In My Pretty Garden the Flowers Are Nodding

My parents are quite the gardeners. They have a beautiful yard and maintain a great vegetable garden every summer. Along with all that, my mom has about 20 indoor plants and always plants lots of flowers around the yard (some are perennials so she doesn't have to plant them every year, she just has to dig some up so they don't take over). And, I don't think I've ever seen a weed in their yard...anywhere. My mom is too fast for the little buggers and digs them up before they can spread or cause too much nuisance.

I hope someday I can be as great with plants as my parents are and now I'm on my way to becoming so. A couple weeks ago my sister, Heidi, gave me some money (she is in charge of my parent's money while they are on their mission) to spend on flowers and yard stuff. She said they would have spent on those things anyhow and she wanted me to have some flowers in my mom's planters. I was pretty excited because deep down I really wanted to beautify the front porch and deck out back like my mom does every year. So I jumped at the chance to buy some annuals to plant around.

Then, this same sister called to tell me Fred Meyer had flats with 48 plants each for $10. It sounded like a good deal to me, so this afternoon Owen and I headed to the store to buy some flowers. Then, when we got there, the store had a rack of half price flats that had been partially hit with frost. Some other ladies at the store who were also looking at the frost-bitten pallets said they'd be just fine...Snap off the dead plants, give them plenty of water and a couple weeks and I'll never know the difference. Since I like a challenge (oh, and I'm cheap too) I thought I'd give it a try. I planted them tonight (well...most of them) and I think they look pretty nice. Hopefully I can help them stay alive and beautiful! (I haven't killed any of my mom's indoor plants, and I have taken a couple horticulture and floral design classes -- so I'm not a complete novice).













Also, while we were there, we found some awesome deals on vegetable starts. We picked up eight tomato plants (six Burpee Big Boys, one golden girl and one Super Fantastic -- I hope they are all super fantastic!) and six pepper plants (a yellow and a bunch of rainbow mix).

When we got home, Owen tilled the garden.













And we planted the starts.













We are super excited to have lots of vegetables this summer.