Welcome to my little garden

I do not have a green thumb.  In fact, the exact opposite is true.  (What would that be?  A black thumb?  A brown one?  Purple with pink stripes?) I have never been able to keep a plant alive in my house for more than a week.  This is going back to when I lived in an apartment too.  I'd bring home a plant thinking it would help "pretty up the space" and I knew that plants are good to have around because they release oxygen into the air and all that jazz.  Well, it has been my experience that dead plants don't do anything for prettying up the room and they definitely don't help the atmosphere around here.  So I stopped bothering.  I'm just one of those plant killers that, through no fault of my own, can't seem to keep anything green alive.

Moving to a house with a yard gave me hope.  Maybe I'd have better luck growing plants and things outside!  Maybe!  I must admit that my luck was definitely better in the great outdoors.  Although I still had a problem with some flowers and plants.  It always seemed like when I thought it was time to put effort into the little garden (via watering, miracle grow, etc.) that was when the plants would shrivel up and die.  Maybe it was just my personality was too much for them and they committed planticide to get away from me.  I'm not sure, but I made it a vow after two years that I was just going to plant and then leave them be.  Mother nature could provide the water and sun and I'd sit back and enjoy the fruits and flowers of her labor. 

This year seems to be a drastic change from the past couple years.  The flowers I've planted have taken off like no tomorrow and I haven't done anything other than put them in the ground.  I'm a very impatient person so I have to admit that I never bothered to really research what could and should grow around here.  I didn't bother to pay attention to the amount of sun and shade and soil type.  I planted by emotion.  If I saw a flower I liked, I bought it and planted it.  I have no rhyme or reason to the colors or how I plotted it all out.  There was no plan.  I just put them in the ground and voila... pretty flowers! 

And so, after all my hard work (haha) here's a look at how my garden grows...

The first flower I have no clue what it is.  My mother-in-law brought over a couple flats of mixed flowers one day and my husband planted them around.  So I can't take any credit for the prettiness of the first two pictures below.  Those were my hubby's doing.

Next up are my happy little yellow chrysanthemums.  When I bought the flat of these cuties, I didn't realize that from a distance they actually look like dandilions.  So for awhile until they started to really grow nicely, I have a feeling that my neighbors thought that we had lots of weeds!  Of course close up you can see that they aren't.  I picked them out because they looked so cheery and bright.

Now those babies are growing like mad!

I feel a little bit of regret that I didn't buy more of the following.  These Winky Double REd & White Columbine are so neat looking.  I only planted 2 of them, but really wish I got more because they're growing so well.

Another one that I regret not getting more of is the African Daisy.  I did pick up two of these as well (one in the color below and one in a deeper purple).  They did so wonderfully that I really should have planted a bunch.

Be careful wandering through my garden because there be wildlife around here!  Eek!

Among the flowers you're more than likely to run into Mr. Duck (or as I call him "the JarJar lookalike") and Ms. Piggy.  Also, gnomes and flamingos have been known to appear in the oddest places.  They were camera shy on this day however.

I even tried my hand at veggies this year!  So far my peas are growing like crazy!  (At least I think this is the peas.  I forgot to mark where I put each seed in my garden, so I'm just assuming this was where I placed the peas.)  I also planted radishes, cucumbers, carrots, green peppers and rhubarb.  If memory serves me right and I am recalling where I put them correctly, the radishes are doing well and the carrots are starting to grow too.  The cucumbers, I think, are also beginning to grow... but I think something ate my pepper plant that was peeking out of the soil.  It was there and now it's not.  I haven't seen hide nor hair of the rhubarb, which greatly disappoints me because I love that stuff!  Ah well.  I'm just impressed that anything is growing at all.  I never have any luck growing from seeds so this is a first try for me.

 If all works well, next year I want to do a really big vegetable garden.

My day lilies (although I shouldn't call them "mine" because they were already here before I was) are just getting buds and should bloom pretty soon, I hope!  They're orange and so lovely.  I'd like to add some other color lilies to the mix one day.

I really can't wait for the Tiger Lilies to bloom.  Those are always so beautiful!

The plants that I never have to worry about are the Hostas.  These babies keep popping up in all sorts of places and grow so big and pretty.  I've got a couple different types, but this one's my favorite.  (Just ignore the icky bug on his leaf!)

I am the happiest about my carnations.  I never previously realized that you could actually grow those in a normal flower garden!  I always received them in bouquets and such, but never put one and one together to see if I could grow my own.  However, when I saw them at the nursery, I just had to grab some!  I'm wishing now that I had gotten a couple different colors instead of just one, but at least I picked a cool shade!  They sure pop against the greens and other colors of my garden, don't you think?

I have some Black-eyed Susans that haven't bloomed yet, but I think they come out to play later in the summer time, if I'm not mistaken.  I also have a few other odds and ends, but I won't bore you with all those.  This is just a highlight of what someone can do in a garden when they have no clue what they're doing. 

Thanks for visiting!