Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Garden photos

Here's what my garden looked like yesterday afternoon: a bit messy, but colorful:

At this time of year, the roses in the bed on the left should be twice that size and have twice as many blooms. But these darlings had a difficult winter (we had to replace several bushes), so I'm not expecting much from them right now. Especially as a small herd of deer has found its way into our urban neighborhood and has been nibbling on the tender buds!

A couple of weeks ago, I planted an entire herb garden in this whiskey barrel: parsley, spearmint, chives, thyme, basil, and rosemary, plus some nasturtiums. Then I added a scented geranium just because I've never grown one (I don't think they like full sun, but we'll see). We love cooking with fresh herbs and dropping mint sprigs into our iced tea and lemonade. The nasturtium blossoms will add a nice peppery taste to salads.

In the pots under the birdbath are some pink zinnias, a yellow primrose, and some red petunias that haven't taken off yet.

Last weekend, my hunk o' burnin' love surprised me with this big pot of pink verbena, "Terra Cotta" million bells, and screaming purple and pink petunias. I set the colorful bouquet on a stand above this lush bed of periwinkle, which gives us masses of sweet little blue flowers in the spring.

11 comments:

Shauna said...

Um, Brenda, I had to chuckle at your first comment. This is NOT messy! It's beautiful. I'm a non-gardner, and I appreciate that gift and passion in others. My yard? Disaster. Or at the very least, plain and uninspired.

Brenda Coulter said...

The thing is, Shauna, I don't think of myself as a gardener. I'm just a person who likes having flowers around.
;-)

Jennifer Shirk said...

Beautiful!!

You gave me a great idea with that container for the herb garden, too. I've always wanted to grow some, but I was afraid the bunnies would get at them.

Brittanie said...

Congratulations on your nomination. :)

Brenda Coulter said...

Thank you, Brittanie.

Yeah, Jennifer, the whiskey barrel is a great way to frustrate the bunnies. I was thinking my parsley, in particular, has grown very fast in the two weeks since I planted it. But now it occurs to me that for the first time, I'm not sharing it with the rabbits!

Bonnie S. Calhoun said...

Well I know I haven't been around in a while cause I'm trying to polish the presentation that I'm teaching at the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers conference in august...but I jsut noticed that I'm not on your link list anymore...while your still on mine :-(

Brenda Coulter said...

Sorry, my friend. There were about 120 links on that list, and I was adding and updating them all by hand. I just couldn't keep up with it anymore, so now I'm experimenting with an auto-list hosted by Referer.org. When somebody follows a link to my blog, the refering site should show up on the list. I believe I have it set to show the most recent 75 referals (but I can expand that), excluding search engines.

The service appears to be a little glitchy, and the results don't show up in real time, so I'm not completely satisfied thus far. When I have time, I plan to investigate BlogRolling.

Brenda Coulter said...

Oh, and I'm sure you'll give a great presentation at the conference. Have fun!

Jenster said...

Your garden is beautiful! Even the "before" picture. LOL Would you like to come to Valley Forge and so something with mine???

Jen

Brenda Coulter said...

No!

;-)

I mean, thank you, but I have enough trouble keeping up with my own garden.

dmoffett said...

I love the picture of the whiskey barrel garden. May I use the picture on my web site? I sell whiskey barrel planters and rain barrels.
You can see them at: http://www.KentuckyBarrels.com
kybarrels@gmail.com .

I will give you credit for the picture. Let me know how the barrel planter worked out for you.

Dan