Two More Years

I give it another two years. It has taken forever to get some of the garden elements in the back yard going. The irrigation system and moss rock border were installed in late 2021, but nothing was really planted until the following year, then changed around the next two years. A bench was put in, new things added, the birdbath moved around. 

For four years now it's been evolving, but still looks so undeveloped.

In 2025 a lot is still tiny, new and barely established. And I have discovered many plants take 3 or more years to bulk up and flower, more years to become anything to look at.

Red flowered pineleaf penstemon has taken 4 years to
do this in a spot under the aspens

Now I want to stop tinkering and wait. No more moving, transplanting, buying new or re-designing. If I can hold back, I think in two more years I'll have the start of a fuller looking garden.

If I can wait.

A tiny yellow sulphur buckwheat blooming after four years, and the first
few electric blue penstemon flowers on a wisp of a two year old plant.

I actually edited out some stuff from garden spots where I had planted the wrong things in the first years. Now, starting over, some areas are again immature and just getting going.

This leafy green redtwig dogwood was planted two years ago. Still just a collection
of a few stems and some leaves, it will take several more years to become a shrub.

I need two more years to see the back become anything. Meanwhile I wait, looking at tiny things each year, waiting for non-bloomers to mature, and getting the camera up very close to the things that are putting forth a little effort finally.

Another of the red pineleaf penstemons, blooming for the
first time since being moved to this spot in 2022.

I'd show you what the whole space looks like, but all the camera picks up is mulch. I have to aim the camera at each individual plant to show anything and even then the wood chips dominate the photo.

A white flowered salvia blooming after a year, but still
tiny, spiky and a little hard to see in the mulch

It's funny, no matter how close I plant things, nothing grows to touch anything else. Even as they fill out and some start to finally bloom over four or five years, they don't touch. I'm a tidy gardener, but it's beginning to bother me that my gardens look so socially phobic. 

I don't want weedy chaos, but a little fullness and friendly mingling would be nice.

I give them all another two years. I'll be 78 then. I can't wait much longer than that.