A day of shopping for the flower beds.

  I know we all have our favorite flowers we plant each year and a specific order in which we do these things but I don't know about you, but I've been really off with this gray yucky weather we've had so much of.

  I have tried to motivate myself to go pull weeds, to get the flower beds cleaned out again, yes, I did clean them all out when we had that fluke week of warm weather in February that had us all thinking early spring. Unfortunately they all grew back during the last 4 months of gray skies and rain. 

  So last week I did find some motivation on my days off to get the flower pots all dumped out that were to far gone, to the others I just added new soil and some fresh herbs and petunias in the others.  That was the beginning of my motivating to bring color back into the yard, although you can see, the slugs found theirs too, they raced right up to slime my precious posies.  Did I mention I really hate slugs?

  So off to my local Mclendon's I went this week, the best deal in town and it's locally owned, so I'm all about supporting them by shopping there. The stop there  just began  my need for more flowers and to surround myself in color, so down to Carpineto Bros next to find a few plants I wasn't finding.  They had some geraniums, which seemed to be scarce this time of year already and they had alot more of the yellows that weren't just marigolds which I was trying to find.

I bought a bunch of yellow petunias, these portulacas and some bright cheery snap dragons. Of Course those couldn't be left  without  the pinks and purples that also were calling out to me and strangely enough the reds.  I usually stick to traditional English garden colors, but figured since I was adding yellow, why not? But I do have to  wonder if it will help the darned dandelions blend in more? I also managed a bit more of orange too, or  more coral I guess.

Who can resist the charms of these happy blooms?  I find myself just wanting to cover the yard in all these bright happy colors, to keep the gloomy gray skies away.

After I left Carpineto Bros I decided that I should go check out another of the local nursery's that is also a produce stand over in Maple Valley.  They had more geraniums, so after buying a couple pinks and hot pinks, they didn't really have much else for geraniums, I decided I should be done spending and hope for some of my seeds in my cutting garden to help me out for indoor cut flowers. Now the real work begins....getting rid of the grass that seems to take over my flower beds each year.  I seem to do this process each year in reverse order, buy first, weed second.  Hmm, will I ever get that one through my head?  Or perhaps if I have the flowers, it forces me to get the weeds out.

T

Petunias and pansies always remind me of my grandmother Clara, who lived in Minnesota. She always had so many of them surrounding different areas in the yard, she'd bend down on arthritic knees and put them in each year in every color combination possible.  No solid colored ones for her, always the stripped, the frilly, and the multicolored.  I remember her sending me out after supper to pick all the spent blooms off to keep them going. 
  All in all, flowers bring cheer to all, after all, isn't that why we take them to our loved ones when they're ill?   Hope you all get some time to plant a little "cheer" in your yards too.