i can't believe it has been a month since my last blog! i feel like such a slacker :( but that's really just a testament to how the hot, dry weather in august forces us all to kind of suspend gardening season and hold our breaths until the heat breaks and we (and our plants) get some relief with cool nights and breezy daytimes.
you'll notice that some things that you had ambitious high hopes for at the beginning of the season didn't quite...well....survive. this leaves awkward bare spots in your garden, and if you're anything like i am, "bare" is NOT word in your gardening vocabulary. this is where potted plants come in handy. all my containers (herbs, annuals, even houseplants) have been happy outside all summer long with their regular watering and fertilizing. (plants in the actual flower beds aren't so lucky.) when, at this time of year, dead or bare spots show up, i just pop a pot of plants in the open space and my flower bed looks filled out and lush again. this is one reason why i love containers so much-- they are portable and can go wherever you need to camouflage, fill out, redirect, add color, etc....
examples, you ask?!
the orange leafy plant, above, is a houseplant that comes outside in the summer. i sat his pot right here to cover up a weird spot where a flower i attempted to grow here died last week. notice how much color you can get without using any flowers....hello, low maintenance gardening.
the purple plant in the green pot is Baxter, another one of my houseplants. (so what, he has a name. don't ask.) he normally spends his summer on the front steps but i moved him down here to cover up a blank spot where i pulled out a dead mum. see how pretty the purple is with the orange lantana next to it :)
i had a pot of lantana next to my back door that has been doing great. i moved it to sit next to my walkway and keep people from stepping all over the creeping jenny growing on the ground. it also shows off the blooms better. (lantana is one of about three plants that actually thrive this time of year. next year, im buying three million of those plants.)
here is a hanging pot of petunias that looked so terrible in the middle of july that i took it down and hung it in the shade for some rehab. now that it looks better, i put it back up next to my back door. (another great thing about containers...when they look bad, all you have to do is move them out of eyesight and presto! beautiful garden again. sneaky, i know.)
another thing to start thinking about this time of year is getting any fall/winter plantings established before the weather turns cold and nasty. i ripped out my geraniums on my front porch and put in two little evergreen cypresses. they can have a chance to get strong and put on some growth now before snow and ice show up in a few months.
is this not the cutest little tree? they are 2/$16 right now at Lowe's.
that's all for right now. tomorrow, more on end-of-summer maintenance. :)
