Don’t worry, I don’t only have roses! What is a southern garden without hydrangeas, daylilies, gardenias, and azaleas?
Hydrangeas
My hydrangeas are blue for the most part- I have acidic soil so I lucked out there. I have a small limelight hydrangea in the back (green hydrangeas are my favorite!) and this really cool shooting star hydrangea- only on year two here, so can’t speak to its growth potential yet.
Fun tip:
You can change the acidity of your soil and change your hydrangeas from blue to pink. You can buy it from your local garden supply, or be like my old-school mom and bury rusty nails with the roots.
I’m a big fan of Asters as well- but they are slug bait. Another strange tip from my mom- put a tin pie pan with old beer in it to attract slugs away from the plant babies.
Daylilies
The daylilies are exceedingly happy- although I’m too scared to dig around my mailbox to divide them.
We have a baby rat snake nest in there- not super fun to come across suddenly. They’ll coil up to strike even though they’re not harmful to humans.
Why do I allow them to stay?
Well, they’re kinda cute- and we have a lot of copperheads around and rat snakes eat copperheads, so we have an uneasy truce. We did find the most gorgeous garter snake in the backyard- but he was a little too interested in my goldfish and frogs, so he had to go.
Don’t worry, Mr. Rochester safely relocated him to a nearby creek! Even though I live in a very suburban neighborhood, we have lots of wildlife- snakes, obviously, frogs, birds, hawks, mice, bats, deer- all sorts of fun critters.
Additionally, we have a little woman-made pond out there as well- 5 fish with countless baby frogs (the cutest!) Mom calls them ‘pond fairies’. They have plenty of mosquitos to eat- which as you know, is the state bird of NC.