Digging in the Dirt

Oliver and I worked on two flower beds Wednesday.

First, we started on the bed to the left of Oli's door. This is what it looked like a couple of days ago.
We carefully raked the surface of the exposed soil and pulled weeds and grass coming up in the bed. I make a game with Oli out of shaking the dirt off the roots. Usually the dirt goes everywhere but back in the flower bed, but it is great fun.

Then we marked out the different sections with a thin line of sand, and planted these seeds.
The tall plant with the white plumes, called liatris, should get to about three feet, and is a perennial, so I chose that location carefully. The liatris is in the triangular section, the cosmos was planted in the two inches along the very back, and the nasturtium should fill in the space between the hostas and the liatris.
The empty circle is reserved for a hosta which I need to buy. Soon. I bought a bare root host a couple of weeks ago, but when I took it out of the bag, it looked dead. I planted it anyway, and watered it, but I think it was a lost cause.
Next, we got to work on the flower bed next to the porch. I've had all this debris piled on the soil in hopes of killing the weeds. It seems to only work where something heavy completely smothered the weeds, like where the bags of soil are, or under the bricks. The weeds under the old plastic shower curtain were weak, but still there. So, now we know.

We used the same approach as before: rake soil, pull weeds, mark with sand, plant seeds.

Oli can't quite reach this flower bed, so he just got as close as possible, settled in the cool grass, and watched me work.
Again, I planted a row of cosmos across the very back, next, in the center some German chamomile, and two different varieties of blanket flower on either side. The blanket flowe did really well for me last year, but I had a single plant, so hopefully they will do as well started from seed. I have not had much luck with chamomile in the past, but I had this packed left over, so I figured I'd toss them in there and hope for the best. I think even if they don't make it, I can get a chamomile plant from the nursury to put there. If I even need it. The next plant in the center, the gazanias, might just take over the whole area. Following that, there is a row each of seed tape zinnias, then seed tape alyssum ( have them reversed in the seed packet photo).

Then I popped a couple of marigolds that were already started into the divider between the two beds.

By now, with all the rain we've had, it is probably time to weed. That's my least favourite part of direct-sowing; I'm never sure what is a baby plant and what is weed.