What a Week - Sunny and Warm

A great gardening week.  Bought several flats of annuals - yellow and pink snapdragons, three flavors of dianthus and two of trailing lobelia.  Planted almost all of them.  Also an assortment of stuff for the bait barrels out front.  I'm also hardening-off my home grown perennial seedlings.  I planted the seedling dahlias yesterday and the primroses and columbine will be put to ground tomorrow or Tuesday. 

I've also potted-up the English Daisies I started from seed.  And a half dozen hibiscus.  The hibiscus will winter over in pots.  I move stuff from my upstairs closet seedling room to the garage to begin the hardening-off process.  I have learned the hard way that hardening-off ain't a cakewalk.  Wind kills.  Sun kills.  And rain kills.  Gotta crawl before you walk!

My dahlias are doing OK on the deck.  I did not put them under the eaves when we had our last storm and I'm afraid they suffered from the wind and rain.  I tied them up today and gave 'em some fertilizer - they should be happy for that.

Here are a few pics.

Bait buckets planted.

Bought a yellow azalea for the new bed. 

Nothing says Spring more than Leopard's Bane and a bleeding heart.

Apple blossom time...Juneau style.

Pink ones too.

 Now if I can only keep the porcupines at bay...

 

  Ain't they pretty?

My final hardening-off exercise will be for the double impatiens my mom kept over the winter.  She puts stems in water and they enthusiastically root.  I've had 'em in peat pots for a month or so now and they are ready to roll...