Girlfriends

GARDENS - The picture of the iris is from my garden this spring.

Well, most of my girlriends live in Minnesota. In Minnesota, we really appreciate our gardens, for the growing season in the northern United States can be short. For that reason, we spend a lot of time (once the ground thaws out) working in our gardens. We spend many hours at the local garden shops looking for the perfect flowers and then come home to get them in the ground. Then we water, weed, and fertilize so we can sit back and sip a cool drink and look out at our accomplishments. We love the colors in our gardens of pinks, purples and blues. Of reds, oranges and yellows surronded by seas of green and white. We work to get our hanging baskets looking just right, and spend time pinching off the old buds of our geraniums, petunias and roses.

This year I decided to enlarge my perenial garden, so I asked Mark to enlarge it a little for me. Well, it ended up being larger than I had planned, but in the long run, it will be well worth it. I spent about an hour one day selecting some perenial plants for the one end of the garden. I also had a container of 'wildflower seeds' that I sprinkled in that end of the garden. Well, now those seeds have started to sprout, but now I don't know which are flowers and which are weeds, so I'll have to let them grow a bit more. You know how it is, the weeds grow faster than the flowers, so I figure they will soon be a foot tall and the flowers will only be several inches tall, then I can do some weeding.

I also tried some Preen this year in my perenial garden to try and keep the weeds down. If any of you have any suggestions for the weeds, share your ideas. I also bought one of those attachments for the hose where you can attach the liquid Miracle Gro. I LOVE IT!! I have used it twice now. It so so much easier than mixing, carrying and watering each flower bed. It delivers the water in a nice shower (which you can change if you wish)and you can also use the attachment for just watering. It has a off valve so it makes it easy to walk from garden to garden to water.

I hope everyone has some time to get out and work in their gardens. It is relaxing and a great way to get in touch with nature.

Monica