Gardening, A Memorial Day Tradition

 For as long as I can remember, Memorial Day has always meant playing in the dirt, preparing the garden beds, and a trip to the garden shop to purchase plants. I look forward to the day Thom and I have a house of our own with a yard and gardens. Right now, we have an apartment, and a small deck. Regardless, tradition must go on, and I have made due with window boxes and flower pots. Despite a week of rain, we were able to get the dirt prepped, plants purchased, and planted. The next two days were rather chilly for plants that had just come out of the greenhouse, but everything is doing surprisingly well with the heat wave we are currently experiencing. The lovely petunia to the right is from my hanging pot right outside my kitchen window, it is full of purple and white petunias. These beauties are big! My hope is that they will vine out over the edge of the pot. So pretty, and you can never go wrong with purple.

Our window boxes are filled with herbs, and a random petunia that would not fit in the hanging pot. This one has parsley, lavender, rosemary, dill, and oregano.

And this one has sage, chives, and thyme; all of which managed to survive the winter. We also added basil, peppermint, and a random petunia. Fresh herbs are crazy easy to grow, and add a nice touch to culinary creations. Thom loves to add a few mint leaves to a glass of ice water, and dill adds a nice splash of flavor to scrambled eggs.

My flower pot is home to a morning glory and moss roses. This picture was taken a week ago, you can no longer see the garden gnome the moss roses have completely taken off. My morning glory is also doing really well, I have four or five new vines popping up that I need to train to the slats surrounding the deck. My hope is to have a wall of morning glories.

My miniature garden is a nice little retreat after a day of work, or for a morning coffee. We have a little bistro table out there and it is just the perfect place to sit. Unfortunately, I nailed the table with the black spray paint when I spray painted the baker's rack for the kitchen, so the whole thing needs to be repainted. The only question is what color?

In other gardening news, our CSA is doing well, and first pick up is going to be this week! So excited!