I belong among the Wildflowers.

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned my love of gardening before. It's as bad as my thing for Santa. I can't go into a garden center without setting myself some sort of spending limit before leaving the house. Even if all I need is a bag of potting soil, or a new trowel, or plant food.

DH's mom sent me some $$ for Christmas, cause it's easier than having to get something and then have to pay shipping for it on top of that. We also get to get our own things, and when we're adults I can see how it would be hard to shop for us.

I took mine and drove quick as traffic would let me on a small island, in the rain, during the holiday season, on a weekend, to the Garden Center and got 3 Hippeastrum (commonly referred to as Amaryllis) bulbs. I got ones that were just growing spikes, and the labels are all in Japanese, so it was going to be a SURPRISE when they opened!

They bloom in the winter/early spring, and usually indoors. I've seen them here growing outside, so after I've enjoyed them this year in the house I'm moving them to an out door pot until blooming again next New Year. The first one that opened had a strong coral stripe, the second had pail pink edging along the petals, and the third was a large bright pink showy bloom. Actually all the blooms are rather showy. They all have about 4 blooms per spike, and each have at least 2 spikes of flowers, that are set to bloom at different times, so I'll have flowers for nearly 2 months! Then they'll die back, and the leaves will come up, to replenish the bulb, and then it will need a dry period over the summer where even the leaves will die back, and then the bulb will be dormant thru the fall. These bulbs don't like to freeze, so unless you live in the south and the ground doesn't ever achieve a hard freeze these are strictly potted indoor plants. Most people use them as discardable blooming houseplants after the blooms have died.

The top pic is an Orchid (I don't know the variety) that Sister Savage gave me. Her neighbor moved out and gave her a bunch of house plants. Sadly (for her) she does not have a green thumb, so she gave them to me! I nursed this one back to life, and it bloomed for me, I got about 40 little yellow flowers on it in total, and they lasted about 7 weeks! DD#1 pressed one of them and is working on an arrangement of that and some Hibiscus from the yard, once it's framed I'll post a pic of that as well.

I've found that Pointsettias grow year round here, so, I"m going to be putting my little ones in my flower beds in front of my canna lilly's, and my nasturtiums are coming back up to climb over my hedge. I have no idea what kind of hedge it is tho, it's got these little blue flowers that stay open all day during the cooler months, but only in the morning during the summer. It's easily rooted also, as it was in my friends yard and I liked it so much that I asked her to have her gardener save me some the next time he trimmed it. I thought he would have to pull me some with roots. He just trimmed off the top 6 inches of the hedges, piled them up in a box for me, and told me to plant them with at least 2 inches in the ground, water well for 2 weeks. My flower bed looked like it had hair plugs for a couple months, but they have filled in nicely. Once the yellow/orange/red nasturtiums start climbing well, and blooming it will be a nice color contrast to the cornflower blue of the hedge.

OK, so now you know I'm just as crazy about gardening as food. And I just barely got started on my plants. I promise tomorrow, back to food, with new pics and everything.

I've been plotting all weekend about a white chili with chicken breast and navy beans.