Plant Those Pots!

I will swear by the fact that I think that planting is therapeutic and good for the soul. The other day I got up early on the weekend and headed over to our local home improvement store to pick up some plants. I spent probably an hour just browsing the plant section, reading about them and trying to figure out what plants would look best in the various pots and planters we had around the house. Although it was a little late in the season, I highly recommend going at this time. There are a lot of plants who are outliving their welcome in their temporary plastic pots and have been put on the 75% off section. If you pick carefully you can definitely get great deals on healthy plants. So after a glorious early morning hemming and hawing in the plant aisle, I came home with my bounty.

Oh Cube, how I love you. Look at how versatile and roomy you are! Anyways, we all know how much I love my car, but did you know how much I love flowers? I just kept staring at these all day! So I started with the front of the house and moved around to the back. Here is the huge pot that I got to dress up the front of the house.

Since it was so big I put in extra plastic bags and empty plastic pots to fill up some of the space and conserve soil.

I also like to lay out the plants for each pot so I am organized and know which plants need to go where.

The final product!

There were a few other additions to the front of the house that came a little after. I had been wanting to get some hanging plants for the deck and one day I came home and was surprised to see them there! It was a sweet gift from my in-laws.

You can also see the pink flowers in the baskets on the front steps. Those were a 75% off deal; they were each a couple of bucks and I think they add a nice bright spot of color to the front!

Moving on to the back, we have some planted boxes attached to the porch rail and just a bunch of others that we kept in storage. I decided to pull a few out and use them, although I had plans to paint them and make them prettier. Oh well, there is always next year! They still end up so very pretty at the end!  I also had a few plants that I had kept alive through the winter that I was able to use. So these were the plants I had to use:

These are what the planter boxes looked like after the winter. So sad looking.

This one I planted a plant (I forget the name) last year and it comes back every year. Yay! But this is what it looks like when it takes over everything. At least you can dig some up and use it in other planters!

Once again, I set out the plants by each planter to make sure I put the plants I wanted in the right ones.

So after the organization, we were off to the planting races. Once again I had my father-in-law around to help with his mad planting skills.

Now for a few after pictures. I can't help but to just gaze out at the beautiful flowers all day long. They always bring a smile to my face!

(This one makes me laugh. After all my planting, this one ended up more random after a last minute change to another planter. The pretty middle plant with the HUGE amounts of the "takeover" plant that I have now dubbed it. Oh well, it still is bright and pretty!)

Now remember when my mom and I had a shopping spree? Here is the reveal of one of those items in use!

So there it is folks! My planting adventure...and the plants are still alive to tell about it!

How about you? Any planting adventures that you have had? Any flowers that you love to put in year after year?

Landscaping Adventure: Reuse Those Bulbs!

Reader beware: Landscaping is a learn as you go project for me so you may see some blunders and transplants. For all of you other rookies out there, this also shows you that you can triumph outside in the great outdoors. Coming from a family not green thumb inclined (memory of my dad and me and the incredible summer of the one tomato on the numerous tomato plants we attempted to grown) the outdoors was almost a little scary. I just had no idea on how to grow things and keep them alive. Then I married into the Rapp family and inherited a father-in-law who is a master landscaper and a mother-in-law who is a fearless planter, oh and a wonderful husband who also has a vast amount of knowledge. They have all been wonderful in getting me over my fear of planting (yeah, I think I was actually afraid to commit to putting something in the ground). So Eric and I have been tackling some landscaping projects around the house, especially in the front. But this post is not about that. It is about a side project with some out-of-place bulbs from the front.

As we tackled one of our front beds, we ended up taking out some random plants and bulbs. So we were left with a pile of half-grown bulbs.

I just couldn't let these babies go in the burn pile of discarded landscaping. I love everything about bulbs. I like that you can plant them once and you get beautiful flowers every year. I love that they bloom and then are gone; therefore no ugly looking brown plants throughout the winner. Score! So when faced with this pile I went searching around the yard to find a place for them.

Here is the winning spot!

This little corner bed in the back yard (just barely). This was a new addition last year so it really is just three rose of Sharon (you will see a lot of them throughout the yard) and my beloved daisy bush I put in last year. Here is Daisy.

I will update you when she blooms! Anyways, back to the point. Now that I had pinpointed the spot to transplant the bulbs, I went to work digging a trench to put the bulbs in. It also gave me an idea if I liked my choice of where to put the bulbs.

It looked good to me. And with impending storm clouds and the smell of rain in the air, I literally dug in! Time to make these babies permanent. It took a little oomph on my part to get through the barrier paper that has successfully kept out the weeds for a year. I got through it and got these little guys in just before the rain hit. I actually didn't get after pictures until a week later because it did rain. So here they are planted (a week later also means they have lived a week!).

Here is the before again:

Now the after!

I subtle change but a good use of the bulbs that otherwise would have bit the dust! Also, isn't that a beautiful flowering bush in our neighbor's yard?!

Question:
What have you been planting this spring? Any new favorite flowers or plants? I am always looking for suggestions of what to plant!

Daffodils in March?!

I don't know about where you live, but this winter should be said more like "winter"? Meaning, it was winter as determined by the calendar but the weather had a mind of its own. In Virginia, the weather is pretty mild but I love that it definitely has defined seasons. Except for this year. Winter decided to be downright warm, well, except for this fun snow storm. With all the warm weather, the flowers decided it was spring and blooms have begun to pop up everywhere. Including these little lovelies in the back yard.

These are definitely resilient little blooms having survived monstrous thunderstorms and tornado warnings in the past few days. Yet they bloom on, foreshadowing the early spring ahead of us.

While I was taking these pictures off my camera, I also found a few other pictures stored on there from a while ago. These pictures got me hungering after those perfect summer days. Don't you feel it from these pictures?

Ahh, can't you just imagine being in that perfect summer dusk, with the height of summer blooming around you, the quite hum of lawnmowers many homes away, children laughing from neighbor's backyards...? Just those gentle sounds of summer that make you feel so peaceful. I am definitely in the mood for days like that (and maybe a beach trip!). Oh, and fresh veggies from the garden of course!

What are you most looking forward to this summer?