New Flowers, Herbs and Hungry Critters

This week I got some sad news so I cheered myself up by buying these two mixed pots of flowers and the two rosemary plants (the rosemary plants are on the right, in the shade). I put the flowers in larger flower pots (in this picture on of the pots is resting in the larger pot I eventually put it in and the other is on the ground) and the rosemary in my new herb garden (which is where my failed xeric garden experiment was last year - hoping for better results this year!). We're still growing herbs in our old herb garden location too so if the experiment works out we'll have plenty to share and if not, at least we should have enough for our own cooking.

Last week I mentioned that something ate our dill plants down to the ground. If you look closely in the photo above the stem on the right is starting to produce new growth so I'm hoping both plant clusters will recover (each plant cluster has 2-4 stems).

Above is an overview of the new experimental herb garden, taken before I planted the two rosemary plants. In the photo (clockwise from the left) are bee balm (courtesy of my wonderful master gardener and stamp collector neighbors - thank you!!!), cilantro, the chewed down dill clusters and a patch of lemon balm. The area is shaded in the photo but receives more than 6 hours of sun a day.

Here are our artichoke seedlings. They looked a whole lot better a few weeks ago. I guess when we moved the dill whatever creature was chomping on it moved on to the artichokes. We really only need two so if even that many survive we'll be happy. In the back pots my husband had originally planted some echinacea seeds but they didn't sprout so I planted some dwarf zinnia seeds. They have yet to sprout so if they don't we'll change the soil out before trying with some new seeds.

There's a lot to do in the garden in spring. In the past week I've also transplanted another echinacea, put in more of the bee balm our kind neighbors gave us and done some weeding. My husband has done some pruning and added dirt to the flowers in our window boxes and more.

Right now our roses, lilacs, irises, ajuga, goatsbeard and forget me nots are blooming. You can see some of our flowers on my inspirational and photographic blog at http://lovejoyandpeas.blogspot.com

Happy gardening!