Oops, she's decided she can be a gardener

OOPS....she's decided she can be a gardener!

Just a little about me and my gardening history. My family has always loved growing beautiful flowers. Uncle Lailon has a flower shop in Kosciusko, MS and Granny & Papaw Dorsey worked in his shop with him. Granny Dorsey always had beautiful begonias growing on the porch and Papaw had a bountiful garden.

Granny Chipley (on Daddy's side of the family) had the most gorgeous rim of buttercups, narcissus, and iris around the yard. Daddy's sister Alice always has something growing.

Both sides of the family grew cotton.

As long as Daddy lived, he was working in the yard or garden. Mama still loves to plant and grow flowers. They also had a floral business in their home and worked together until Daddy couldn't do it any longer.

When I lived in Eufaula, AL, I had a flower shop (is there a pattern to this?) as well as being an active member of a local garden club (Buds & Blossoms). During that time, I also belonged to Flower Workshop in Columbus, GA. I was an officer of District 7 of The Garden Club of Alabama for one term in the early 1980's. I loved working with flowers.

If I can ever find them, I'll post some pics of floral arrangements I entered in flower shows back then. Surprisingly, I won a few ribbons.

My yard wasn't much to speak of but I had some daylilies and iris along with some Eleagnus and assorted fruit trees. When we moved to Louisiana, we left all our plants/flowers behind. That was in 1985.

I'm not sure why I didn't continue gardening after the move but I'll blame it on the heat. :-) Last year I decided I wanted a flower bed so off to the big box stores we went. We bought Calla Lily bulbs, Salvia, New Guinea Impatiens, Impatiens, Reiger Begonias, Mandevilla, Variegated Pitt and lots of other stuff. Mama brought Hosta from her yard in Alabama. DH dug and planted until he could hardly stand it and I reveled in the color every day. I planted Impatiens, Reiger Begonias, and Geraniums in the strawberry planters that sit on the front stoop. What a show they put on! The Calla Lilies (my very favorite) bloomed and the foliage stayed green all year even though I expected them to die down. This year, I've had wonderful blooms on the Calla's. The Hosta that Mama gave me sort of limped through until about January before dying away and I truly thought they were dead as door-nails...but nope....they came back although the variegation is going away (I'm told that's called "sporting") and they're becoming solid green but seem to be thriving. I think it's because they were in shade in her yard and here they live in full sun. They have had the most graceful blooms.
	The picture above was taken a couple months ago and as you can see the Hosta is kind of skimpy. The slugs had a hay-day with it at the first of the season. The picture to the left shows what the clumps look like now.
We visited a nursery outside Brookhaven, MS a few weeks ago (Bamboo Plantation) and I found two really nice Hosta. Here's a pic of one of them. If you're ever in the area....they're really nice people! No affil...yadda...yadda. I also bought a few daylilies while there. You can see blooms from 2 of them below.

Mama has lots of Bearded Iris she's going to dig up and bring down here and I can hardly wait to get them. Baby sister Vanessa moved here with her daughter Faith a little over a year ago and now Mama lives here also. She comes over often to see what the flowers are doing and to check DH's vegetable garden.

DS started working in the horticulture department of a local program for handicapped clients (Options) and is loving it. He wants to buy a new plant almost daily. It's a joy to share gardening with him.

Passion Flower Vine...bought at Options and just planted in May. It's growing like crazy as well as blooming it's heart out!

This is one of the plants Chris bought at work. He was so thrilled with his purchase and I can see why. It's lovely.

We're finding that aphids love Hibiscus as much as we do so we had to start spraying to get rid of them.

The downside is now that I'm gardening again, I just don't have much time to spend designing quilt patterns or creating new quilt UFO's. I've joined some gardening groups on Yahoo and am loving it! I'm dancing as fast as I can trying to learn as much as I can about the things I want to grow.

It's early July....so it's hot here in south Louisiana! There's not a lot I can plant right now except maybe some Hurricane Lilies (Lycoris) so I think I'll head off to ebay in a bit to see what I can find. Update!!! The Hurricane Lily bulbs have arrived...now to decide where to put them. :-) I remember a wide row of these growing in our back yard when we were growing up. They were so colorful.

I'll share a few pictures from the flower bed so you can enjoy them too.

A Calla bud emerging.

This Calla had the most beautiful black throat.

I thought the Mandevilla that bloomed non-stop last year had died so I decided to pull it up. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the fleshy roots were still nice & firm and a tiny sprig was trying to break through the dirt! I put a new Mandevilla in it's place and potted this one up to see what would happen. After about 6 weeks of begging and pleading, I started to see new sprouts. It's vine is now starting to climb the trellis but no blooms yet.

And the new one I put in it's place????....it's pouting too....change that to dying.

Here's a picture taken from our back door. We *used* to have a nice deck from the patio out onto the pond but a not-so-nice lady named Katrina along with a drought previous to that made most of the deck fall in. Tearing it down and rebuilding it is on the to-do list but who knows when it will get done.

The sweet little kitty was a visitor.