Razzmatazlady

Category: Flowers

  • Our Trip to the Garden Center






    Here are just a few pictures I took while we were at the nursery.
    It’s a great little nursery about ten miles from where we live and it’s smack-dab in the middle of the country!
    It was really chilly so I was happy I had dressed warm. There were only a couple of others there besides Jack and me so we had lots of choices. You can see Jack’s veggies on one of the wagons and my flowers on another. I should have taken a few closer shots but, oh well…..
    I bought dahlias (tall and short), marigolds, petunias, pansies, sweet alyssum (white), dusty miller and a bunch of herbs. Dusty miller has a dusty gray-green foliage and doesn’t flower but it’s great for an accent. And I just love masses of white alyssum which really makes all the other colors just pop out.

    I actually don’t know what veggies Jack bought…will have to go check that out.

    Well, I do know he bought onion sets and potatoes and eggplant, which I just love – have a great recipe for eggplant parmesan and another for ratatouille. Ratatouille is vegetable stew, usually made with eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and onions, seasoned with herbs and garlic. It’s just delicious.
    Not sure what else was in his wagon but I DO know that whatever he bought will be just yummy! I love fresh-from-the-garden fare.
    So we planted all the flowers and today he’s going to put in the vegetables. Will post some pictures after it’s all said and done.

  • Gardening Day

    A Cute Little Bootscraper

    Thought I’d post this picture of a bootscraper that daughter MJ gave me a few years ago. (It’s not very clear but I’m in a hurry so don’t want to retake the picture.) Anyway, I pull it out in the fall and put it back in the spring.

    It’s fun to dig through all the things we’ve stored over the winter. For some reason, it’s just like opening presents. Exciting, even. Goes to show you how little it takes to please me – ha! We’ve been puttering around putting our garden art here and there. Once everything is how I want it, I’ll take more pictures. But I do love this little boot scraper.

    Today will be a gardening day in our household. We’re going to our favorite nursery to get vegetables for the vegetable garden (that’s Jack’s bailiwick) and I want to pick up some annuals to plant here and there. It’s supposed to be coolish (not a real word but it gets the message across), in the low 60’s but it’ll be sunny which is critical in my book.

    I put the Texas wildflowers in amongst the peonies a few days ago but just in case they don’t come up, having a few tall, colorful annuals will at least ensure that there’s color after the peonies stop blooming.

    Dahlias, probably – they are gorgeous and come in a hundred different colors. Zinnias are great, too. Even marigolds. You can get tall marigolds, short marigolds, yellow, red, orange and mixed colors. They’re perfect for a little color with not a lot of work. And one of the best things about marigolds is that they’ll put up with a little neglect.

    Planting annuals is a really good thing to do with kids, too. They can’t easily wreck them. And if you’re going to really do it right, you should snip off the blooms once they’re planted. It encourages the plant to spread. Kids love doing stuff like that. They can pick flowers right away. You can float the blossoms in a clear bowl of water since they’ll be too short to put in a vase.

    I think annuals are highly underrated. Well, I’m off to inspect the gardens. Might as well get an early start. Will report on our progress tomorrow.

  • The Chickadees & The Gardens

    White Tulips Finally Blooming!

    The chickadees are back. We were sitting at the kitchen table with some friends and I noticed one of the chickadees in the cranberry bush. I watched her hop down the branches to the birdhouse and then inside. So I feel much better, now.

    Another little update (not earth shattering): Some time ago in one of my posts, I mentioned that someone told me that it might have been a wren that destroyed the robin’s nest last year (it made me sad). I thought it was Karen, my friend who was here this morning. Anyway, I mentioned that to her while we were having coffee and she said that she did not tell me that. She said that wrens are too little to destroy a robin’s nest.

    I don’t know who else might have told me about that but I am very relieved that it wasn’t the wrens. I guess my memory was just playing tricks on me…

    The peonies are about a foot high. You could hardly see them poking out of the ground last week so this nice warm weather has really given them some incentive. They say that peonies bloom by Memorial Day but there’s no possible way they’ll be ready by then. We have four of them in a little bed by the driveway. There are pink flowers and white flowers and one of them is kind of white with pink edges on the petals. I love ’em. They smell heavenly.

    It looks to me like the lilac bushes aren’t going to bloom. I was planting flowers in pots on our deck, yesterday, and when I walked by the lilacs it looked like the buds had dried up. I wonder why. They’re huge and they’re really old and we should probably dig them out and replace them but not this year.

    I didn’t get the Texas wildflowers planted yesterday (or whenever it was I said I was going to do it) so I’m heading out now to get them in the ground. It’s sunny, again, but it might rain later so better get it done!