Fall Planting

I have been doing some Fall Planting. Some of my spring/summer flowers were just looking so tired, so, a couple of Saturdays ago, Scott and I drove over to the Growers Outlet and picked out a "few" things. Well, maybe more than a few. I didn't know what they would have or really what I needed. I found some really cheap pots of caladiums, so I bought 4 of them (hey, they were $1 each and each of them had about 5 bulbs!). I split up and planted 2 of them and then I am just keeping the other 2 in the pots so that the bulbs can be planted next year in case the ones I planted don't come back. Also, in case (hopefully) we sell our house and have to start all over with our garden! They had Calla Lilies for $1 or $1.50 according to their size, so I got a few of those to fill in the place in my garden where only 2 of the 4 I planted last year came back. I got two different plants that said they could be annuals or houseplants. I can't remember the name of either of them, but I know the red one was nicknamed "chicken gizzard", which is kind of gross, but it was $ .50 and the purple one I got was only $1. Then, we spent most of our money on some mums. They have large ones 3 for $15 and medium sized ones 4 for $10. So, we got three large burgundy colored ones and 4 medium yellow ones. So, we came home with a truck load of plants for $40!

This was kind of a "spur of the moment" trip. I had gone out into the yard to dead head and water the pots to realize that everything looked so tired and I just couldn't stand it. Even my beloved hanging baskets out front kind of made me want to cry (see that picture to the left, isn't that sad?). But, they are better now, thankfully.

By the time we got back from the Growers' Outlet, we needed to eat lunch, so I kind of lost my steam. I went out there and pulled up all the zinnias (I will never get pink zinnias again BTW, I will only get the orange ones again) and chopped off all the gladiolus. I snipped and pinched everything I could that looked brown from my hanging baskets (I also swapped which side each was on and turned them around) and pulled all the weeds out of my garden areas. Then, I was kind of tired of being outside. So, I decided to "plan" my plantings and "sleep on it". Well, that was a good excuse to not have to dig any holes that day. I paid for this the next day, btw. The picture at the top is not the best picture of our house, but I had to use the "backlight" feature on my camera to be able to see the garden b/c the house was shading it. So, that's as good as it gets. To the left is the picture of the "planning" I did on Saturday. As you can see, I switched the location of the mums, but it is still the same idea. I actually ended up sticking with the original idea I had when I was at the Growers' Outlet.

Instead of planting stuff in the yard, I spruced up some of my already existing house plants by adding the purple thing to one (they had it labeled, but I just can't remember its name) and the red one (the chicken gizzard) to another one, which I had recently bought a new pot for and I repotted altogether. I also potted two of my calla lilies to add color to our basically green house plants, but they are by themselves. I love the way we have our garage set up with shelving and a peg board. My wheel barrow has become my "planting table" when I do a pot. I always keep my big bag of dirt, my small garden tools, my gloves, and my little shaker of fertilizer in there so that when I want to plant stuff in the yard, I can just put the plants in there and wheel everything around. Do you see that spot on the left front of the wheel barrow where my knee pads are? I just moved those and sat my pots in that spot to do my potted plants.

We had our fellowship lunch at church the next day, and I was planning to take a nap and then going out there and planting all that stuff once it cooled off. Well, on our way home, someone called wanting to come that evening and look at the house. This threw us into emergency action. Scott went in after we got home and picked up and vacuumed and put away the dishes while I got on my gardening gloves and planted five mums, two calla lilies, and, once I divided them, 10 caladiums! I was still so full and it was so hot. Oh, I felt so gross out there. I thought I might barf, or pass out, or possibly both. Oh, how glorious my shower felt when I was done. The picture is of the caladiums I planted. They were kind of sad and droopy when we got them home, but now they are pretty perky. I guess they needed some TLC.

Since then, all of our potted plants have perked up as well as my hanging baskets. So, we have two mums that we purchased to be potted plants. So we have LOTS of potted plants for all seasons :o).

