Litchfield County/Garden Redesign

I've decided my front cottage garden is a little too cottagey--wild and impassable.  So I'll be relocating some things, like I did last fall.  Also I ran out of room in the gardens last year for a rose my friend had given me so I started digging up part of the front lawn.  I've been working on it steadily but it's slow-going due to the extreme heat, humidity and daily rain showers.

I was too exhausted from Friday's gardening to continue Saturday so I took my mother and sister up on their invitation to go to Litchfield County.  We went as far as Sharon and the Cornwall area.  It is so beautiful, like Vermont but with more money.  We went to a garden center where my niece fed the chickens and we got a load of free annuals that should have been given last rites.  We're hoping they can be resuscitated.

Here is a beautiful container of succulents.  My mother's really wanted one like this ever since I pointed her towards a blog that Martha did on all her succulent containers.

 

On the way home I saw a really unusual cloud formation.  It's been another weird weather year.  There was a tornado not far from here yesterday.

 Here is the mayhem that is my front lawn.  That's eight bags of mulch lying about.  Now I'm thinking maybe I should have created a fan shape where the two walkways intersect.  They're not equal sizes, though.  Any ideas?

 I'm already concerned about dragging the hose over the mulched bed on the left.  The spigot is behind that large bush to the right of the porch entrance.  The idea was to minimize the amount of lawn to be mowed.  I have to store the mower in the shed which is underneath the deck in the back.  I have to drag it up stairs on the right of the house, where the driveway is located.

The sad-looking, droopy plant on the right in the last picture is a ginormous hydrangea I transplanted from my mother's garden.  It was so heavy I needed my brother's help in loading it into my Escape and my niece's help unloading.  I'm so thrilled to have her back from college, by the way.  She did super, super well there (UCONN), which is a difficult school.  We're all so proud of her and how she's matured.  She may be following in her aunt's footsteps now that she's changed from a French major.  Darn.  I had planned on visiting her in France next spring.

I guess that's enough for this random post!