Spring Planting Time Has Come!

Gardening time is here and I've been working outside.

 

My daughter Erin got me a turtle for Mothers Day a couple of  years ago.  Most of the moss had fallen off, so I bought some sheet moss at Walmart and held it on with fishing line, then I put in a fresh pot of Baby Tears.  Now all I need to do is water it.  This is the back side of it above.  Below is the front side, and it needs a little work on his face.

The Baby Tears plant will grow and practically cover the moss by the end of Summer.  I think he's so cute.

This year I'm going to try growing a water lily in our gold fish pond.

  It's suppose to cut down on the amount of algae growing in the pond.  I guess it blocks sunlight once it gets lily pads.  The little plastic flower is tied to a string that is tied to the bag holding the lily plant.  We need to get some black colored hose for our pump so it won't show up so much.  You can barely see the goldfish that overwintered in the pond--they did just fine even though it froze over a few times.  I think the algae  probably produced oxygen for them--I don't know for sure.  There's a  partially submerged fish spitter on the right, the birds like to jump on it to take a bath.  They bob up and down, but don't seem to care.

I potted up some bedding plants in these pots next to the little pond.  I have begonias, elephant ears, lobelia, and a yellow green sweet potato vine that will get big, because I feed them Miracle Grow liquid fertilizer---all of them. Yesterday, I planted the front flower bed, but it's not much to look at yet.  I double dug the parts that don't have perennials, or bulbs.  I also mixed in lots of spaghnum peat moss to help loosen up our hard clay soil.  I also potted up about 80 rudbeckia (Blackeyed Susan's-perennial variety) that I dug out of that bed.  I was one tired puppy last night.

I still have some plants to set out, but I'll get to it soon.  Most of these go in the back bed.  I just enjoy gardening so much that I forget to eat, which is bad because I get low blood sugar that messes me up for a few days and I just drag.

This is a close up of one of the begonias I bought for one of the concrete planters out front.  My sister is coming over for a Bible study she and I are doing---I really enjoy that too.  Right now we are doing a study on the Beattitudes.  It's Kay Arthur's book--Lord, Only You Can Change Me.  I highly recommend it.