My Spring Flowers

snapdragons '11, originally uploaded by Bumble Lush.

Spring has been beautiful in the DC area so far. Last year it seemed that we jumped from winter straight to summer with no transition whatsoever, but Mother Nature is making up for it this year. The past few weeks have been mostly rainy, but I like spring showers, and the rain is helping my plants. The few sunny days we’ve had have been warm and felt good on my skin.

I mainly grow vegetables, but in my front yard I have flowers.

I planted petunias and snapdragons in the pots in the front yard this year. For the last two years I had peppermint in the pot where the petunias are now. The pot sits on the dividing line between my driveway and my neighbor. One year, my neighbor thought they were weeds and yanked the mint out completely. She’s a bit batty and twitchy, a harmless but strange creature, and I know she meant no malice and probably thought she was doing us a favor. “Didn’t you think it was odd that the weeds smelled minty when you cut them?” I asked. “No, I didn’t notice that,” was her reply. She didn’t get ANY of my extra vegetables that year.

The peppermint grew back, and my neighbor left it alone last year. However, the company that does maintenance around the common property of my subdivision must have thought it was weeds too because I came home one day last summer to find that all the common area had been weeded, including my little mint. So that’s the story of why petunias are sitting there now.

(the peppermint in its glory days)

My hydrangea plants are growing quite nicely. The Endless Summer is shown above in the ground and the leaves look so lush and green.


And the Brestenburg is in a pot. I will try, yet again, to get these to turn blue. The best I got last year was a purple-ish color.


The hostas are making a nice comeback


And a surprise bulb popped up! I planted bulbs in a small patch in the backyard in 2008, my first attempt at flower gardening, and most of them rotted. I ended up starting that area over from scratch and planting blueberry bushes instead. But I guess one of the bulbs survived and here it is three years later!

Next post I will update the progress of my vegetable seedlings and list out what we’re growing this year.

In Bloom -- Pre-Spring

Spring is officially several days away, and some of my plants are waking up early to greet it. The pictures above are of two of my three hydrangea bushes (Endless Summer in the ground and Brestenburg in a pot). If this year is anything like last year, I expect these guys to be in full bloom by May. I mentioned that these pictures are of 2 of my plants. The third hydrangea, also Endless Summer, looks quite dead; there are no buds on any of the stems. It never really grew as well as its brother--it was always small and puny looking-- and I wonder if something got to it or the soil quality on that side of the yard just wasn't enough to keep it strong. I need to do a little more research on this one to determine what to do with it, if it is in fact dead.

What else is blooming--my jalapeno pepper plant! This plant was started from seed and is now in its third year. It's in a container and has done very well. Right now we have it inside by an east-facing window to get as much sunlight as possible. It has two flowers plus one that looks like it's about to open. You can see it in the picture above. I'm excited to see if it produces as much fruit as it did the previous two years and what the taste will be lik (they've been fairly mild).

Two weeks ago I started some bell peppers (top) and and tomatoes (bottom) indoors. I think they're progressing nicely. The bell pepper seeds are leftover from last year's crop and they're a mixed variety of colors. I'm hoping to get a purple one out of these since there were no purple peppers last year. The bottom picture is of patio princess tomato seedlings, a nice and easy-to-grow determinate plant (also grown last year). I haven't yet had time to plant the Tiny Tim or Oregon Spring tomatoes sent to me by Emily, but that's on my list of to-dos for the upcoming week. My to-do list also includes finding some different varieities of tomatoes, pepper, or squash to plant this year. I thought I had a lot of leftover seeds from last year, but I actually don't. We have also planted broccoli and yellow onion bulbs in a tiny plot in the backyard, and I'll get pictures up of those too.

Weekend Garden Recap: Lazy and Rainy

Hydrangea buds

patio princess seedlings

A rough work week and cold, rainy weekend made me feel very lazy and somewhat unproductive this past weekend. I did notice the hydrangea plants had sprouted some buds. That to me was my personal official notification that spring is on its way. I was also happy to see that the tomato seeds I planted last Sunday have already sprouted. I can't wait for it to be warm enough to get them outside!

I had planned to hit up some nurseries and look for seeds, both vegetable and flower, but I didn't quite get around to it. However, while at Whole Foods, I noticed they finally put seeds out for sale, and I bought oat grass seeds for our cat. We planted the last of his seeds in September and I didn't replenish his seed stock before winter. The poor thing has had to live off a pet store cat grass kit all winter that just didn't grow grass as fully as the real seeds. I know he'll be happy once we get his little garden growing.

And now Monday, bleh.