Gardening

The July report.

The actual "garden" plants (dwarf bell peppers, dwarf pumpkins, and sunflowers) aren't doing well. Not enough sunlight, probably not enough dirt. The perils of container gardening in a covered porch. LOL I moved everything out to the back deck, where there's a bit more sun (not much, thanks to Bud the lovely pin oak). Nothing's eaten them yet, but they're still not growing a lot.

As far as the houseplants and flowers, things are slightly better. The oxalis are doing well, and one of the pots of purple oxalis that I'd given up on has started showing some life again. The Christmas cacti bloomed (crazy little buggers) in June. The Mother's Day impatiens basket is still alive and blooming, and so are most of the bedding/container plants I got for Mother's Day.

HyVee has their garden center on clearance. I went with Mom to find her some petunias, and we left with petunias (99c a quart) plus about 30 daylilies, mostly for $1 each. I got a gallon iris (3.33), 2 gallon daylilies ($3.33), and 4 small daylilies ($1 each). Then, of course, there was a trip to Westlake's for a big flowerpot and some dirt. And after potting everything on Sunday morning, I had room for another gallon plant. It was that or buy another bag of potting soil. So on our weekend HyVee run, I ended up with another gallon daylily and two quart ones. Hopefully they'll all survive until next spring or we find a house, whichever comes first.

Also, we stopped in at the Hemerocallis Society's daylily show at the library last weekend, and they were giving away bare-root plants from some of the members' yards. We came home with a small canteloupe-colored plant, which is now living in the big pot with the clearance lily from HyVee's sale last year. (It actually bloomed this year. I left it on the porch until it started to freeze, then put it indoors, in the coolest corner I could find, and hoped all winter that it wouldn't get confused. I should keep it away from those confused Christmas cacti, they'd be a bad influence.)