I have been totally inspired by You Grow Girl and her awesome "Herbaria" series. It seems like a great way to keep track of what's blooming at the same time, so when it comes time to move things around, you can better assemble a collection of plants that give you all-season color (or food!) in whatever area you're planting. I don't think I captured it as artfully as she did, but I'll keep working on it.
Many of the plants in this photo were rescued from "that lady's house." It's a bit of an inside joke as "that lady" has an actual name. She's a friend of a friend. She and her husband bought a house without a square inch of grass anywhere on the property. They are not plant people. And I imagine the whole scene was more than a little overwhelming. Even for an experienced gardener, it would have been overwhelming. It was becoming overgrown and desperately needed to be managed. Not knowing what to do, the decided they might just need to spray Round Up on everything. My friend asked if she minded if people dug some things up before the rain of poison started. She kindly agreed. 
I brought a few friends from work and we started digging. It was mid-October, so many things had already died back and were very difficult to identify. We managed to put a general name to most things - rose, lily, peony, etc, but had no idea what color things were or how tall/short (for the lilies especially, as they had died back and all that was left was the dried up stalk). After 3 hours, we all left with our cars full. Completely full.
Over the next few days, I worked furiously to get things in the ground. Given that it was already the middle of October, I was worried that things wouldn't have a chance to take root before the cold and I'd lose everything over the winter. Amazingly, nearly everything popped up in the spring. The down side is that not knowing what most of it was, I now have a hodge-podge of onesie-twosies with tall things in front of short things and otherwise misplaced items. As things bloom and I figure out what they are and how they grow, I'm slowly moving them around to more appropriate spots in the garden. There are still quite a few lilies that haven't bloomed yet (although I think they all have buds on them this year), so it's a daily adventure to see what's out there!
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