I had 4 addresses in 2004. I sold my house and moved to a temporary apartment. I moved from that apartment to PA to live with Steve. We moved from his apartment a couple of months later to our current house. I told Steve I wasn’t moving again until it was time to cart me off to a nursing home. I wasn’t kidding. I’m here to stay.

I find myself taking a very different approach in planting flowers than I have at any of my previous addresses. I’ve never lived somewhere with decades in mind. Normally, I plant annuals because I love the colorful and easy to care for flowers and each spring I have a clean slate to start over again. But now, with many summers stretching ahead of me and a child coming to keep me busy, I’ve decided to plant things of a more permanent nature (assuming I don’t kill them).

I don’t have a good track record outside of annuals. I plant a variety of herbs in pots each spring and put them outside all summer. I use the herbs for cooking all summer and fall. But when it starts getting cold and I have to bring them all inside? They die. Basil? Dead. Dill? Dead. Cilantro? Dead. Oregano? Dead. Parsley? Dead (okay it usually isn’t doing well when it comes in – I can’t get parsley going for some reason). I don’t know why. Don’t even get me started on house plants. I have 1 surviving plant. It is a dracaena and as long as I repot it every year and ignore it other than to give it water, we get along fine. If you ever visit my home, you’ll notice lots of silk flowers – you can’t kill silk.

But last weekend, feeling optimistic, I bought a butt load (this being a scientific unit of measure meaning more than 9) of perennials. We dug out a new flower bed at the end of the driveway, mixed compost and peat moss into the soil, and mulched it. We planted 2 hydrangeas (my favorite), 3 azaleas, this really cool variegated willow bush, a peony, a columbine, a hosta, and some decorative grass thingy. Did I mention that I tend to over plant? I plant pots every year (different than the dying herb pots). They are spectacular in June, beautiful in July, but by August they are all choking each other out, fighting for space. Following that logic, if I keep everything alive, in 3 years I will have a jungle back there. But then again, I planted 4 annuals in the front flower bed last year. Only 2 have returned to live again. If the 50% survival rate continues, it might be just right back there.
** Photos are my pots last year about a month after planting when the over crowding was beginning, a couple of close ups of my pretty posies last year, Angus checking out the flowers before I put them in the pots this year and the last one is the new flower bed we just planted.