So it's been about a year and a half of us renovating our fixer upper home. Unfortunately for me, apart from helping out in painting walls and doors and removing wallpaper, due to my rheumatoid arthritis I don't have the strength to do much else. Jeff has done 90% of the work in this house, 5% help is from me and the other 5% is from contractors he needed to bring in to fix things he wasn't able to. Such as plumbing or electrical wiring.
So to keep myself busy at home on my days off I decided to get into gardening. Or should I say potting. The landscape around our house was very much overgrown with poison ivy, thorns and who knows what else. Instead of planting in the ground I bought a bunch of purple pots and placed them on our deck.
Purple/Lavender is my favorite color so I tended to gravitate towards flowers of that shade. My oh my was I happy to find that there are plenty of flowers that come in purple! The first flower on the left is called a Butterfly Bush. It is technically a bush flower but since I planted mine in a pot it only grew so wide. It has its name due to it attracting butterflies and hummingbirds. The flower in the middle is called a Candle Larkspur and they bloomed in a beautiful Lavender color. The last picture on the right is a Delphina White Bee Larkspur. It had so many bunches of royal purple flowers on one stalk. Just gorgeous! Some of these were perennials and some annuals. The difference between the two is that perennials bloom back every year while annuals bloom just once.
I also bought some purple petunias. This pot held four different variations of purple petunias each blooming a different shade! I have to say out of all the flowers I've grown and the type of weather they've all endured from scorching heat, drought, downpour of rain, flooding (from improper draining on my part) petunias are the most resilient. They bounce back so quickly from each traumatic weather event and begin blooming anew. Underneath my petunias I kept some fresh catnip, I would clip off a few and bring them indoors for the cats to enjoy. Meeka loved to rub her face in the catnip while Enzo practically inhaled it by gobbling it quickly. The petunias on the right were on sale for $1. They were literally selling a pot of dirt with a sign that said petunias. Lo and behold with some shade and water they grew an abundance of flowers in like two weeks!
I did get flowers of other colors not just purple. I fell in love with a vine climbing flower called the Mandevilla. It is a tropical flower and you're supposed to bring it indoors in the winter but I did not because the petals are poisonous to cats and Meeka is an avid plant eater. The flower in the middle is called a Dahila. It looked to me like a pinkish-purple color and oh each petal is perfection! The last flower on the right is a Hibiscus! They also attract hummingbirds! My in-laws had a hibiscus in their old house in this enormous pot and it was basically a mini tree. In the summer it attracted so many hummingbirds (and bees)! It is a beautiful flower.
I'm not sure what the red and yellow flowers are. The nursery I bought my plants from was Lowes and they used to have a discount section in the back where they literally sold pots of dirt because the flowers in them died. I would buy the $1 ones and figure if I couldn't bring them back who cares it was only a dollar. With just a little love, water (and fertilizer) the flowers always grew back! The flowers in the middle are for sure Lillies, they came with the little sign still inside of the pot. Also a perennial! After the winter frost they started to grow back!
Yes I found some more purple flowers! The ones on the left are called Salvias. I see them in a lot of neighborhoods actually in the landscaping. They are an easy flower to grow and don't really need that much maintenance or even water for that matter. The flowers in the middle are called foxglove. They looked like little bells, I would see bees crawl inside to get the nectar. The last ones on the right are Lupine and they also grew in a little cluster! I also had some lavender (the herb) but I can't seem to find a picture of it. Will update later.
As much as I love flowers I didn't grow just those. I also bought five different variants of bell peppers and tomatoes! I grew orange, purple, red, yellow and green bell peppers! Unfortunately I found later that a Possum would frequent my garden on the deck and run off with all my vegetables before they fully grew! :(
I had five different kinds of tomatoes I was growing but the only plant that actually grew to it's full potential without an animal running off with it were my cherry tomatoes! I was able to eat a few of those. I was also growing Zucchini, yellow Squash and Eggplant. I would see the flower blooming and then POOF it would be gone. I also had a few raspberry and blueberry bushes growing but alas they didn't make it either. :( I used to blame it on a squirrel but then I found the possum raiding my garden one night and realized a squirrel isn't strong enough to rip off my eggplant and run away but a possum surely is.
Oh and if you ever wondered how I would bring plants home, I drive a two seater coupe. The passenger seat is how I brought all my plants home! The picture on the right is one of my deck when it was half full. Oh yes. I crammed more plants onto it until there were no spots left to walk. I loved it!
