sunday to clean out the daisy bed that runs along the sidewalk and re-mulch it in an attempt to keep the grass from re-invading. Here is the product of our work:



The edge is a little crooked, but it looks MUCH better than before! The grass had not only invaded into the sides of the bed, but there was also a lot of grass mixed into the daisies themselves. It was a pain to get all that grass out of there, and I'm sure that when Spring rolls around, we will have to pull out more grass that we missed.

We're going to edge the side of the bed that is touching the lawn with plastic edging to keep from having to constantly weed this bed this Summer. I hope it helps! Grass always seems to grow everywhere you don't want it, but won't grow where it is wanted.

Most of the daisies will be two years old this Spring, so they should really thrive this year. The rule of thumb I have heard with perennials is the first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap! Although they have been planted only two years, this is really their "third year" in the ground, because their "first year" is their planting year when they are zero years old. It's like in Computer Science - we count from 0 instead of 1 - very confusing :)

I was very excited to see some daffodils poking their little heads up through the soil this weekend!



I planted 3 dozen or so daffodils in Fall '06 in the same bed as the daisies, and they did come up the following Spring. I am happy to see that they are going to come up again this Spring since the last bulbs I planted in Fall '05 in this same spot dissolved over the following Summer. I decided not to check on them last Fall, because I didn't want to go through the pain of planting more if these had also dissolved. So, it was a nice surprise to see that we will have some Spring color!

This one is really exciting - check out that bloom getting ready to bust out and greet us all!