Hello and Garden Update

Hello everyone!
Last night, Scott and I attended a 30th birthday get together for my good friend Alice where we (I) indulged in some of the above vino at Bin 22 in Richmond's Carytown area of the city.
Here's the birthday girl with her main squeeze, Dave, whom she will marry this summer!


But aside from the festivities, I spent all of last Sunday after the Blandy plant sale planting my new babies. Below are my new lavender and sage plants - one on each side of the front steps in front of my yellow roses.


Below is one of two baby peonies (not purchased last weekend, but just recently up for the spring).


Dead center is a sunflower seedling! I planted these not knowing if they'd grow or not, the seeds were old-ish. Evidently some of them have produced plants!


Yellow roses on either side of my front steps. Here, on the left side of the steps you can see a variegated lemon balm plant behind the rose on the right and then a basil plant directly behind that. This part of the yard tends to stay pretty dry (unlike my swampy backyard) and the herbs really seem to like it so far!


On the right side of the steps in front of the house, I've planted the rest of my herbs in front of the iris row. We have creeping rosemary, regular rosemary, two types of thyme, and the bottom left corner is some ground cover/creeping mint and thyme plants. Love them. I want them to take over the yard so I never have to mow... just kidding... sort of. I have a couple of other creeping succulents in there - one of which I forgot the name and the other is an ice plant. I planted those last year and haven't killed them yet. Hurrah!

Moving on to the backyard, below are some bulbs my lovely Shelby's mom gave me last summer that I wasn't sure I planted correctly (I laid them on the grown in a row and covered them with mulch). But evidently they made it! What an experiment.. Anyway, they are gladiolas but I can't remember what color, so that will be a nice surprise in a few weeks.


Nasturtium of two different varieties. I hope they climb the wire you can see there attached to the deck post. That's the goal. Last year I let some vines take over the deck railing and really enjoyed the effect.


Speaking of decks... here are my potted deck plants (with fire pit in background and party lights in foreground). Marigold (mint?) out of the picture to the right. I was confused by the label, so this is either going to smell like mint or produce flowers. I gave it a big pot just in case.

Anyway, those plants you can see - up front is a hot pepper (chili I think) and then the next pot back is cilantro and then behind that is a huge pot of mint. Tons of mint. And some oregano and chives. All of which came back from last year! Yay!


Here we have (from top of photo to bottom) Nasturtium (with wire for climbing); blue flowers whose name I've forgotten; gardenia; rue; Morning Glory; the stick looking thing in the bottom right is a gardenia also (not dead, though it looks it); to the left is a Moon Vine. The Morning Glory and Moon Vine will creep up a wire together.

Over to the raised beds, we have the baby lettuce! Already turning red and everything.


From top to bottom I have the lettuce from the other picture, a pepper and tomato plant, the box below has that carrot-top-looking plant that is a fancy kid of cilantro, tomato to the left and zucchini to the bottom right. Just a snapshot of all the goodness planted in there! And in the far background is my new hostas from Mom's yard that Scott was kind enough to dig up for us. I planted those on my lunchbreak yesterday. They are enormous.


So as long as I can keep up with the weeding, the yard is looking pretty good. Far cry from last year when I moved in. It was a jungle. And I've gotten quite a bit of use out of my rain barrel this year since it was such a soppy wet spring. I love it, and I love that some lovely local vendors made it!
That's all for now! I will be attending a drag race tonight to see Scott and his '69 Camaro tear up the asphalt (What do you say to talk up a drag race? I have no idea what the lingo is.. I am such a nerd.) at the Richmond Dragway! I'm pretty excited to see what the whole thing is about. Cars get Scott so excited, I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about.


My two boyfriends in Bethany a couple weekends ago. Happy weekend!