What's blooming today?
I’m not sure what kind of flower this is. I don’t recognize it at all. Does anyone have any idea what kind of flower this might be?
It’s a nice looking flower isn’t it? It appears to have many petals – twenty or thirty I believe.
Please let me know if you know what kind of flower this is. I’m curious.
Here’s a a few handy gardening tips that you might find useful, particularly if you are new to gardening:
1. Do your homework. Visit public gardens, read magazines and books.
2. Amend the soil for success. Lighten clay loam soil with compost.
3. Design for surprise: place some curves in your design or interesting nooks that visitors to your garden have to enter to see what magically beautiful plant you have growing there.
4. If you inherit a garden: Wait a season to see what comes up. You may destroy something you want to save. We were lucky to have purchased our house in June. I was able to watch what grew that year and used the following winter to plan out my new garden.
5. Smart plant picks. Purchase plants that are drought tolerant or said to be easy to care for if you don’t want to spend too much time in the garden watering and pruning.
The Well-Designed Mixed Garden: Building Beds and Borders with Trees, Shrubs, Perennials, Annuals, and Bulbs
6. Mass appeal. Plant large areas with one flower in one color, such as purple phlox. You can always tell who’s a beginning gardener because they plant one of each plant. masses of three to five or more plants planted together in the garden bed make a much more satisfying display.
7. A wild prairie garden can be work until it gets established. If you want a natural looking garden find out what plants are native to your area and use them abundantly.
8. Japanese-style garden do’s. For dimension, build hills and cover them with moss.
9. Time-saving trick. Plant hosta around the base of trees and you won’t have to trim around them.
10. Get the kids to help. Most kids like helping in the garden. You may still end up doing more work than they do, but it’s a way to spend some quality time with them and also a way to get them outside.
11. Sure-fire critter repeller – build a fence with a gate if you want to keep out skunks, who don’t climb but can dig just fine) and other pets that might frequent your garden. Gates and fences don’t stop all critters but a fence might deter a few of them.
The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals
Well, as some of you know right now I’m having a blog party over at Tricia’s Musings to celebrate my first year of blogging. Yep, Tricia’s Musings is one year old!
I’m having a pseudo ICE garden party over there. Go have a look at the photos of the ice garden and the ice bar. MMMMM lots of chocolate over there too. Yum!Ok I know I can’t complain about our winter here at all. Others have had much worse, particularly people who usually have great winters … but winter has finally arrived as of this week. We’ve had snow, finally, and now very cold temperatures. Right now it’s -12 c (10.4 F). Brrrr!
So I’m jonesing for Spring. Here’s a flower, a tulip and other spring flowers, that I’m longing to see in just a few short months:
I’ve noticed that only a portion of the Green Thumb Sunday members have been playing lately. I know that while I’ve been posting regularly I haven’t been visiting as often as I should. My reasons are that I’ve been too busy trying to raise money to keep the bills paid (I’m home sick with no income coming in so I’m doing paid posts to earn some money), and I’ve been very ill lately.
I am wondering why others aren’t playing though. Have you lost interest? Or is it just because it’s winter and you don’t have photos to post? Remember photos do not have to be current. They also don’t have to be of a garden or a plant. It could be a nice scene from nature, something outdoors … use your imagination.
I created this meme so that we could show off our creative talents and our gardens. A great bonus that we get from interacting with each other is that we get a boost in traffic, some extra links to our sites, and perhaps some regular visiters too.
I’m going to go through the list and people that haven’t played for at least two months or haven’t even updated thier site in the last month will probably be removed. I’ll leave messages if I’m considering removing you from the list.
Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.