The thumb is turning

I managed only to murder 2 of my plants!!!  Well that's not counting the 2 potted plants that were by the front door.  I blame the vacation. 
Remember 3 months ago when we planted a little flower garden in front of our house?  Well it has turned from this:

Into this:

I lost my purple salvia, which I just adored.  I'm not sure what happened, when we came home it was sticks.  I honestly wanted to cry.  We also lost the zinnias about a month after planting.  I replaced them today with some more impatiens and the salvia was replaced by a blue russian sage.  Did you notice the border line isn't straight?  Oh well.  We did have to go out another 6-8 inches last month because the plants were right on top of the grass.  Now that I know I can keep some plants alive, I look forward to next spring when I can experiment with more.