I found this guy in one of my seedling starter cups. I startled him, and then I watched in amazement as he tried to run away – but couldn’t. The next day, I thought I saw his crumpled dead body in the cup, but then a few days later, I found him in another cup – and so I let him out. In the rose bed. Anybody know what kind of spider this is?
HoustonGrows blogger and longtime Houston Chronicle editor Molly Glentzer has a post tomorrow about the Carefree Beauty rose, and in it, is a picture of her large Carefree Beauty bush.
It was great to read about the history of the rose that’s thriving in my bed this year, even though she inadvertently posted the post a day early and it hit my RSS feed. I know it was posted early, because when I tried to add a comment, MovableType had a cow.
So, I’ll just comment tomorrow.
Now, this sort of thing happens to me all the time. Especially when I’m writing yesterday’s post today … because I’m trying to write a post each weekday, sometimes life forces me to cheat. NOT the same type of cheating Tiger … oh, nevermind. There really is nothing more I can add to THAT conversation.
But, today I can post the picture of my Carefree Beauty rose that I just happened to take a day before Glentzer accidentally published her blog early.
I also searched my Google Reader and Mr. McGregor’s Daughter has some great photos of her Carefree Beauty, and a nice story about how she succumbed to have a rose – but just this rose – in her garden.
Yesterday, I had a reason to celebrate and a vacation day from work so I went down to Frank’s Nursery in Richmond near one of those large master-planned communities on FM 359 and I bought myself a Neon Cowboy rose, with Kim’s help, of course.
For a while, I was kind of undecided between the Neon Cowboy and the Gizmo rose, which looked very similar, but this one in particular looked the fullest and healthiest, so I went ahead and chose it. That, and it has a funnier name.
So, right away I transplanted a few seedlings out of the way and dug a nice, big hole and dropped the Neon Cowboy down into my flowerbed in the space where the mystery rose that I bought from Needville was (it died last year in August, if memory serves me well). The cowboy is now between my Carefree Beauty and Marie Daly, both of whom have performed wonderfully so far this season.
Photos from the third week in the garden are up, spanning from March 28 to April 3, and have been tagged "Week Three" in my Gardening 2010 album in my Picasa Web Albums.
This week, I’ll offer four photos sampled from all of the ones I took.
We only had one patch of dianthus survive the freeze(s), but it’s a really strong patch in the front bed. I bought two packets of dianthus seed so it would have company this year.
I’m really looking forward to the two packets of coleus seed wizard mix that I planted. However, it was pretty slow to show some signs of germination life. It’s doing a lot better, now, about two weeks after I sowed them.
And now for the requisite full bed shot … at the end of week three.
Here are some shots I snapped today before the expected rain, which we may or may not get today.
Out of nowhere, the purple petunia that Kim started off her flowerbed with last year returned, but this time, it was outside of the flowerbed. So I took it out of the ground and put it in a pot:
I searched high and low through last year’s gardening photos, and so far, I’ve only found one shot with the petunias from Kim’s bed. So I’ll include it here, from April 5 of last year:
This is no April Fool’s joke, either. And if you think last year’s grass looks better than this year’s, then, I blame the grubs.
I’m officially done planting seeds. I still have half a packet of mixed wildflowers and a whole package of orange poppy, but I don’t care. Enough is enough. I’ll just use those seeds to fill the cells where nothing germinates.
Kim says the first step is admitting you have a problem.
Hopefully, my problem is too many flowers.