Planning to Garden

I have to admit that I have never been all that successful at growing plants indoors.

When we lived in a condo, every year I would go to the garden department and select plants for window boxes. Jay would always ask which plants I was going to sentence to death - and every year I would try like heck to keep them alive. Never worked.

Of course, we did have full southwestern exposure - leading to lots of frying of plants and flowers. The one year I had success, I watered everything once a day. We then went away for 5 days. I came back and yes, all the flowers had died.

But, I always wanted a beautiful garden - especially one for the kitchen - that had great flowers to cut, vegetables to harvest and just a joy to look at!

Since we now have a backyard, I have had much more success in achieving this goal! Last year, J and I selected a bunch of flowers (yellow lilys and some sort of blue something) as well as herbs (of course). I figured we would start small and see how it went. Not only did J love gardening and seeing things grow, but the garden actually grew beautifully!

And, this year, much of what we planted (to my great surprise) has started to come back!

In Chicago, planting before May 15th is generally not suggested since there is a great chance of frost. However, that hasn't stopped J and me from planning our garden! This year I am going all out! We are planting more herbs, some containers for outside that have baby eggplant and cherry tomatoes as well as lettuces for salad, and lots of different kinds of vegetables - chiogga beets, round orange carrots, sugar snap peas, green beans (yellow and green), cucumbers and - for the Fall - pumpkins - the kind that Cinderella's Fairy Godmother made into a carriage! And, we also got some blue morning glories (J's favorite flower) and pink mounding zinnias.

Yes, dear friends, I have gone garden crazy! But, if we are anywhere near the success we achieved last year, it should be a wonderful garden to enjoy through the Fall!

We plan on planting this weekend for Mother's Day - so I will let you know how it goes! And, possibly, post some pictures for everyone to see!