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I’m trying to give a couple of the Experts a little more time to submit their answers for the Ask the Experts Panel, so that means the post will be ready later this weekend. They volunteer their time to help me on this blog, so I don’t like to rush anyone. I figured you, dear readers, would understand that.
In the meantime, here are some photos of really adorable flowers, Fritilliaria, blooming in my backdoor container garden oasis right now:
So cute!
Hey look, this Galanthus flower is totally confused!
I first noticed it blooming on Christmas Day. Christmas Day!!!! Silly little flower. They’re among the earliest spring bloomers, but this is ridiculously early – only four days into winter! It’s still there today.
Due to its early arrival, I wondered if any Crocuses followed suit. The Snowdrop flower is in my backdoor container garden, but the Crocuses I was curious about are planted in the ground near the street. I hadn’t yet prepared that bed for winter, so since today was a bright sunny day and since the chore was on my final to-do list for 2014, I cleared all the dead stuff away (mostly dead Cosmos flower stalks). No Crocuses blooming, but there was a lot of greenery lurking underneath where those dead flowers used to be…there were bright green Iris leaves, lots of Larkspur babies, even a few tiny green Hollyhock leaves.
I know Albuquerque winters are fairly mild, but still!
Baby basil plants on my kitchen windowsill!
Because why not?
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Good To Grow is an Albuquerque-based interior and exterior landscaping service. We use plants and flowers to decorate offices, homes and patios around the city. We also offer memorial garden services, meaning that when a loved one passes, we can plant a customized garden in his or her honor. If the person who passed was an avid cook, we can plant an herb garden to honor that person’s memory. If a Veteran dies, we can plant a red, white, and blue perennial flower garden. If you lost a beloved pet, we can plant a garden around the burial site.
If you’d like to know more about the landscaping or memorial garden services offered, please send an email to lizatheplantlady at gmail dot com. Thank you for your consideration.
Welllllll, technically, the photo is from my November 30th garden. The day I finally got around to planting garlic and onions. I still have some cleaning up to do, but I’m happy with the progress.
It’s been warm in Albuquerque, about 60 degrees all weekend. So yard work and planting seemed appropriate.
Inside, the Hippeastrum my cousin sent me is starting to look fabulous:
I’ve never had an Amaryllis flower that’s such a vibrant red before, so I’m tickled to see it. It’s a stunning display of color in my living room. Who says winter needs to be dreary?
When the flowers outside look like this:
It makes me extra thankful that indoors I have these:
(It’s looking like I got a red Hippeastrum this year – woohoo!)
This admission that I’m grateful for having Nature inside when everything shuts down outside is not new, I’ve said it many times. It’s one of the best arguments for having houseplants – they can sustain you during the dark days of winter.
What do you think? Does wintery weather make you thankful for your indoor plants?
Oh dear. It got cold in Albuquerque.
The tomatoes are officially history.
This happened before I was proactive enough to take cuttings to overwinter. Oh well. Ya snooze, ya lose. No indoor tomatoes this winter for me. I’m not particularly heartbroken about it.
I spent some time over the weekend cleaning up the containers.
There’s more work to be done, but that’s a good start. They look much better than they did a few days ago. My next step will be to plant garlic and onions.
It didn’t snow here, but it did in other parts of New Mexico. Are you buried in snow where you are?
Tucked inside the tangled mess of tomato plants, I found this adorable little Geranium bloom:
And it totally made me smile.
Last week I mentioned that Candy, my lime tree, has been thriving outside this summer. Um, that musta been a brain fart, because Candy died a long time ago. The tree that’s been outside all summer is my lemon tree (it was banished for having mealy bugs). Duh! I’m not sure how I got the two confused. Anyway, the lemon is back inside now.
I may have overstated the thriving part, but considering how terrible she looked at the beginning of summer, she’s closer to thriving than say, merely existing. The mealy bugs appear to be gone, so that’s great news. I’ve been checking for them every couple of weeks all summer long, and haven’t seen any in months.
No mealies means the tree was allowed to reclaim her tony spot by a west-facing window.
I never did name her, but I collected suggestions from some of you. Options on the table are Jolene, Cissy, Citrina, Prudence and Lucy. (I already had one plant named Lucy but that was a long time ago.) Votes? Recommendations?
Guess what? It’s another milestone post – this one is 1,501!!!! Juuuuust kidding, haha. I mean, it is the 1,501th post on this blog, but that’s not much of a milestone after yesterday’s momentous one.
Hey, look! My late October garden in the early morning hours:
The Agastache and Zauschneria flowers are still vibrant and make me smile every day.
That big mass of greenery in the container next to the flowers is a couple of tomato plants that seem intent on taking over the driveway. They are laden with fruit – I harvest a few every day (it’s hard to see the ripe ones in this photo, but they’re there). Same with the pepper plants scattered throughout – they are still producing tons of peppers.
The marigolds at the bottom of the photo seeded themselves, but I don’t mind. The bright splash of color is nice. Plus, they started blooming late enough in the season that they didn’t attract whiteflies to the tomatoes, so the tomatoes were spared disease.
The strawberry towers are hiding behind the lemon balm plant. That’s probably just as well, they’re not producing fruit anymore, and I need to adjust the irrigation for them. (In other words, they’re mostly brown at this point so I’m glad they’re hidden.)
It’s hard to make out, but all the herbs are still there plugging away, too, like the parsleys, oreganos, chives and basil plants.
If there was doubt in anyone’s mind about growing fruit, vegetables and herbs in containers, hopefully my garden will serve as proof that not only is it possible, but the plants can thrive. You can grow practically anything in containers. And the containers can look good in the process.
I’ll be back tomorrow. I hope to see you here!
Good To Grow 