Taking It on Tuesday: Gardening

This was not what I was planning on taking on this week. And, really, I probably get to any actual gardening and planting this week, but I'm going to start the planning process.

I have not had the best luck the gardening department. The lovely summer-in-Texas heat usually bites me in the butt.

We've been in our house for four years now. The first year, I got super ambitious and we bought all kinds of flowers to plant in our the bed under the front windows, which only held the itty-bitty, newly planted standard new house shrubs. I thought I'd just plant some flowers around them and also around our lone little Charlie Brown tree in the front yard. I encountered a few problems. First, I did not pay attention to the sunlight our yard gets. The tree gets quite a bit, so the beautiful begonias dried out and died. The bed, however, gets very little sun at all, which was not conducive to wide variety of flowers I planted there. Not to mention the fact that those lovely shrubs grew. I did fair a little better with the flowers planted in a few pots around the walkway, but eventually the heat got to them too. So, overall, big fat fail.

The second year, my grandfather, who has one of the best yards ever, asked about my attempts at gardening. He suggested I try only planting in pots and perhaps buying hanging plants and transplanting them. Sounded like a good idea and I certainly couldn't argue with his success, so that I did. I had a really pretty landscape:

Pretty, huh? And look at that lawn! I take no credit for that. The lawn is all B's baby.

So, that's how the front of the house looked for, oh, a month. Then the heat hit again and my beautiful flowers started to wither away, no matter how much (or little, as the case may be) I watered. The next year, much of the same.

Last year, I just never got around to it. I had a lot going on and I just couldn't bear the thought of spending money on flowers only to have them die away again. Actually, I did plan on planting. I even bought some books about Texas flowers and planting and such. But, life got in the way of on my planning and we went flowerless.

So, my plan right now is to plan and get to planting. My goal for this week is to study my yard. I'm still going to stick with pot planting. I'm cracking myself up right now because it sounds like I'm going to plant weed. Hehehehehe. No, no weed for me. How the heck would you say that? Anyway, I'm only going to plant in my pretty pots. Seriously, I love my pots. Got them at Garden Ridge. They are all a heavy plastic, but look like ceramic. Anyway, I'm going to place the pots where I want them and then spend a day studying the shade and sun patterns.

I already know the front of the house, especially right next to the house where the pots will go, does not get a whole lot of sunlight. But, I want to know for sure what gets sun when so I can plan my plants accordingly. Since I work from home on most Thursdays and plan to this week, that's the perfect day. I'm going to draw a diagram of the house (please stop laughing at the thought of me drawing a diagram; it's not that funny) and then write up a timeline. I'll go check every hour, I think and note where the sun hits or doesn't hit.

Now, all of this planning will not solve the lovely problem of the "awesome" Texas heat. But, the only thing I can do there is really know my flowers. Know how much water they are supposed to get and try to keep up with it. And also, know which of them are meant to last through summer and not just spring.

I know I do not have a green thumb, but damnit, surely I can keep a few flowers alive through summer. I hope so anyway.

Happy Tuesday!

A