I like to draw up (literally) my plans for my garden each year -- usually several times. This year, I've been thinking about my perennial garden because I know I need to move some things around. Last year, the chives were getting out of hand and things were just looking overcrowded and misplaced. That got me thinking about my garden's history.  We moved into our house in September of 2009, so my first garden season was 2010. My perennial garden was empty save for a lone tulip and sickly day lily. Thanks to a generous co-worker's wife, I got a lot of free transplants that first year -- lilies and irises and phlox. I had planted a few bulbs in the fall, too, so the first year, my garden was off to a good start.

I'm obviously pretty inconsistent at taking photos, but it was really fun to look back! It's always fun to look at the early spring / winter photos and how dead everything looks and then to see the garden in full bloom -- and just to think that all of that had been lying hidden under the ground!

It is crazy to look at 2012 when we had that early spring (summer, really) and how the garden was a month or two ahead of normal schedule! My garden has also gotten prettier in the fall over the years. Spring is full of bulbs and June has unintentionally turned into a completely purple garden. My biggest challenge has been around July when the spring flowers have faded and the late summer flowers haven't yet bloomed. I've tried to incorporate some new mid-summer blooms, but it remains a bit lacking. One year, I got tons of black-eyed susans from who knows where -- I loved those, but they never came back in full force.  I think I'll thin things out a bit this year then take another look at what I can add in to make sure I have good color all season long.  This year, I'll try to take at least one photo every month for better documentation! It looks like this week it's going to be a good taste of spring. I can't wait to be able to get into the dirt and start playing!