Remember this post from last year- when we bought all those fabulous perennials so that this year we’d have a lush low-maintenance flower garden?

Here’s the “before” picture I took last year:

I was supposed to present an “after” picture this summer.  Um, let me introduce Nikita:

Nikita (left) and Kenna (right)

She’s six months old now….but as a new puppy she found it enjoyable to dig up all the tubers and roots in the yard, especially any new growth….that was extra tasty I guess.  The first things to go were all the new perennial plants we purchased last year.  That meant no more purple verbena or agastache:

They are gone gone gone.  Before planting the canna lily, I divided it into 3 plants and spread them out across the landscape.  Only ONE of them is finally starting to grow:

It’s sister plants started growing a couple months ago and one of them made it about 4″ tall before Nikita ate it.   The other one simply never showed.

We have one hibiscus plant left (out of I think 4?):

It’s not blooming yet, but I’m seeing lots of buds.

At the same time I planted all the perennials last year, I also divided the calla lily that we got from my Grandma Ruth years ago.

I love love love that plant and every year it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and we get so many compliments on it.  Here’s the “babies” that grew this year:

It was June when we realized many of the plants were permanently gone and we’d have some massive gapes in our landscaping.  The first thing I did was fill in the front with petunias, I love petunias.  We also went to Al’s Garden Center and picked up a few more perennials, different one’s this time hoping for a less desirable “flavor” (ha ha ha):

And then raided my mom’s landscaping for some grasses:

And here’s the other clump of calla lillies that I transplanted:

So here it is…. the “after” shot you’ve been waiting for, it’s just not the after shot I was hoping to have last summer when I wrote the first post:

And here’s some more of our yard: