Well, I hope you're ready for a lot of photos today! Ha! Anyone knows that any good planting weekend worth it's salt should also include a lot of photos to document the day, right? :) Plus, I can't seem to resist snapping photos of pretty flowers! And so, I've got a ton of them to share with you today. You might want to take this opportunity to run and get a beverage of some sort. When you get back to your computer, go ahead and settle in......get nice and comfy. This is the story of our planting weekend.....
Our planting weekend each year begins with a trip to the nursery. We have a favorite that we go to every year because they have the most variety to choose from. I'm a bit of a stickler for color (I know, you're shocked, right?) and so I love the variety of colors (and types of plants) that are available at the nursery.
We've done this for enough years now, that we have it down to a science. After Bartley gets home from work on the Friday afternoon of Planting Weekend, we head to the nursery to load up on everything we'll be planting this year. Then we bring it all home that night so that Saturday morning, we're ready to hit the ground running!
The above photo is only a small portion of the outside of our favorite nursery. It's huge!
And this is just a teensy smidgen of the inside of the nursery. A tiny fraction, really. Did I mention that it's huge? I love that.
We walk around and peruse everything, contemplating our planting diagram as we go. Bart drew up a diagram of all the spots we wanted to fill in our front flower bed, as well as how many pots we have on the back deck to fill. Having this in hand made it so easy to determine exactly how many of everything we needed.
We like to add a few perennials each year because they bring SO much joy when they come back year after year. Of course perennials cost more than annuals, so we didn't buy them all at once years ago, but we've really enjoyed adding a few more to the yard each year. This year, we added a couple plants to our front flower bed like the one you see in the photo above.
We added another columbine (above)......we've got a whole row of these along one side of the house in different colors. They're great because you don't have to do much to them at all and they tend to spread rather quickly.
I couldn't resist this crazy purple flowered plant! Isn't it so weird yet cool at the same time? The tag on it says its some sort of variety of bachelor's buttons. Who knew?! It looks quite happy in our front flower bed now. :)
Geraniums....
Begonia.....
Coleus and caladium.....
Dahlia......sigh.
In the end, this is what we came home with.
Here's a shot from the front seat. Oh my stars, the inside of that SUV smelled like HEAVEN on the way home! Mmmm. I couldn't stop exclaiming over how good it smelled in there......like a flower shop!
We always start planting in the front flower bed. And by "we", I mostly mean "he". It's not a very large space for the two of us to be in at the same time because of all the other plants and flowers that are in the bed already. So he does the planting there, and I'm the gopher.....doing whatever he needs me to. We finish up in front with 4 flower pots on the front porch and one in front of the garage.
Then we head to the back yard and that's where we fill all of the pots on the deck and plant the tomatoes.
All of this got planted in back.
I LOVE mixing colorful coleus and caladium in with the flowers, because they're colorful all summer long! You don't have to wait for them to flower.....the leaves provide the color!
We have 6 flower boxes around the deck rails that are filled with flowers (and herbs in one) and then a collection of various sized pots clustered around the deck.
Aren't geraniums so pretty? And hardy too.
A few peeks at the finished product. Of course, everything looks small right now, but in a few weeks when it all settles in and fills out, perhaps I'll share a few progress photos.
We also have a shepherd's hook in the back yard near one of the fences close to the deck, so it's got two hanging baskets on it....one with geraniums and one with purple petunias. I couldn't resist showing you these geraniums......aren't those stripes on the petals just gorgeous?!
Lastly, we also planted 6 heirloom tomato plants this year, so just think, it won't be long before I can bore you once again with my informative posts filled with tomato photos! LOL. Something to look forward to! :)
And yes, I totally plan on tracking how many pounds of tomatoes those 6 plants produce this year. That was so much fun last year! I'll be sure to let you know the names of the 5 heirloom varieties we planted. I can't remember them all at the moment, but that's a post for another day. *wink*
Now before you leave me sweet comments about what a fantastic gardener I must surely be, let me assure you that everything I know about gardening, I have learned from my hottie hubs! BARTLEY is the green thumb in this family and even after everything is planted, he's the one that typically waters and weeds and keeps everything alive! He has taught me so much, yes, but ultimately he's the gardener around here! And if he were writing this, he would surely tell you (as he has me, a gazillion times over the years!) that he owes it all to being in 4-H as a kid! Ha.
I've so enjoyed learning and working by his side over the years and I'm so, so thankful for his willingness to put up with a Planting Weekend every year and his dedication to keeping everything alive and flourishing all summer long. I'm also grateful for his calm during the storm every year (literally), because every time a summer storm comes along, I stand at the back door and look out at our little plant babies and worry that they'll not survive the storm. And every year, he says the same thing......"They'll be fine." I love that man.
I hope you enjoyed this peek into our Planting Weekend! Have you done any planting yet in your neck of the woods? What are your favorite things to plant? Flowers? What kind? Veggies? Tomatoes? What type?
