Small Gardening

I like the idea of gardening, but I am also lazy.  Or rather I'm busy with a lot of other things, many of which interest me more or are just necessary.    In any case, I've never spent a lot of time trying to get things to grow.  We have a small border of plants at our house here and some of them have not survived the transplanting last fall and/or the winter.  So Scott and I decided to pull out the dead stuff and put in some new things.  We purposely tried to pick plants that would do well here and were supposed to come back on their own each year and require very little maintenance/work (because laziness), but about eight of them died.  The border plants are on a drip system so there are certain spots (where the drip nozzles are) that plants can go.

See our very tiny raised garden in Illinois HERE.  It rains a lot in the summer in Illinois so very little work was required on that garden.  Love it.

This is some of the dead stuff.  Dead lantana I think.  

We also had some lavender die but other lavender plants did well.

We tried to get a variety of things to replace the dead stuff.  I am a sucker for anything that looks remotely like a daisy so we got a lot of that.  Scott had to lobby for some non-daisy like plants.

Here are some of the things before going in the ground.  I think that's a euryops plant in the pot.  They have small yellow daisy like flowers (see my daisy obsession?)  I wanted to get a lot of these but the nursery we went to only had one plant left.  So if anything else dies I might try to replace it with more euryops.  Those seem to do well here.  I see them all over town.

Coreopsis in the back and echinacea closer (two daisy like flowers).

And Scott is putting a camelia bush in the middle.

There it is in the middle

Euryops near, two plants that didn't die in the middle (escallonia like) and purple osteopermum farther away.   Another one that looks like a daisy.

Also some of the plants our landscaper planted are finally looking like they might bloom.  See that stalk going up in the middle?  So excited!!  These ones have been dormant all winter.  This is actually a Shasta daisy I think.  See, I may have a problem.

Two gardenias.

Not daisy like!

Euryops

I check on them all the time since we've planted, hoping that they don't die.

So far, so good.

Osteopermum variety

Arizona blanketflower between two of our hearty lavender plants (daisy anyone?).  I tried to cut back some of the dead leaves which made these lavender plants look a little weird and scrawny.  Maybe I'll just wait until the end of the season.  I am gardening illiterate.

I was reminded of my other domestic failures this week when I tried to hand sew this bunny's head back on.  The kids played with her a little too wildly and her head was hanging by a few threads.  Anna begged for me to let her do the sewing since she learned a few stitches at activity girls.  I should have let her.  After I finished (and it was not pretty - think Franken-bunny) Anna examined the finished product at length and said, "You should have asked Grandma Guptill to do it when she was here."  :) 

So I can't garden or sew very well, and I'm also pretty bad at decorating and cleaning.  But I do cook! That's something. If only learning to decorate were as easy as reading a recipe from a cookbook.  Then maybe I could do it.  Oh well.

Small Gardening Update!!

Today we added a grapevine to our very small selection of plants.  It's a concord variety.  We were going to get a green variety too but decided on just one for space reasons.  Hoping it does well.

Some of our almost dead lantana has been coming to life lately.  We left a few nearly dead lantana plants because they were showing signs of life.  And now they are growing!

Another lantana plant, back from the dead.

Some succulents we got for inside the house.  We transplanted some and are awaiting pots for others.  The pot on the left has some new pumpkin seeds in it.  If they grow we will have to get a larger container to put them in.  We'll cross that bridge if we get to it.  Anna and I also planted some herb seeds that came in a little window box set.  We'll see how those do.

We have some gravel between the garage door and yard that is very uncomfortable to walk over barefoot.  I wanted to get some paver stones to make a little walk way and finally got some today.  I found out this afternoon that they get very hot in the sun, so still hard to walk across barefoot in the heat of day.  :)

Our front porch got a little sprucing.  We used to have nothing out there but a few months ago I added a bench because the neighborhood kids will sometimes gather on the front step.  I added a few pillows for sitting on or against, the little plastic Adirondack chair for kid seating and the blue planter stand for a small table or seat - sometimes there are drinks or rainbow loom supplies that need a place to be.  I want to get a little wicker pouf (like this one) for sitting or putting feet or things on.  So I'll keep my eye out for a good deal.

Got two planters that I filled with succulents too.

See that's me trying to make things look nice.

Another view.  Not that the neighborhood kids will really care.  But I care.  

Hope it's functional for the kids at least.