Friday, June 27, 2008

green stuff

I've been meaning to post for a while now but when I logged in I realized it's been over a month since the last post. We're such slackers.
I was going to post more wedding pictures but.... I've not gotten any more wedding pictures from anyone. So if you are reading this and you took pictures at our wedding, please send them our way. As soon as the photographer gets me the pictures, I will start posting those too. He warned us that it would be at least 2-3 months. I hope we hear from him by the end of July.

in other news.... there's not much new here. Brian and I have both been working a lot since we got home from the honeymoon. There's really nothing new. The most exciting thing that's happened- my aloe plant is blooming. For those of you who may not know, I like to play in the dirt and Brian supports this habit of mine. This year our garden is bigger and better than ever.

This the front of the house and our new planter there.




The large reddish plants are coleus and on each side of the planter are some black elephant ears I got from my mother. I had put some flower seeds in between each of the coleus but they grew so large so fast that the flower seedlings aren't getting much sun these days.
My basket o' petunias
The rest of the pictures are from all of the plants on the back patio. It's rather green out there right now.

The hanging basket is an asparagus fern and below is the schefflera that I got at Dad's funeral in 2003.

starting on the left:
elephant ears from Mom with Seema sniffing around
bell pepper that have just barely sprouted
mix of flowers- I'm not sure what all is going to bloom there
zucchini
Anaheim peppers
hummingbird vine and lilac bushes all in one pot
the famous blooming aloe


So the aloe plant- I have tried so many ways to kill this plant. It's been peed on by the cats, knocked over, over watered, under watered, repotted several times... This spring it was half out of the pot and it had turned a greyish brown. but this weird shoot came up out of it. Now we have it repotted (again) and it's in full bloom. Imagine my suprise. There are parts of it that's still kinda brown but the center of it is nice and green and a little spotty.
I had no idea that aloe plants bloomed. So I did some reading and found out that they will start blooming after about 4-5 years. I think it will now bloom every year (not sure tho). Last year this thing had so many babies that the aloe babies were pushing the main plant out of the pot- I think that was the precursor to blooming.

still kinda brownish but still kickin'



More views of the same plants from above




The tomato plants are in the large green tubs. If I remember correctly the one on the left was breed for container gardens. In front of the tomatoes are several herbs- chives, basil, parsley. I'm trying to grow green onions in a pot too. I 'm not sure those will get very big. The smaller terra cotta pot on the right has the "Wildflowers from our Wedding" seed pack.
This was our other large garden purchase this year- the plant stand. I've been wanting for a while now. I can bring this indoors this winter and hopefully we can have herbs/small flowers all winter. Or it will be a place to store dirt this winter.
There's so much on here- lots of cat nip on all shelves, amaryllis that has not bloomed in ages-it just gets green leaves and then dies over and over- and mint on the top shelf.
2nd shelf- zennias, bleeding heart
3rd- more catnip and another assorted flower seedlings

on the right next to the big plant stand is another Coleus. There are also sweet pea seeds that have sprouted underneath the coleus but it got so large so fast that it's not really letting the flowers do much growing.







And finally- in this very long post-
Anna's special little helpers. They help with the catnip and bugs. The LOVE the catnip and below they are shown enjoying small bits of it. They also monitor the bird situation. There is a bird feeder on the other side of the asparagus fern that sees a good bit of traffic. I also have a hummingbird feeder that has seen no traffic. Maybe I have the 2 feeders too close to each other... Maybe Sully is eating all of the hummingbirds...



That's all for now. I promise to do a better job with posting. I hope that in the coming months there are more exciting things to write about. And since we never do post- please pass along this blog to everyone you know and remind folks to look at our pictures!!!!! :)