Bring on the flowers

Two weekends ago we planted a lot of vegetables. However, man - or woman - cannot live by vegetables alone. There must be flowers, so this past weekend it was the flowers turn.

The official "last freeze" date for Houston is February 14. That's the "official" date, of course, but we're going to trust it and plant our asses off.

The good thing about container gardening is that, if the weather turns really cold, you can (most likely) bring SOME of the most tender plants inside. IF you have enough room inside, that is, which is a little problem for us.


We are now up to about 40 active containers, and I'm not sure we'd have enough room inside for all of them. I guess we could spread them over the 3rd and 2nd floors, in a pinch.

Sunday was another glorious day in Houston. Clear. Low humidity. About 65 degrees. Took a long walk in the morning. Planted bulbs and flowers on the roof and in the front gardens.


The Meyer Lemon tree (on the roof) has the most awesome smelling flowers on it right now. I think each flower will grow into a lemon. The smell is like jasmine, only stronger and better.

Last year we got seven lemons off the tree, and if the flowers are any indication, we'll have twice that many this year.

Unfortunately, the recent cold weather killed off our Mizuna, although the Radicchio in the same pot is going gangbusters. And the Red Sails Lettuce is getting HUGE.

Sometimes I get very anal about things. I have created a notebook with a tab for every container. There are sections for Misc. Gardening things, sections for kitchen planting, a section for the front gardens, of which there are four: the NW, the SW, the NE and the SE gardens. And then inside the SE garden, there are three areas: the SESW, the SESE, and the SEN.


Yeah, I know. Overkill. But I like to be able to open the notebook and see a history of what we've done or tried to do in the green spaces. So shoot me.

Anyway, this weekend, on the roof, we put six flower seeds in one pot:

1) Vinca

2) Nasturtium

3) Petunia

4) Nicotiana

5) Cosmos

6) Dianthus

In another pot, I put only Nicotiana seeds. In another, only Dianthus seeds. In a third, only Nasturtium seeds. There must be flowers.

That did it for the roof.

On the ground, we put in several bulbs: Daffodils, Dutch Iris and Narcissus.


Since we had a bunch of seeds left over, we dropped in several of the seeds listed above in the NE, NW, and SW gardens.


We have pretty much decided to rip up ALL of our remaining grass in the SE area and put in gardens and plants instead. Our neighbors don't mind. Indeed, they planted some herbs in our NE garden, the one that nudges over into their property.


It's nice to have nice neighbors.