Spring Flower Fever!

We are right around the average last frost date in the Oklahoma City area (you can put your seedlings outside, if you've hardened them off!).  This past Thursday was also our fourth wedding anniversary, and Chad knows me so well.  Aside from sending beautiful flowers to work, he also gave me a $40 gift certificate to Lowe's intended for flowers around the house and yard.

Normally, I'd be spending it on all things related to vegetable gardening.  But this year, vegetables will be limited to a few pots, due to the fact that growing a baby and having a giant belly in late summer kinda takes some fun away from things like bending over to weed, harvest, and prune.

We were drawn to bold colors and selected a pot of red and orange daisies, petunias (a basket of deep purple, two six-packs of red and white striped), multicolored celosia, and a red variety and white variety of some low, small, slightly bushy looking flower whose name can't recall at the moment.  I got so excited about this and all of the flower pots we have (between our own and several this house's last occupants left behind), that I've been fishing through our seed stash pulling out all of the flowers and herbs that can be successfully sown outdoors around the last frost date.  It also comes to mind that we have a bare spot in our front flower bed... though I'm tempted to grow a few little baby sized heads of lettuce there instead of flowers, until the weather is too hot to easily grow lettuce.

One pot I'm particularly excited about is the one full of striped petunias.  I placed them in a circle near the rim of the pot, leaving a bare patch of soil in the middle where I seeded a burgundy okra plant.  I don't know how long the petunias will have their pretty blossoms, but if they last a good amount of time the okra will grow up above them and have a pretty little border.  (If they don't last very long, I'll just remove them to give the okra a little more room.)  It may not have enough room to really thrive and fruit in a pot, but I've been curious to see this burgundy okra plant since I first got the seeds.  I'm hoping it'll at least be healthy enough to put forth blooms.

I still really love vegetable gardening, but this is a fun change of pace for me, too.

Overgrown Plants!

We purchased one single Hardy Hibiscus from the farmer's market last year. It was beautiful with its massive, satellite dish flowers. The seller told us to cut it back in the winter and it would likely come back in the spring.

Boy, did it ever!

It went from one plant with two or three stems last year to who knows how many plants with how many stems this year! We love it! It's like a giant, tropical bush!

Speaking of overgrown plants, I can hardly believe that this brandywine tomato plant I just kind of stuck on the side of the house was a stunted seedling.

I should have pruned it down to just one or two major vines and staked it. As it is, I've been doing everything I can to keep the whole thing somewhat contained to the space that the too-small tomato cage indicates is its "home."