Everything in Bloom

I love this time of the year because everything I have planted and nurtured has come alive! I love growing flowers and especially lilies and roses. The lillies are bursting with color. There are day lillies that close their blooms each night are reopen each morning. I have orange and two varieties of yellow. There are also pink, orange, red, and lavender star gazers. I have to clip some of these for my wife to display in the house.

I have several varieties of roses as well. My favorite are the knockouts that bloom from spring into the fall. The are very prolivic, allowing for weekly boquets for the house. I also grow red climbers and have white and pink bushes. My wife love to dry flowers and make reaths.

A few years abo I purchses a small shrub, an oak leaf hydrangia, to plant in the rear of the yard and it has grown slowly, but this year it really took off. It has 10 to 12 inch oak-shaped leaves and this year but our large clusters of gorgeous white foowers. It is going to become one of my favorites.

I also like to grow a few vegetables. Last year I experimented with red skin potatoes and they did very well in my sandy soil. They are relatively easy to grow and I placed them in front of my rose bushes. They taste so much better than what you buy in the produce section of the grocery, with bright white meat and a thin skin. This year I doubled the number of plants. I just pulled back the soil around a few of the plants and we should be eating fresh potatoes in a week or so.

We have tomatoes and bananna peppers in planters, yellow wax beans, strawberries, and raspberries. Nothing tastes better than fruits and vegetables fresh from the garden. We do all this on our quarter acre lot. If you use your imagination with the space you have, you can grow about anything you like.

A few years ago we won an award for having the best lawn and landscape in our neighborhood. Each mail carrier nominates a few houses on his/her route, and then those are judged by a committee of professionals. You receive a nice certificate and they post the winners in the local paper. We took second place in 2007 and hope to do well this year. It is nice to receive recognition for somethng you enjoy doing.