This month has finally seen the temperature creep into the upper 60s to 90s with fewer freezes. Which meant I could finally get serious about planting things in my new flowerbeds!


I've heard that azaleas are hard to maintain, but the one I planted two years ago couldn't be happier and has required practically no work. To plant them I just dig a hole a little bigger and deeper than the plant. Fill it up loosely with peat moss (azaleas like acidic soil which is what the peat moss is for) and add water until the hole is filled with a soupy mixture. Then you plop the plant in, cover the edges with dirt and you're done.
The next flowerbed we built is at the end of my deck and I haven't gotten it filled yet, but my grandmother did bring me some jasmine from her house that I planted in it. Eventually it will grow up the side of the deck.
Before I could plant anything though I had to line the edges of all the flowerbeds with landscape fabric. Because we used landscape timbers to build the beds the soil can wash out the spaces between the timbers without something holding it in. Since the plants need to root deeper than the beds I couldn't cover the bottoms which made cutting the fabric to size a little tricky.
This was actually the first bed I planted anything in since I went to one of the local herb festivals and stocked up on tomato and pepper plants. We have a lady in Tulsa that grows and sells heirloom tomato and pepper plants, The Tomato Man's Daughter. She has a great selection and I almost always buy my tomatoes from her.

I barely got my tomato and pepper plants in the ground before we had another freeze though! I cut the bottoms off of some milk jugs to cover the plants overnight so they didn't die. It actually didn't get as cold as the weathermen predicted which was good.
In the front yard I bought some bushes to replace those that died a couple summers ago and Grandmother bought me a couple of new plants to go in the pots on the front porch with my silver sage.

Other pictures from this spring:
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St. Francis looked pretty nice with my tulips blooming this spring. Irises and dahlias are starting to come up now. |
The garden bed has some sort of purple flower that grows along the fence. Lovely (and invasive). |
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Ollie thinks he's a rabbit. Or at least runs like one. |
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Titan, my brother's cat, enjoying geraniums at my mom's house. |
I know dandelions are weeds, but don't they look pretty making a path to the forsythia? |
I hate to mow, but Ollie loves a freshly mowed yard. |
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