Getting the garden ready

When I woke up Sunday morning, I had a very serious conversation with myself.

Me: Get up! We need to get the garden ready for the plants!
Myself: It’s still cold!
Me: Wear a jacket! They say it’s going to get warmer later.
Myself: It’s still cold! It will always be cold! Plants don’t like cold!
Me: Get your bum off the bed and get a move on! I’ll make you a nice Filipino breakfast
Myself: I’m up! I’m hungry!

My Mission: Kill all those pesky weeds that has overtaken my flower bed.

My little helpers.
They actually did a good job planting the seeds for our little greenhouse

 

I am just in awe every time I see my plants waking up from their winter slumber.
I planted this lily just last year and it has produced little baby sprouts.

Post Script:

It did get warm enough to take the jacket off. And the sprouting and budding plants is enough to inspire me to get their bedding nice and cozy for them to rise from.

My succulent pots…

As always, whenever I am in a garden centre, I can never leave without anything. Last weekend it was succulents.

Succulent pots were expensive so I bought a bunch of those cutsie little plants and just made my own pots… all 8 of them… here are a few…

 

It still gets a bit cold at night so whenever we come in the house to retire in the evenings, these beauties get to sleep on the dining table until it gets warmer for them to be left outside.

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Summer, don’t leave me…

Double white petunias and calibrachoa are still patiently blooming

Summer seems to have its running shoes on and can’t wait to sprint away and pass the baton off to Fall. The weather has dramatically changed these past couple of weeks. Temperature has dropped; the nights and early mornings are considerably colder; despite the sun’s warming rays, the wind now chills the skin. And painful of all, the garden looks tired. Some of the flowering plants are past their glorious prime, though the enduring petunias and calibrachoas are still gracing me with their propitious blooms.

We’ve harvested so many tomatoes and cucumbers we’ve started giving some away, not really knowing what else to do with them. Our apples are starting to turn red on the tree, another dilemma of not knowing what to do with them or how to dispose of them.

In the whole, Summer was/is great. And my first venture into gardening has been a success considering I wasn’t really a gardener to start with. It sure was a learning curb. I know now what I want, and don’t want, in my garden for next year.

Still hoping that Summer would stick around a little longer though…

For love of the lily flower

The Lily

Night after night
darkness
enters the face
of the lily
which, lightly,
closes its five walls
around itself,
and its purse
of honey,
and its fragrance,
and is content
to stand there
in the garden,
not quite sleeping,
and, maybe,
saying in lily language
some small words
we can’t hear
even when there is no wind
anywhere,
its lips
are so secret,
its tongue
is so hidden –
or, maybe,
it says nothing at all
but just stands there
with the patience
of vegetables
and saints
until the whole earth has turned around
and the silver moon
becomes the golden sun –
as the lily absolutely knew it would,
which is itself, isn’t it,
the perfect prayer?

- Mary Oliver

Beautiful Gazania

Every flower in our garden is special.
I might take a liking to a particular flower because of the fullness of its bloom,
or mesmerized by the memories another would awaken in me.
But every one of them has a story to tell me, and I just love sitting in the garden to listen…

Big kiss yellow flame gazania
taken in the morning, not fully opened yet