My flower garden

I wasn't feeling too inspired yesterday, and once again I didn't go anywhere other than on dog walks, so I took a few pictures of my garden. When we moved into our rental house here in Bloomington, there was one small island bed in the back lawn that had three things growing in it - a sage bush, a struggling thyme plant and some of the local wild violets. Shortly after we moved in, I enlarged the bed, digging out lawn and connecting it to the concrete patio. I put in a Butterfly Bush (Buddleia 'Black Knight'), a white shasta daisy, a white yarrow, a sedum, a perennial salvia and left room for some annuals and some tender perennials that I replant each year. There is not much in bloom at the moment other than the yarrow and a yellow rudbeckia that has reseeded itself, but it is starting to fill in and after our long winter it is so nice to see some flowers in bloom. In the background you can see some piles of chestnut catkins that I raked up. These have fallen all over the lawn from a tree in our neighbor's yard. In the fall they will drop their nuts which are covered in a nasty, terribly spiny casing that can prick you like a needle even through thick gloves. Poor Poppy stepped on one last fall and was limping for a week.