Polka-Dotty Garden 2020

I decided to change up things on my blog for Summer.  I'll be writing posts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and taking time off for vacation.  A more relaxed Summer writing schedule will mean more time to do things with my family and making more time to do things around the house like gardening.

Let's talk about gardening today.

I've spent the last 5 years or so really working on learning how to take care of plants indoor and outdoor.  My MIL taught me lots about landscaping and putting flower pots together.  I've learned from lots of different people and asked lots of questions to figure out how to have a green thumb.

I'm pleased to announce that I can finally say I have a green thumb.  I know how to keep plants alive and how to figure out what plants work best in my yard.  Sure I still kill plants from time to time, but in general I'm able to care for all kinds of plants.

I usually do all my plant shopping and pot planting around Mother's Day.  This year the cool temps in the Midwest, tons of rain and COVID-19 slowed all of that down.  I just got around to buying plants last weekend.  My options were a little limited and I had to make some adjustments.  I ended up with several new plants and lovely color combinations.

The neon green vine is my very favorite - Sweet Potato Vine.  It adds so much color and personality to my pots.  I added in the purple plant this year called Purple Heart for some fun foliage.

I also picked up these pink Coleus plants and purple Bacopa - both new to me.

Impatiens do SO well on my shady deck.  I planted several pots of them.  I also have Lantana to plant in my front yard again this year.

I love giant ferns on my deck.  I have two that frame the back door perfectly.

These pretty flowers are on my front porch.  I usually try to do three different flowers/vines in a pot, but I made room for 4 in this one.  I'll let you know how that goes.

A few more highlights from our yard and years of hard work :)
*We still need to remulch the entire yard, but that has yet to happen this Summer.

I laid each one of these pavers that I found stacked or buried in our yard a couple summers ago.  They have finally filled in perfectly with grasses and are a nice extension of our deck area.  All of the plants that you see are perennials.  We planted them last year and this area look so nice!!  We mixed 3-4 different types of Hostas and Astilbe.  They all love the shade and do great here.

We planted tons of perennials to build up our landscaping and I love seeing how they come back every year.  This lavender is WILD.

These lillies get bigger every year.

 My cute gardening helpers.

Olive is such a sweet helper.  She loves to garden with me.

Real life confession: I struggle to delegate.  I often just want to do things myself so that it's done my way or done right.  That's not always the greatest quality.  Gardening gives me tons of opportunities to practice patience, delegating and letting things not always be done my way.  Olive is so eager to help.  She's my right hand girl.  We planted several pots the same.  I have two of each kind of pot.  I would do one and then Olive would mirror what I did.  I did my best to let her follow me and help when she asked for help.  We got almost everything planted and it was tons of fun.

At the end of the day, she told me that gardening with me was the highlight of her day.

It was such a good reminder for me to include her in what I'm doing even if it takes longer, or is messy or the end product doesn't look perfect.  It's worth it.

Do you have fresh flowers planted at your house?