My rain garden is only just starting to get established. All plants went in last November, except for the winter sown echinacea and a division of Louisiana iris. I have had some losses already: I planted three each of dwarf iron weed and swamp sunflower, and only one each made it through winter; plus, the winter sown rosinweed that didn’t even make it out of the winter sown jug! Some of the echinaceas went into the spots left open by the swamp sunflowers and the ironweed. Also, the clethra that was doing so well lost three quarters of itself in a heavy windstorm a few weeeks ago. I’m hoping it’ll sucker again, but right now, it’s just a single stemmed mini tree.

I have discovered that that things start wilting if we don’t have any rain for a week, no matter how solid a downpour we had before. (And that’s been tested by a downpour about a month ago where the rain garden turned into a giant pond and nearly flooded over - exactly the way it should.) From what I have read that should change as my long rooted natives establish themselves and dig into deeper soil.

The Louisiana iris was the last thing to go in as I didn’t divide my existing plants until they started going dormant. They currently look nearly dead, but there is a faint tinge of green at the base that belies their appearance.

And then there have been the weeds. The grass keeps on trying to creep in from the berms, and establish via windblown seed. I identified a bunch of little seedlings as dog fennel, so that’s been pulled out as soon as it pops up, and the vines from the fence are delighted with the lovely open space I created for them to move into. Then there has been two weeds that I’ve been keeping a careful watch on. One (well, it’s two separate plants) is in the mint family (squarish stem, those distinctly arrow head leaves), opened flowers yesterday and it’s a red salvia of some sort. The other I am still suspicious of, but will let it grow for the moment.

The garden in its entirety. Pine cones, the odd stray clump of clover (which I’m not going to bother about weeding as it’ll eventually get shaded out if things go to plan), and the compost heap in the back. This is a very neglected corner of the garden, and can really only be seen from my bedroom.

Seed heads on the river oats! My problem is going to be how to distinguish between the grasses I want (river oats and little bluestem) and this I don’t (everything else).

Aquatic milkweed going strong. No sign of monarchs, but the oleander aphids didn’t have trouble finding this new source of food.

Red salvia. To be left alone for the moment.