A Few New Flowers

Well, once again, I'm writing an early morning post. Today I woke up at 4:45 am, hungry and wide awake. There was one bird tweeting outside, but I don't think I can blame it for waking me up. It's just getting more difficult to sleep these days, and the slightest discomforts seem to wake me up. I remember a few months ago my cousin-in-law Jess mentioned how she was glad when her pregnancies ended, because then she could finally get some sleep. I couldn't understand what she meant, having only remembered losing sleep after Sam was born, but now I can see her point of view.

Just when I posted about not having the stamina to garden, I did find some time to purchase and plant a few new flowers. I was able to weed one garden bed, and J did a great job of weeding the other one. We've laid down more wood chips, so I think we'll keep the weeds at bay for the next few weeks.

I planted a peach-colored foxglove and a blueish-violet delphinium in the back section of the northwest garden. Both of these are supposed to keep blooming from late spring until mid-summer. I'm especially excited about the delphinium; its colors really pop and look great from a distance. I also had a replace one of our azaleas that died - I put a euryops (bush daisy) perennial, which has been trained to grow like a little tree. I hope this change in height adds some visually-interesting height variation to the garden. We haven't enjoyed too many of the yellow blooms yet, but I'm hopeful.

J got this Tiny Skyline Asiatic Lily at the store, when I sent him on a quest to find "something colorful" for the corner of the northwest garden. I think that the orange color is a nice contrast with the blue of the nearby delphinium. This should reach somewhere between a foot tall and a foot wide. We hope that it gets enough sun throughout the day.

 I bought this brightly-colored Kalanchoe plant on a whim, because it was so striking at the nursery. I didn't realize that it is an annual until I got home, so we will only get to enjoy it this year. But perhaps I'll buy more in the future. This is supposed to get to a height of 14-16".

We also finally decided on a hanging plant! I don't know why, but choosing a hanging plant for the porch is always more difficult for me than it should be. I always visit several stores and mull over all of my options for several weeks before making a decision. I feel like hanging plants are such a big commitment, since you'll be looking at the flowers on your porch for a whole season. And I also don't like petunias that much, and hanging plants always seem to have petunias. I don't mind the miniature ones ("Apricot Red Eye") in this pot, though. This pot also has Bright Cascade geraniums (which are more interesting to me than regular geraniums), Blue Velvet verbena, and Colossal Blue bacopa (which looks more like a lavender).