That is both in celebration of May Day and a distress call to the Master Gardener. This may come as a surprise to most of you, but gardening is not one of my talents. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Last year my mom agreed to come plant my flower pots for me (after years of begging I finally wore her down). And they looked pretty damn good! I kept them watered (for the most part) and they lasted well into the fall.
So I sent out the bat signal again this year and Mom came on Tuesday to help me plant. We first took inventory of how many pots were in the sun and how many in the shade and then took off to the nursery. We were throwing stuff into the cart like we knew what we were doing (well, one of us did). There weren’t a lot of shade plants to choose from and one of the spikey things (yes, that’s it’s plantalogical name) I wanted was gone. So we decided to take our purchases home and reassess the situation.
We determined we needed a few more shade plants and some fillers. Mom suggested we make a list of what we needed. A list! Now that is something I can get behind; love a good list. I would have done that to begin with and not been able to veer away from the list. I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no plants, and if it ain’t on my list, I ain’t buyin’ it!
So we go to the next nursery with a plan, and the moment we pulled into the parking lot I knew I’d lost her. She immediately went to a plant and was asking someone about it and decided we needed a couple of those. It wasn’t on the list, but I’m not the expert here, so I went along with it. After wandering in two separate directions for about 20 minutes and throwing various things into the cart, she decides we’re done. Um, what about the list? She just laughs and shrugs her shoulders. We’ve put a lot of things into the cart, but only a couple of them were on the list. “Oh this is good. We’ll make this work”. Who is “we”, I’m wondering? What the hell did we make a list for if we weren’t going to consult it? But she’s having a great time, saying this place is like a candy store. Yeah, she’s not paying for it and none of it is on the frickin’ list!
But we get it home and she starts to make the magic happen. I’m just an assistant for this part. I stir up the old soil, add some new soil and fertilizer. I’ve decided I must not put enough plants into a pot. She has these babies full with some of this here, and we’ll put some over there. Oh, we have one of these left over, we’ll just stuff it in here. It looks good, but I’m not really sure what all is in there.
Here is an action shot:
And a picture of the master in her natural habitat (I didn’t make her sweep; the broom is just an accessory to her outfit):
Here are the final products:
Plants to watch this year: Dwarf Papyrus, Baby Tut and Black Velvet Petunias. I have high hopes for these. Oh, and gardening tip of the day: did you know you aren’t supposed to get the blooms of geraniums wet when you are watering them? They will bloom better if you water the soil only. Who knew? I didn’t.
It’s not that the geraniums will bloom better — it’s that the blossoms will stay looking nice longer if they don’t get wet.
Those containers look a bit anemic now, but give them a month, and they will look good.
It was a more than even trade. I’ll plant containers anywhere/anytime if the noon-gardener sends dinner home with me. Thanks, Amy!
I’m not sure where the ‘noon-gardener’ came from in the above comment. Should be non-gardener. My fingers were walking!
Amy, I love your blog! Always educational and never disappoints on the humor either!