I really can't wait until I'm in a house again. I miss rooting around in the flower garden, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, picking up branches.... all the stuff that gets you outside and away from the computer, and feels like play even though it's work. Living in an apartment, I'm limited as to my outside gardening activities, but I do what I can..
Yesterday was the first day of Autumn, and a beautiful day it was . Blue, blue sky, crisp morning melting to a warm afternoon and then a cool evening/night. The kind of day that makes you want to open the windows and air out the apartment after a summer spent in air conditioning.
I spent part of yesterday at Lowes, buying pansies. Yes, it's October, and I"m buying flowers to plant outside. Welcome to Georgia. :) Fall is pansy season here, and since the remnants of Frances and Ivan drowned my petunias, I had some open pots just begging for a little color to be added to them.
As I was leaving Lowes, with my 2 dozen pansies and bag of potting soil, I got into a conversation with one of the workers about whether bulb-type plants can be grown in containers. Not only did I get an enthusiastic affirmative, she told me how she does it at her house. First, she recommended daffodils, since they'll come up every year, and I wouldn't have to re-do my pot every year as I would if I planted tulips.
She puts 2" of dirt in the pot, then plants her daffodil bulbs, about 2" apart from each other. The she fills up the pot, puts a hosta in the center of it, and plants pansies around the hosta. This gives her something in the pot every season. The pansies for the winter, the dillies for the spring, and the hosta in the summer. When the hosta looks to be on its last legs, she trims it and plants her next generation of pansies around it.
I thought that was a brilliant idea, and I might try that in the spring. For now, I made do with what I had, mostly.
As mentioned above, I had several empty pots destined to be pansy homes. I ran to Wal-Mart this morning and bought some daffodil bulbs (some yellow, some white). While buying the bulbs, I saw a beautiful metal tub on sale, and I could just picture it overflowing with flowers, so I bought it, too.
Then Jessie the IG kept me company outside while I spent part of another beautiful fall morning planting pansies and daffodils. I don't know if the metal tub and my window box are deep enough for dillies, but I figured what the heck, and planted some bulbs in them, with pansies on top. We'll know in the spring.
I'm thinking now that crocuses (crocii?) might have been a better option there, but if I'm right, I can rectify it next fall.
Then I put a daffodil bulb in each of my deeper empty pots, and pansies at the top. My larger pots got more than one bulb.
Ihad a couple bulbs left over, and then realized that I had all kinds of room in the large pot that holds Bucko, my Norfolk Pine. So again I decided to experiment, and buried a couple bulbs in that pot, and with one of my dracaenas. Stuck some leftover pansies in there, too.
Watered everything, and am now just sitting back waiting for the pansies to get over their transition shock and take hold.
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