Random Ramblings

Garden Madness

I know I've been talking a lot about gardens and gardening lately, but . . . 'tis the season and all that. ;-)

Here's where I have to make a confession (I seem to do that a lot, don't I?). I'm a pretty indifferent gardener. Oh, I like gardens and all, I just don't like all the work that goes with them. Especially when it comes to planting them. This is why I use pre-started plants instead of seeds, and no, I do not pre-start my own plants.

So I start out all gung ho in the spring - planning out my gardens, choosing the plants, planting the plants - but then my interest kind of peters out. Which is why I generally try and stick to easy to maintain bedding plants, like the petunias in my front garden:

The rest of my gardens are smaller and even easier to maintain - they pretty much just need weeding and watering. This is the pond in the back corner of the garden:

This garden is named Kelsey park, in honour of our border collie who's buried under the fountain:

And what would a back yard be without planters?

As you may recall, I've been paying lip service to getting some indoor gardening done too. I had planned using some of the extra plants from the garden around the pond for my terrarium, but unfortunately there were no extra plants. In fact, I came up a few plants short. So all I've got so far is an African violet, and sorry, but that's not enough incentive for me to get the tank ready for planting. Here's a picture of the tank:

As you can see, I repurposed it for storage. :-) That's another good reason for not doing anything major with it until I have the plants - I'll have to find a new home for all those linens. But once it's finished, it's going to go in the middle of the top shelf of my very messy bookcase:

It's going to mean some shuffling around, but that's where I had it when it was full of gerbils. ;-)

Finally, last fall I bought a really cool clay pot that I had no idea what I was going to use it for, but I just had to have it:

It's actually a strawberry pot, but I've watched my neighbor struggle for years to grow strawberries. If the forest creatures or birds don't get them, they develop a fungus. I'll stick to buying mine in the grocery store.

But I've always wanted an indoor herb garden, and I figured why not? But a funny thing happened when I started looking at herbs. I saw mint instead. Flavoured mint. So now I have orange mint, chocolate mint, pineapple mint, and spearmint. I couldn't find any other flavours, so I bought seeds for cat mint and cat nip (which are pretty much the same thing, only different coloured flowers). And then in the very top I planted dill seeds, because I couldn't find a dill plant and I love dill.

So. If my experiment works, and my mints grow, then I can harvest and dry my mints and then create some mint teas for the tea drinkers on my Christmas list. And the cats can expect home made catnip toys for Christmas. 'Cause I have lots of seeds and I'll be growing catnip outside as well as in. ;-)