Fancy Dressing

Now that we're out of the woods frost-wise, I have decked out the house in flowers for summer. Last year I pulled the trigger too early and killed a lovely set of hydrangeas the day after I bought them.

We have 2 cast iron planters hung on the front of the house and 2 window boxes, now chock full of snapdragons, marigolds, petunias, and trailing petunias. I hope to add a third planter to the shed once the siding finally goes up to tie in with the rest of the house. The pics aren't the greatest, but you get the idea. Once they really get blooming it should be a nice pop of color for the front.

And though I'm not too thrilled about the fact that the land behind our house has been purchased by developers and we will soon have neighbors behind us that aren't cows, I figured I should spruce up the back porch, too.

I have such a weakness for hanging baskets of flowers, and Bedrock Nursery in Lawton, OK does a PHENOMENAL job on theirs. I almost felt bad for the folks at Lowes this weekend buying their scraggly looking arrangements for twice the price. In fact, I have to say that Bedrock wins the prize this year for their flower selection. Last year I went with another local nursery, but when I took a peek this year, it was slim pickings. This year I bought all of the wisteria, geraniums, and flats of bedding flowers from Bedrock. They even had really awesome looking tomatoes, peppers, and herbs (the latter ended up in my cart somehow...).

April Flowers

The thing about springtime flowers is that you wait for months for them to arrive, and then when you blink, they're gone. I've been taking pictures of all the new floral arrivals, but even as of this posting, they've changed. Oh well.

This is the border along part of my front flower beds. It already looks very different from when this was taken because several of the daffs are gone and more orange/striped tulips are open. Joe likes to pick the "grapes" off of the muscari, so some of those are looking a bit weak these days.

It's not flower season around here without some bright geraniums. I had intended to overwinter last year's geraniums but got sidetracked and left them out for all the freezes...they didn't make it. These puppies are at least twice the size (I found an awesome nursery in town that has the best plants hands down) and I SWEAR I will overwinter them. However, the pictured plant I found split this morning, and I wonder if I'm having some kind of root borer problem. I saw the same thing happening with some seedlings in the veggie garden, so we'll see.

Do you see those sunny little faces flanking the blueberry bush?

My sister-in-law gave me some bulbs from her garden club in Virginia last November, and I didn't get around to putting them in the ground until January. I planted them in between the blues in the berry patch for something to look at while I wait impatiently for berries, and they came right up.

Isn't this a lovely sight? My pergola, the hubs building pea trellises beyond the gate, the unfinished gate (it's now finished and pretty impressive), and new wisteria plants. I really know nothing about wisteria other than it vines and is good to plant on pergolas and arbors. These have pretty purple flower clusters that are actually starting to bloom, but these pics are a week old, so bear with me.

And finally, our new apple trees are blooming and leafing out. I'm glad the last freeze didn't really seem to affect them, and the blossoms are so cute.

Come onnnnnn, apples!

FINALLY

So remember that freak snow storm which proved that spring wasn't really here yet? Apparently, I should have seen it coming.

The first is mudswallows. We have a pair that live out the summer in our frony entryway, and they sit on the ledge of our front door and peek in on us all day. I saw them scoping out the nest several weeks ago, but they didn't stick around. I wondered why, and it seems like they knew about the blizzard via bird weather forecasting.

Well they are finally back:

Forgive the dirty window. It's too high for me to clean with any kind of regularity. When we first moved in we debated knocking down the nest but we quickly realized that there were babies in it, and that would have been REALLY bad karma. We were rewarded a few days later with a positive pregnancy test, so I will let these little guys hang out as much as they want. The nest is a little bald now, but in a month or so they will have built it up with grass and muddy spit.

The other sign of spring that I'd been waiting for was my daffodil bulbs. They flower buds just would NOT open...until the day after the blizzard. Wise blossoms? Maybe.

I'm a little sad that the daffodils I planted in the center flower bed 2 years ago didn't sprout this year. They looked great last year, so maybe the freakishly cold winter killed them? I don't know, but I am pleasently surprised by my hyacinth bulbs in that bed. Last year they were just a few inches tall, but this year they came back HUGE.

They're almost a foot tall. See the honey bee on the white one? They smell amazing.

Thank you, Spring. You were so missed.

Mum's the Word

Winter on the prairie is brown. Like, BA-rown. I can't help but remember the vivid colors that we were seeing just 2 months ago when the mums were in bloom, and I just want to fast forward another month to my spring bulbs that will eventually bust out. The weather has been warming up enough (50s-60s) that I can throw on a sweat shirt and my mud shoes and do general cleanup and tinker around in the gardens. Most of the work is about to be concentrated on the vegetable garden.

I decided to conduct a little flower gardening experiment in the meantime, and I'd love it if my more experienced readers could weigh in. In an attempt to save some money next year in the plant-buying department, I moved the mums that previously occupied window boxes and containers to the front flower beds.

Can you even see them? I know it's hard to see the brown on brown contrast. I can't tell if they are just dormant or if they're dead. I mulched them fairly well because we're expected to have a few more hard freezes.

In other news, there is action with my bulbs.

I'm pretty sure this is a hyacinth, but I can't remember. There is a whole row of them poking through and creeping open. Come on, spring!

Fall: Best time to plant flowers

Okay, maybe not the BEST time, but certainly a good one. I mean look at these:

Is there anything more festive than a mum? Probably, but I can't resist these pretty balls of autumn color, especially when most other colors are dying and browning for the winter. This year I've replaced my summer geraniums (to be discussed in a later post) with mums in all of my containers and window boxes around the front of the house. My goal is to eventually plant these in the ground once the flowers die back, and see if they make a comeback next year. They should, because I bought all "garden" mums, instead of "container" mums, which are supposed to be grown indoors and normally only last one season.

I've had fun planting spring-blooming bulbs, though the warmer temps we've had in the last week (70+) are causing them to sprout a bit. I hope this won't kill them when our first frost FINALLY arrives.

This is what last year's planting produced in the spring:

There were some bright red tulips, too, but those popped out later. I've added bulbs all along the flower beds, whereas last year I only had them in the very front section (the most my 6-months-pregnant body could handle at the time). I can't wait to see the show come March!

Another fall tradition that I hope to end is the planting of pansies. I LOVE the look of cheerful little pansies along the sidewalk in front of the house. Last year we planted them, and I kept expecting them to die back when the temperatures climbed in the summer. A few of them did, but several stuck around all year (super pansies?). I now think that with a bit of watering in the summer, we can keep these little guys going as perennials. We planted in all of the front flower beds, and I found a pretty rose-colored bloom to alternate with the traditional dark purples, yellows, and whites.


I've mentioned my geranium containers, which also contained marigolds. A few of these survived to keep the new mums company in the containers. With the fall comes a new generation of seeds, and happily these container marigolds threw out several seeds that have sprouted here and there in the front beds:

You can't beat free flowers, right? Especially ones that are so beneficial for the garden as a natural pest-repellent. I'm actually planning to plant these in and around the vegetable garden next year.

And although these aren't technically a fall flower, I'm so pleased with the rose bushes in the front, too. These were planted by the previous owners of our house, and frankly looked on the verge of death last year. We haven't done anything to them except some minimal pruning and occasional weeding, but we've been paid back immensely throughout the late summer and into fall so far:

Everytime I think these girls are done for the season, I see new buds forming and opening. They first bloomed way back in May, when I cut a few off and placed in an old Parmesan cheese shaker-turned bud vase. Here it is mid-November and they're still going strong.


The other major fall planting project has been shrubs (!), but I'll give those their own post. It's a doozy!