The earth

I'm so excited, for this year...at last...I am attempting something that has intimidated me all my days: gardening. I have been responsible for the demise of many house plants. Even several arrangements of hardy cacti did not survive my care. Those experiences have left me feeling vulnerable and rather reluctant to take on large-scale, in-the-earth plant planning and planting.

So this year, my sister and I have banded together in our desire to take on the great outdoors, tame it, beautify it, fill it with pretty blooming things. After weeks of talking about how nice it would be, this afternoon we took ourselves off to the local garden centre (three totally uninterested little boys and one experienced and helpful Oma in tow) to explore the world of horticulture.

What an overwhelming world horticulture is, to the uninitiated. We decided our plan of attack in this, our inaugural year, was container gardening. The variety of containers and boxes is vast and daunting. Is this a decision to be made based soley on the pocket book? Does climate or contents impact the choice? Baffling. I thought that simply deciding to plant stuff in a container was half the battle. Nevermind! Not to mention the fact that you can't just get a few pots of 'stuff', you must make a selection from among hundreds of varieties, heights, flowering seasons, colours etc. Yikes! Daunting indeed.

Living in Germany for a number of years has given me a fondness for geraniums. I'd love to have a long windowbox of red geraniums, under an actual window. Nothing else in it...just geraniums. I was very surprised at myself, once at the garden centre, to discover how many of the flowers I was wanting to take with me. What colours! What shapes! So many possibilities.

We brought home two planters, one of which has a little shrub waiting to be planted in it; the other will very soon be brimming with assorted herbs. Oma bought a few lovely flowers to go along the front path (they look like a daisy with a purple centre - so lovely). I bought a pretty flowering maple in a planter with two little ivy plants in it. The flowers on the maple have a tissue paper texture, and are a cheery orange colour.

I am accomplished gardener in manner of Martha Stewart. (get the quote?) Hoorah!