How Does Your Garden Grow?

My mama was a gardener in her earlier life, working in a nursery for years and years.  When you hear nursery, you think "babies", but nay nay, its a nursery with plants.  She was good at that sort of thing... the old joke was she could plant a rock, have a tree in a few weeks, take the leaves and make a great casserole, then knit you a quilt with the leftovers.  That's the kinda chick she was, that mama of mine.

There are a lot of things I learned from dear Mama, but planting and gardening wasn't really one of them.  That being said, I can dig a hole and pot a plant.  That being said, I was quite proud of myself when I put together a big planter for the drive thru at our Starbucks.

Melanie asked me if I would take on the project, and since I consider half my job to be "get stuff done so she doesn't have to worry about it", then I took it on willingly.  She and I went to Lowes and walked around for about 20 minutes, looking for help and got none.  We were told that Ms. Jennie would along directly, but after a few more minutes went by with no Ms. Jennie, we had to split. 

I came back a little later when I had more time, and loaded up.  I got a apricot hibiscus, some begonias, some petunias and a few more fun things, and on the recommendation of Ms. Jennie, who finally showed up, I came up with this:

So, a few days later, Melanie asked me to do another for the front.  She told me what she wanted, but I missed part of it, catching only, "Covered with flowers."  To me, that meant just put a lot of flowers in it.

I head to Lowes and buy a whole lotta plants, bring them back and get them potted.  Melanie comes out, looks and says, "This looks great!" then adds, softly, "...can you make it taller?"  Its then that I realized she had actually said, "I'd like it to be tall, like the other one, covered with flowers." 

That'll teach me to only listen halfway.  I tend to do that alot.

Anyway, I haul off back to Lowes and walk around a while and make another decision.  Instead of small roses, I end up going with jasmine on a trellis.  I bring everything back, unpot most of the flowers I just potted, then plant the jasmine vine.  I then repot everything, then soil and water.  And here's what I ended up with:

I mean, I'm no Martha Stewart, but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  I even bought a watering can proportional to how it should be watered daily. 

My garden grows just fine.  I'm even thinking of doing flowers in front of The Cabana.  If I can find the time, that is.  Good luck with that.