Last year:



This year:



BWAHAHAHAHAAA.

Progress on the front border, too:



Just need to snap up some Lee Valley "garden staples" (since the plastic pegs from the nursery were not, to use my mother's phrase, worth the powder to blow them to hell) to secure the landscape fabric and then get riverwash stone to spread around.

Additional details that make me happy:



Miscanthus 'Gracillimus'. Beautiful reddish plumes that bob and flutter in every breath of wind. One clump is twice the size of the other, weirdly; as far as I can tell the growing conditions in those 15-20 feet should be identical. Hopefully they'll even out over time.



Cleome - surprise! And yay for self-seeding annuals! I'm reminded/struck by (a) how gorgeous these are and (b) how much I like the foliage and what a nice contrast it is to everything around it.



Pretty purple-and-silvery sage from my mom's garden. I wasn't sure how well it would take the transplant, since it was basically a stem hacked off the main plant and stuck in some dirt, but when I finally got around to putting it in the garden it had already grown roots right around the bottom of the margarine container it was transported in, so I think its survival is pretty much assured.



Pretty pink fall-blooming Ozawa chives. One more reason to ♥ the allium family.

Have only the backyard tulips left to plant bulb-wise. Of course after I got just about everything in the ground the weather snapped back to mid-20s for several days. Hopefully I don't lose anything due to too-early planting.

Also spied curb material for sale at Ritchie's, which has landscaping gears turning in my head. I was going to pay someone to install the stuff, but it's not like it's difficult, just time-consuming. And I have heaps of stone dust etc. to use up in the throughway anyway, right? Although if I want to tackle the basement that's likely to use up all my available pre-snow project time, so this may have to wait for spring.