Gardening: let's try this again.

[angledge]

Yesterday I made my second attempt at domesticating one of the three strips'o'soil that form the front yard of le Chateau. funkyplaid gave me a lift to Sloat Garden Center, & there I bought many green things. Good luck, green things! You'll need it! For once I was known as the Black Thumb, & I'm still less than proficient at this whole gardening thang.

Here are this year's contestants on Survivor: Garden.




I will try to get some photos of the actual garden planting, too. With help from evilfb, I cleared all the weeds from this section, then put down a fabric weed barrier. Hopefully, the plants I bought will spread, covering the boring black fabric. Also, I hope they will live longer than the poor annuals I planted last year. This year's choices were driven by the criteria of survivorship: all annuals, all drought-tolerant. I hope they all thrive!

Plug: there's a new community, norcalgardening, & so far it's been really helpful. Dirt-diggers, check it out!

Comments

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Oh man.... don't even say such things unless you're seriously considering it! It just gets my heart rate elevated. You're thinking about it, *mumble mumble can't reveal information* is thinking about it, *mumble mumble more insider information* is thinking about it.... we could end up with a serious Hive colony out here! Then all we have to do is catch marasca on her return, move ladybugbutt a few thousand miles south, & voila!

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Sure - if your resource pool has about three million dollars in it. Just get out here & we'll pray for the real estate bubble to burst.

[jacesan.livejournal.com]

Did you get any cacti?

[miss-katelynne.livejournal.com]

What are the first (the purply-blue) ones? I'm wanting to plant some flowers in our front yard and those are pretty.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Do you see any cacti in the cast? [/snark] No, I didn't get any cacti. I don't really like them much. My preference is for plants that either 1) produce food; 2) have pretty flowers; or 3) smell nice.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

I put the name of each flower in the alt tag; roll your mouse over it & the name will appear. Unless you're using Firefox or a Mac. In which case, I will tell that the flowers in the upper-left corner are "Veronica peduncularis 'Georgia blue'".

I may need a gardening icon.

[ataralas.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the plants. I can't do indoor plants for shit, but I sure can grow a good flowerbed. I haven't had a place I could scratch in the dirt for almost four years now. Maybe I'll put in some good time down the Shore this summer.

[marasca.livejournal.com]

I've never quite understood what makes one plant thrive and another die horribly. I have one box of herbs and a pot of petunias that are so happy they're practically doing little planty jigs. At the same time, potted in the same soil, I planted two peppermint plants. They're right next to each other. They were both healthy when I bought them. They're getting the same treatment. And yet one is growing like mad and the other has barely grown. My newer basil and coriander plants don't seem to be too happy right now, but I have no idea what to do about it.

Good luck to your flowers!

[jacesan.livejournal.com]

Some plants have emotional problems and have a harder time thriving than others. You can talk to them and try to sort out their problems, or you can just pull them up and throw them away, putting them out of their emo misery.