Does anyone want a calla lily because I have an extra? Ours are doing great indoors. They like sun and for their soil to stay moist. The one directly in our window in the office keeps leaning towards the sun and I keep having to rotate it. Our mums and caladiums came in the fairly nice plastic pots that kind of look like terra cotta pots, so I'll put it in one of those if you want. You can see if in the picture below, but they didn't come with the saucer. I just happened to have that one already in my stash.

Okay, so this was a really long post about gardening. Sorry. But, I am not done.

I have been reading lately about fall gardening. Apparently this is the perfect time to do fall plantings, but things like mums (and I think bulbs) will only last until the first frost. But, for us, that's like January or something, right? Also, you really aren't supposed to plant pansies until after the first frost, but who can wait that long and who is still selling them by then? I figure that when our potted plants all die, I will replace them with bulbs and pansies (which will take care of winter and the first few weeks of spring). I have our bulbs in the refrigerator. Your bulbs are supposed to have several weeks of extreme cold before they can grow in the spring and since our winters are so short in the South, we have to help them out a little (or something like that, you can google it). I just love mums! I am excited that some of mine are already starting to open up! I also put down a fresh layer of pine straw AND put out Preen because apparently now is the time to prevent winter weeds from growing and both of those help. So, if you haven't done that, you should, for your own sanity, if you hate weeds like I do. (I think that was a run-on sentence or a comma splice, or possibly both; so I apologize for all you grammar freaks).

Busy Times!

We had a busy weekend this past weekend which has turned into a busy week!

Scott and I met up after work on Friday and drove to Dallas to celebrate my sister's birthday, which is June 25 and Father's Day (that's this Sunday for you slackers out there who forgot!). It was fun, but we got home really late. You can see our pictures above.

Saturday Scott and I got up and went to the Growers' Outlet up the street from us where they have really good deals on plants. Not everything does well that I have bought from there, but I have learned how to recognize healthy plants, for the most part. It is a long drive for most people, but if you ever want to do a lot of planting and you are willing to go and buy what looks healthy instead of exactly what you want, this is worth the drive. For example, we purchased 30 hostas and 4 calla lilies for $40. Wow. That's good. I paid over $5 a bulb for some calla lily bulbs 2 years ago at Pike and hostas are about $2.50 for the size we got at Home Depot (maybe more). Last year, Scott and I edged our garden and the sides of our house with scalloped edging bricks. So, this year I thought it would make our house look more desirable if I planted something in our front garden and along the sides of the house. You know that rule that you always end up buying twice as much as you planned? Well, it usually ends up that we need three times as much as we planned. We ended up going back twice for more garden soil. The dirt in our yard is awful, so we had to put a few inches along the sides of the house, and while we worked really hard last summer and the summer before to get our front garden dirt in good shape, I wanted to accent the flowers (we bought lantana for this spot) by mounding the dirt up in the center. SO, we ended up buying about 32 bags of dirt! Scott put most of the dirt out for me. I carried about 3 bags over to the side of the house and realized that I was just not cut out for that king of work! Those things weigh 40 pounds, and they were all wet! So, I planted and Scott moved dirt and we measured to get the hostas evenly spread apart. I did not finish planting on Saturday, but I did one whole side of the house. This past weekend, Scott moved about a half of a ton of dirt twice! The things he'll do for me! (sigh) I took pictures of our work in process. You can see that I got hostas planted all up one side of the house on Saturday (top picture in this section). Then, on Sunday, we got all the dirt piled up like I wanted it (next picture). Then, I just took pictures of all the plants I still had left to plant. Just in case you are wondering the plants with the little yellow flowers in the 3rd picture down in this section are Lantana (they come in many colors). I know that Judy Stringer used to plant these at their old house. I wonder if she still plants them at their new house. I have never been able to grow any as big as hers were. Then, the last picture is of the leftover hostas for the other side of the house and the calla lilies. I never knew they came in multiple colors until my neighbor Nan got some a couple of years ago. Enough about our dirt.

