Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Hello! Today is Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, and since the gardener who hosts it is 0ne of the people who inspired me to start gardening again, I thought I would participate. Here is a link to her post. http://maydreamsgardens.blogspot.com/2008/06/garden-bloggers-bloom-day-june-2008.html

My garden is a baby garden right now, only days old. I concentrated on herbs since I am completely new to the Wichita, Kansas climate. I admit, the hailstorms day after day in June have kinda taken me aback and I hesitated to plant anything... but the flowers all around the apartment are doing fine despite the lashing gulley-washers and their bonus rounds of hailstones, so I gathered my courage and took a chance. This is my lil garden, perched on the grate that covers a basement window. The apartment manager had covered the grate with an unused area mat and offered me the space. It isn't pretty, but it will do!

My one and only actual flower was in with the half-price herbs at the grocery store; it has a lovely enticing scent and I'm wondering if it might be heliotrope. I love the deep purple. Each bloom is only about half the size of my baby fingernail; they grow in clusters like verbena--and yanno, it's been so many years since I gardened anywhere but the desert that it could be a verbena and I wouldn't know, lol...

Tis growing in a pot with Italian Parsley and Golden Marjoram. The parsley was mislabeled as triple-curled, but it's obviously flat-leaf.

In keeping with my only-the-best-will-do ethic (lol!) my new plant stand was fished off the top of the laundromat's dumpster. It was a newspaper and leaflet stand in its former incarnation. I cut off the cardboard box that made the top, dusted the stand off, and voila! A folding plant stand to hold my herbs! The pot on the top has Greek Oregano and French Tarragon--tarragon is one of the very few plants I ever pay full price for without complaining much--and I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the oregano had already tried to bloom. I pinched the stems back---but hey, if I hadn't, I would have had Greek Oregano blooming for GBBDay, too. *grin* The pic looks a lil wonky cuz the camera tilted a lil... I have that problem with my hands, lol.... but also because the shelf is slanted towards the back of the frame, so the green pot is tilted backwards. Oh well, a definite slant makes for better drainage, right? And certainly herbs need good drainage. *crosses fingers and hopes on that one!*

The big pot has my spinach, Mesclun mix, and butternut squash seedlings. It's about a week and a half old, and the seedlings were up in four days. That surprised me!

The lil pots were the herb pots. I can never leave well enough alone *sheepish smile* I had leftover potting soil and so I planted more seeds--parsley, basil, basil, dill, and cilantro. Yes, when you have five pots and four packets of seeds you end up with things like basil, basil. It works for me, anyhow. Hope you have the same good luck! *cheeky grin*

One of the things I didn't expect was the amount of shade this lil bitty garden is going to get. Squash was probably not the wisest choice. At the time, I didn't believe that anything on the south side of a building would be shady in the summer, but there ya have it... I'm TOTALLY directionally dyslexic and this is the north side of the property.

Not to mention the east side of the building.

*chagrined look* Ooops, lol... So, um, I'll keep ya posted on whether or not the morning sun is enough to grow real squash. Here I thought I had a southern location with a hive of wild bees only a hundred feet away... well, I have the wild bees, at least till honey starts dripping into the building's walls. (Sometimes apartment managers who are new don't reeeeally know as much as they think they do when they decide something is not a problem, eh?) Here's hoping the bees don't sting anyone; we have a couple tenants who are allergic. But in the meantime... well... I planted squash!

Here's the view from the back door of the apartment building, out to the side of the property behind us. The daylilies are so nice! I didn't even know they were there until yesterday, since the (huge) yard is kinda overgrown and the foliage didn't show. This is the same yard that had the clematis hidden beneath another vigorous vine--no idea what the bully is, something with five leaflets--and I'm not sure, but I think I might be the only one who saw it bloom a couple weeks ago. The first blossom was the size of my hand and deep purple; after that they were progressively smaller (the same color) and the secret show was over in less than a week. The roses have all gone by in this neighborhood now, and the irises as well; even the peonies are done... so it's daylily time. I love it!