All Stressed Out . . .

Gardening is supposed to be relaxing, right? Then why do I feel such anxiety when my plants don't come up right away? It is like my child is late coming home late. I'm poking the ground, looking for signs of life, wondering when, when, when? Finally my hidden ginger came up, then the white crinums came back to life. But what about the pine cone ginger that grew against the fence (2.)? I knew they would be late because last year I planted over them with Mexican Petunia when the sprouts forcefully found their way up.
So I was pretty happy when I saw these little sprouts popping up. My ginger is back!!!!

Seeds

Now, if I said "Free Seeds" in the title, I thought I would be completely inundated with requests. But that is what I am offering. I have an over-abundance of these salvia seeds, so if you email me your address, I'll send you some. Not sure of the variety, the nursery said "pink salvia". I have enough for about three people, but in a few weeks I should have more. I may ask for a self-addressed envelope if I have a lot of requests. Right now all I want is you to let me know how the seeds are growing.

Type "Free Seeds" in the subject line. wickedgardener76@yahoo.com

Something I DIDN'T Kill . . .

It may not look like much, but for me, that plant is pure happiness. After buying these crinums at local plant sale in October, I promptly planted them. And they promptly died. Dead, dead. All brown, not an ounce of life to them. Now if I were just a touch less lazy, I would have taken them out and planted something else. But I am that lazy, and didn't really have anything else to plant there. So I left them in the ground. I was pretty bummed because I have not been able to find crinums in any nurseries. My pink ones were given to me by my mother's co-worker and I found these white ones at the master gardener's plant sale. It would have difficult to find more. So you can imagine how happy I am that these suddenly came to life a few weeks ago. The tag didn't give me the variety name, but it said it was white with pink stripes. So maybe it looks something like this?:

Maybe I'm overly optimistic. Whatever. If it blooms at all I'll be ecstatic.

Peruvian Daffodil

Check out what I came home to! A Peruvian Daffodil bloom in the corner garden. (Insert happy dance here.)

Update on Mom's Garden

Worked yesterday on finishing up Mom's Garden. This is what it looked like before:

And here it is now:

Not too bad, huh? It will look much better in a few months.

Reviving the Pool Garden

Look at the bananas. "What?" you say. "Didn't Wicked tell us she removed these?" Well, unless you completely remove all of these roots, the buggers will come back. They look pretty now and I almost hate to hack them to death. But hack I will for two simple reasons:

1. More often than not, the bananas look like this: yuck.

2. They are busting through the raised beds. The bastards must go!

I have to admit that I didn't get to all of these plants today. I did remove the other bunch on opposite corner and replaced it with:

BIRD OF PARADISE!!!!!!!

Bucket Week - Day Three

Yep. I did my bucket tonight. In fact, I did two because I'm going to Mom's tomorrow night and I won't be able do my bucket. (This is some exciting shit, folks) I discovered something interesting tonight. I find destroying tiny, defensive, completely innocent living things can be very calming. Sitting in the pool garden, with the sun setting and a cool breeze gently blowing my hair, all I thought was, I should sit here and pull tender seedlings by their roots every night! It was pleasant and peaceful experience. My garden became a place again, instead of a giant to-do list. My red cannas were coming back. My garden really was my favorite place in the world. Weed free, my garden was promising again. Life was promising again. . . Then a mosquito bit me. Then another. Whatever. This sucks. I'm going inside, Idol is on.

Bucket Week - Day Two

Day two of Bucket Week is going well. I did my bucket while waiting for my dinner to cook in the oven. Tomorrow I'll get my "Suzie-Homemaker" badge. Anyway. Can someone tell me what this plant is? I like to know the name of things I'm cursing. It is so noxious, I hate to even elevate it to plant status. It looks a bit like a dandelion, but has these barbs on the edges of the leaves that catch my hands like thorns. It makes Bucket Week much harder going.

A Bucket Week

I don't know about you, but my valuable weekend gardening time has just not seemed to be there. Too much fun stuff to do and not enough time to weed. So, out of desperation, I decided to challenge myself by picking a bucket of weeds each evening for a week. Above is my weed bucket that I carry around with me while weeding. It does not take long to fill it, especially when I'm also including bird of paradise prunings. I did two buckets tonight, mostly because I was motivated. Eventually I'd like to do a bucket week each month. I'd challenge all of you to do the same, but I now there are a few reasons why many of you can't: 1. its still April, and unless you live in the south, you may not even have weeds yet, and 2. many people can't get home in time. Even if you can't join me, please send your moral support. I'm famous for devising a plan and then totally abandoning it when the mood passes.

Sometimes You Make the Plan, Sometimes the Garden Center Does

It was a soggy wet weekend and besides getting some weeding and maintenance work done around the yard, the major changes have centered around the corner garden:Here is what this area looked like one short month ago. In between the thunderstorms I planted variegated ginger(1.), multiple bulbs, and two queen palms(2.). "What?" you say. "I don't remember queen palms on Wicked's plan." Well, sometimes you make the plan, and sometimes the Garden Center does. Yesterday while shopping I found these palms on sale for $5.99 each!!!! When you find a deal like that, you re-evaluate your plan. I strongly considered a field of queen palms, but restrained myself with only two. As they get larger I think it will provide the more intimate feeling that my online inspiration had. Check out this Chocolate Mint coleus, which I also planted in the corner garden. I can't resist anything called chocolate mint. Yummy! I'd show you where I planted it, but is raining too hard, so this is a shot of some cuttings. I hope to get lots of babies from these plants.

Epcot - Part Two

The nice part of theme parks is looking at their creative plantings. I have to say, I was a little disappointed in many of them, but I like the effect of a mass planting of these impatiens.

I don't know if the caladiums were leftovers from another planting, or a carefully planned spring planting coming up early, but I like the idea of planting a colorful winter flower (like snapdragons) over my bulbs to fill the void.
While bonsai are generally not my favorites, I can learn to love them when they look as lush as these. If you ever go to Epcot, be wary of Japan's gift store. I could have unloaded half my bank account there.

One of the things that made a big impression on me when I first went to Epcot some twenty years ago was the boat ride through the experimental greenhouses in the Land. It didn't fail to impress again. Unfortunately I didn't realize you could take a behind the scenes tour of the greenhouses until they were done for the day. Frankly, I thought my husband would be a bit bored by it, so I put it off. But it was a highlight of the day.

Maybe it was the tomato tree:

Or maybe the eggplant tree impressed him:
Nope, it was the definitely the plants growing in the air:

See the hidden Mickey?