Flower Therapy

Happy Monday to you!  I just wanted to share a few pics of what I did this past weekend.

Oh, it was good to get my hands in the dirt once more -- rich, black soil enriched with Miracle Gro®.  I was definitely inspired by those lovely window boxes we saw while visiting Charleston.

I spent most of the weekend on this little project.  I went to the Farmer's Market in Greensboro on Saturday afternoon to select some of the plants.  That was where I found this pretty Verbena.  It's a shade called "Blue Patio."   I've been looking for "Homestead Purple" but haven't been able to find it this year.  As it turns out, I love this new color.  :)  I bought the Caladiums at a nursery here in town on Friday.

I have always loved the salmon pink Geraniums -- they're my favorite color.  This year, I almost didn't find any.  I saw reds galore, as well as pale pink and fuchsia pink.  The few salmon pinks I found were in big planters with other plants, or in hanging baskets.  I found these along with the Caladiums at the same little nursery.  You can see these Geraniums are a decent size and very healthy; I paid $5 apiece for them.  Not bad, I thought.

The white flowers are Million Bells, a type of mini Petunia.  The little blue flowers are Lobelia. 

I planted the same thing on the other side of the front door.

Now I'm showing these two pictures again because I want to point out something.  Do you see the clear plastic forks stuck all around the edges of the dirt?  That's my little squirrel fort.  Yep, I'm trying something new this year.  I have to give a shout-out to Lynn at Happier Than a Pig in Mud for this great idea (so far it's working).  I battle with the squirrels every single time I plant flower containers.  You too?  It's maddening, isn't it?  They don't want to eat my flowers.  No, they just want to bury their little acorns and such in that nice, soft, expensive dirt, and in the process they make a royal mess of my flowers.  I used to spend the weekend planting flowers, only to come home from work on Monday afternoon to fresh dirt scattered on the porch and rims of my pots, and the flowers looking worse for the experience.

You can read Lynn's post Here; I'm so glad I saw this and I really hope it continues to work.  I've tried just about everything so far, all to no avail.  Now if I can just find a way to keep the Geranium budworms off my Geraniums and slugs off my Caladiums, I'll be in business.  :) 

I'm just showing peeks of the porch right now because I still have some things to do before it's finished for this season.  I need to purchase a new doormat, one more plant (preferably a fern), clean the glass in my storm door, and a few more things.  It feels so good to spruce things up!

What kind of projects are you working on right now?  Whatever you're working on, I hope it's going well.  :)  Thanks for your visit and have a great week!

 Denise

I'm linking to:

Metamorphosis Monday
Inspire Me Tuesday
Home Sweet Home