Gardening Fever

7:30 AM Posted In Edit This 1 Comment »


For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over
and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing has come,
And the voice of the turtledove
Is heard in our land.
Song of Solomon 2:12


Ok, I know the rain is not over and gone! As my cousin, Micheal, says, "I would much rather suffer through rain while March is coming in like a lion then to suffer through April being cold and damp!" And it is definitely coming in like a lion, March that is... It's been raining and storming for the past week straight!

That doesn't do anything to help me with the fact that my kitchen table has been over-taken by all my cool weather seedlings waiting to get out in the ground, or help the fact that my mother-in-law was kind enough to buy me two pink honeysuckle vine cuttings that are sitting amongst the veggies and sprouting leaves while they wait for the frost to past and get out into the garden. Nor does it help the fact that the trees are budding and I have gardening fever and can't get out of the house through the downpour!



That picture was taken last summer when we got the swing-set, but the purpose is to show you the HUGE embankment left when the previous owners cleared land for the house... and they did no kind of improvement or planning for the eventuality of
erosion. Last year, we were more concerned with getting the interior of the house live-able so my answer to erosion was planting grass plugs on the hill. It worked well, for a time, but grass here isn't evergreen, so the winter months have been hard on the embankment. Since we are to the point where everything else inside is basically cosmetic, this year, I can worry about the outside more!

But I have a master plan, see. (
lol) I have those two pink honeysuckles, which is just about the only native southern plant I've not found growing on our property, which I plan to plant at the base of the tree roots that are exposed so they can find some grip on the slick embankment. I want to train them into a background for our patio (area- it's not finished yet! lol). I absolutely adore the smell of honeysuckle; I grew up in south Georgia where honeysuckle grows so proficiently that it's considered a weed but it smells like home to me!)


I have over 500 Morning Glory seeds in Pink, Purple, and Blue (also gifts from my mother in law, who is so in love with Morning Glories and Passion Fruit Vines that her online name is Passiflora!) which I plan to scatter around for quick cover. They sprout in less than a week, grow quickly, and are annuals are here.

Then, I am going to scatter my 1000+ Creeping Thyme seeds amongst the Morning Glories. They take longer to germinate, and are evergreen perennials so by the time the Morning Glories are fading away, they will be just to the size to bloom and take over. :) Hopefully, by next year, the Thyme will be reaching it's full spread and I won't have to worry about anything but filler plants for where the seeds missed !
AND I should have made some attractive, natural steps to preventing the road from washing into my front yard! Not to mention that my yard should start smelling fantastic!


I've spent some time recently scoping out eBay for flower seeds as well. Vegetable and herb seeds are cheap enough for me to buy full price, but the flower I love get a little bit expensive!

I bought some rainbow colors of Holly hocks, which I am going to plant along the front of the house instead of the traditional shrubbery, and intermix with scabiousas and canary bird zinnias.




I'm extending our stone walkway another 60 feet and putting up a fence to contain the people parking in my yard. (The yard has a LOT of rocks in it, and people tend to not realize where the driveway ends, and where they should park their cars!). I am going to put up a trellis and grow wild wisteria up both sides of it. :)
Obviously this isn't just a stock photo of a plant, but this is kind of my long term goal :)



Then all along the fence line, I want to plant Sweet Williams and Plains Coreposis. I love how they tend to have the same patterning in different shapes!


Then I want to mix hostas, astilbes, and lavender phloxes down the walkway that will seg-way into my cosmos and black-eyed susans around the porch.




All in all, I know that it's very ambitious, but it never hurts to plan! I have all the required seeds/seedlings, I just have to be able to get them in the ground! LOL

1 comments:

Sherry said...

Hello!
Just stumbled across your blog while I was looking for hollyhock pics!
Your blog is beautiful!
I love flower gardening too!
I think your flower garden plan sounds great. I also like the same types of old fashioned flowers like hollyhocks!
I was so surprised to find them at walmart this year already in the plant stage and they bloomed beautifully! They also had foxglove plants that were gorgeous and very cheap!
Keep up the good work and bless your 6 little ones!
In Christ,
Sherry

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