Scott and I had a fun night on Saturday, but we didn't spend it together! Scott and some of the other guys went to a bachelor party for Johnny Oxford. They had a lot of fun! Josh cooked a great meal for them at his house and then they all went to Dave & Busters and played pool and some other game I can't remember the name of. I went out with Lauren, Shana, and Maggie to celebrate Lauren's birthday. It was a lot of fun. We went to eat at this Mexican restaurant with the winnings from the guys' last trivia night (they won house cash), then we went back to Lauren's house and watched Dream Girls. That movie is definitely a chick flick. I was glad that I got to watch it with them because otherwise I don't think that I would have ever seen it. We had a good time. I took some pictures to commemorate the night. The last one is of mine and Shana's toes. We wanted to show how good they still look after several weeks. The sad part is that the day after we went, Lauren's french manicure was already chipped! So sad.

Sunday was a really good day as well. The message was really good. Pastor Lee has started a new sermon series called "Saved by Grace" and it is really interesting. I think that I am going to learn a lot from this series. After church, we all headed over to Roger's Bridge Park for a picnic. It was a lot of fun to fellowship with everyone outside of church. I took a bunch of pictures and they are on the slide show up on the left at the top of the blog.

I have been planting this week too. Monday I planted all but 6 of my 18 Lantana in the front of the garden, as well as 10 lily bulbs that I had purchased back in the spring and never planted. I do not know if they will grow this year if ever. I may have waited too long to plant them. The bulbs didn't look happy. Does anyone know anything about bulbs and how long they can stay in that plastic bag you buy them in? I also planted the 4 calla lilies. They like to be in wet areas and our front gardens are DEFINITELY wet! I got all the rest of the plants I wanted to plant layed out like I wanted them on the other side of the house, but didn't plant them. It had been threatening to rain all night, so I decided it wasn't going to rain. I got out the hose and watered all the stuff I just planted...I know, I am so rebellious. Then, I went inside and 5 minutes later is was pouring! Oh well. Tonight I tried to do some planting again and got half way down the side of the house and it started raining again. Such is life. I am extremely thankful for the rain. Scott checked our rain gauge and we had gotten almost an inch of rain! Yay!

I also talked to Meme this week. I knew that she hadn't really gotten much better since the day I went to see her before our trip from my sister. I feel bad for her. She apparently broke some vertebrae from coughing so much from the pneumonia. She still hasn't completely gotten rid of the pneumonia so she is on antibiotics again and her stomach is still giving her problems, so she is on probiotics. She told me on Tuesday when I spoke with her that she had taken a nap that day. Meme never takes naps. So, I think that she needs a lot of prayer. I know she is tired of being sick.

I am tired and I am glad that this week is coming to a close. This weekend promises to have some fun things in store for us as well. One of Scott's fraternity brothers and his wife, Jeff and Adriene, are expecting twin girls and we are going to a couples' shower for them! Lots of Scott's friends seem to be pregnant or have young children right now. We went to their Founder's Day (kind of like homecoming for the fraternity) over the summer at the zoo and couldn't believe how fruitful the group seemed to be.

Well, that is more than enough for now. I promise to try to make my posts shorter. If I keep making them this long, y'all will get tired of reading and stop visiting our blog. I welcome comments - especially if you know how to make a post look like it does when you are editing it once you post it to the blog. I spend so much time adding spaces here and deleting spaces there that I didn't even put there. Does anyone else have this happen?

Introduction

Scott and I are entering the world of blogging! We want to share the things that we do and pictures of our family, friends, and cats (of course). So far this year has been very hectic for us. I have been busy with my "busy season" at work and Scott has been taking classes at Gwinnett Tech and picking up my slack around the house (I have a very sweet husband). However, busy season is over, so we have started being more social. I have been working in the garden and we have a new bird feeder. Below is a picture of our bird feeder and some of our feathered visitors and a picture of part of my garden. The hostas were given to me by my friend Teri at work. We went over to her house last Fall and dug up her yard to get them. Thanks Teri.