Grow A Little Garden

I've decided to give SC a little time to move in and unpack before I show the world her apartment. (But the wait will be worth it, trust me.)

So in the meantime, a little something else... Gardening. :)

I love sunflowers and every summer when I was little my mom and I would plant sunflowers outside my window and cross our fingers they would grow. They usually did, but I think it had more to do with luck and the hardiness of the flowers than our gardening skill. I tried other flowers later, but my attention span was too short and their growing time too long. Usually I'd forget I even planted something after a few days and mom would have to deal with the mess I left.

So understandably when I told her last summer that I wanted to garden, she was skeptical. But I was determined. I wanted a vegetable garden.

I started with jalapenos, and they did so well and I saw growth so quickly that I HAD to grow more.

So my garden grew to include cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers.

They grew better than I had ever dreamed. I felt like a real gardener.

I was so proud of my first tomato! But unfortunately I only got a handful of tomatoes and never got bell peppers or cucumbers. They grew, they just never matured.

I got a million jalapenos though! By the end of summer, my family was sick of eating Mexican food. (And that's saying something for us.)


I wanted to garden again this summer, but I wanted to give flowers a try. (A few weeks later and they aren't doing so great, but let's pretend you don't know that.)

I started with all the basics. A planter with a thick row of rocks at the bottom for drainage then good soil, a watering can, a shovel and a hoe, and a set of gloves. Notice they all match. All encouragment purchases from my mom. She knows me well. Haha.

I knew that my balcony gets a lot of sun, more than 6 hours a day, so when I went to pick out flowers I made sure to get full sun flowers. While some of the shady flowers were pretty, I knew they'd never last in the hot sun. That'd be like getting a Husky and moving to Ecuador. It's just not gonna work out. Flowers have to match the sunlight levels.
I decided on Dahlias because I just love them, Marigolds for color and Salvia for height.

Leaving them in their containers, I set them in the planter and moved them around until I liked the arrangement. It's way easier to try it out this way than after the containers have been removed.

Once I liked the placement, I marked where they were in the dirt, shoveled it out to make space, planted the flowers and then filled in with the extra dirt.

And then I sat back and enjoyed the beauty of the flowers. :)

Now if only I can keep them alive....