Hand to hand combat with spaghetti squash

Bethia Marie told me she loved spaghetti squash, so, always on the lookout for a good veggie, I bought one of the unattractive footballs and brought it home, where it lived in my fridge for about a month before I decided that too bad, I evidently wasn't learning to love spaghetti squash by osmosis and pitched it in the compost.

The same compost that I then added to my vegetable bin. This year I didn't have the energy to cultivate my vegetable bin.  But I didn't have to.  Looks like I'm going to be getting another chance to learn to love spaghetti squash!  It won!

return of the ground peanut!!!

What a surprise!  I sighted this ground peanut in a nursery last year, where it was gorgeous and flourishing. Planted it in my front yard and ooooh, not so flourishing.  Every day, a little more dead.  I'd forgotten all about it when this morning, as I was weeding, I witnessed its return from the dead.

Ornamental Peanut is an attractive, low-maintenance groundcover, that blooms bright yellow flowers from spring to first frost. This drought-tolerant, hardy perennial requires no supplemental water after it is established. It is in the peanut family, thus it makes its own nitrogen. This eliminates the need of nitrogen fertilizers. It has no known pests or disease which makes it an excellent ground cover of choice!

(From Sunset Ground Covers)

mermaid roses at last

I really was sure that John Starnes was a big fat liar for assuring me that he had gorgeous branches of mermaid roses.  Five years later, I have them too.  Unfortunately, my family doesn't believe they are roses -- thinks they are some inferior plant type because they have only five large petals. I hope my neighbor nicens up to me for sharing, because they're climbing right over to her sunny side of the fence.

Ah! The sunshine mimosa is back! It went underground with the freeze, but it was just waiting for the sun.

Wonderful heavy rains -- and in March!

Carl the handyman and his giant shoes are gone, and my plants are all breathing a sigh of relief. Paint spattered and trompled though they are, they are coming back to life. My sea grapes have all new buds after that brief freeze last year.

first bloom on my Valentine's Day hibiscus

I had finished weeding and was heading back into the house when I glanced over and was popped in the forebrain by this giant blossom. Gardens are like babies; there's no Monday through Friday for them.  Time speeds up and slows down and suddenly the unexpected happens.

Marty picked this out for me for Valentine's Day.  Doesn't seem to be a hybrid, which means it may survive what appears to be a bumper year of chinch bugs in 2011.  I love the soft pink; it's the first non blue, white, yellow, purple plant I've put in the front garden. 

Agatha Christie quote on pretentious gardening

"Tush!" said Colonel Pikeaway... "I could do a column on gardening  myself without knowing a thing about it -- just crib from a few luridly illustrated nurserymen's catalogues and a gardening encyclopedia.  I know all the patter. 'Why not break away from tradition and sound a really tropical note in your border this year? Lovely Amabellis Gossiporia, and some of the wonderful new Chinese hybrids of Sinensis Maka foolia. Try the rich blushing beauty of a clump of Sinistra Hopaless, not very hardy but they should be all right against a west wall.' Nothing to it! The fools buy the things and early frost sets in and kills them and they wish they'd stuck to wallflowers and forget-me-nots!"
---- Cat Among the Pigeons, Agatha Christie, 1959.

Some things never do change.  Memo: vinca, Mexican heather, and sweet potato vine in the summer. Purple petunias in the fall.

No new Chinese hybrids of Sinensis Maka foolia.