Side yard and driveway gardens.

Two parts of the garden that I realized I rarely take pictures of are the raised beds in the side yard and what I call our driveway garden. Both of these areas are on the same side of our house which is separated by our backyard fence. I tend to focus most of my energy on the rest of the yard, but this year I'm trying to pay more attention to these places as well.
The side yard is by far the hottest part of our yard. I've put up a thermometer and have found on sunny days it's usually 5 degrees or more warmer there. The kids tend to play a lot here as you can see by the buckets and other toys. After being inspired by one of the displays at the Northwest Flower and Garden show I'm planning to brighten up this area and make it even more kid friendly. We may paint the stepping stones bright colors as well as repaint the raised beds something a little more colorful.

Looking towards the front gate the Littlest Gardener's rainbow garden is in the whiskey barrel. She's chosen quite an assortment of flowers for it. I've let her pick what she wants to plant in here and she does a surprisingly good job of digging little holes to plant in for a 3 year old. The closest raised bed to that is Sweet Pea's garden. She has Sugar Snap Peas, lettuce, carrots, potatoes and chives in there so far.

Growing in one of the beds is some Broccoli. So far the slugs have left this plant alone.

Here are the blue potatoes we're growing after seeing them on Gloria's blog Dakota Garden. We shared the left over potato starts with another little friend of the Littlest Gardener so she could grow some too.

"George" the garden snake. Thankfully these are the only types of snakes you see in our garden.

Just over the little fence at the entry to the side yard is the big purple Rhododendron in full bloom.

Now out on the other side of the fence is the driveway garden. This has been an area that has been fairly neglected. It's full hot sun here and until we moved our faucet (the pipes froze over the winter and we rerouted the plumbing) it was really difficult to water this part of the yard. There are a couple of roses, lavender, Lamb's Ear and daylilies in front of the raised bed. In the raised bed is a very small Magnolia tree with mostly annuals under it right now including Poppies, Larkspur and Cosmos. Towards the front are Coneflowers, Oriental Poppies and hopefully the Dahilas. Behind this bed is Lilac 'Miss Canada', which are the pink flowers you can see, and behind it is a huge Lacecap Hydrangea that was here when we bought the house.

The unknown Pink rose is beginning to bloom.

And 'Tamora' is flowering too. The fragrance of 'Tamora' is very nice, not as strong as 'Gertrude Jekyll' or 'Abraham Darby', but still very good.

Hopefully the weather will improve once school is out and the girls and I will have some fun projects to work on in these two areas in our free time.