Garden Roundup - Back Bed

In front of the carport, there's what I call the "back bed."

It get a few hours of gentle morning sunlight, but is in the dark for the rest of the day. Thanks to feats of elaborate engineering worthy of the Roman Aqueducts, it is Not Wet. Currently, there is a jungle of daylilies, peonies, ivy, and one single solitary fern growing in the bed. I've also discovered this, which I think is some sort of celandine:


Does anyone recognize this little variegated ground cover? It's pretty, but not very ambitious.

I'm going for some sort of a woodland garden feel, so I've planted hostas, trilliums, bleeding hearts. I have some donated irises I might put in, but I wish I had more ferns! They're so pretty.

I topdressed with leaf soil, dug a little ditch in front of the bed, placed old cobblestones as edgers, and then mulched the whole thing. The cobblestones and limestone slabs (behind the bed) are a whole 'nother story, which I will get to soon.

This is also the temporary location of the future rain barrel:


My uncle had a beautiful organic vegetable garden in the backyard of his Noe Valley, SF Victorian home when I was growing up. The garden is perhaps most famous because I was traumatized by its chayote vine. These presumably lovely Mexican squashes have a fiercesome appearance, and when my aunt served them to me for dinner once (with tofu), I thought I would be eating prickles! Still can't eat tofu to this day...

However, I still remember the musty, rich smell of the rainwater in my uncle's wood barrel. So I shelled out the money for this former Jim Beam Whiskey Barrel, which will also looks gorgeous to me. It was a steal at $40 (thank you Wally World), but still a big investment (and another darn garden project, sigh).