Online Gardening Anticipation

I’m pretty excited. On Friday, I received my pre-planned garden from Spring Hill Nursery in the mail and by Saturday afternoon it was all planted. Now it’s raining and I’m getting excited to see everything start to grow.

As a first timer at online ordering a pre-planned garden, I have to tell you I’m impressed so far. Spring Hill Nursery did an excellent job of packing and shipping the plants. And, the plants themselves seem to be very healthy and of good quality.

I had only one small hitch which was remedied easily. One of the plants they shipped – the Butterfly Weed – came in the wrong quantity. I was short one plant. No matter. I jotted off an e-mail to their customer service department and another plant is already on its way. Easy peasy.

To make me feel even more optimistic, my neighbor stopped by while I was planting my front bed. She told me she had ordered a pre-planned garden from Spring Hill several years ago when living in North Carolina. She said she had great results. Despite having a small twinge of negativity (because gardening conditions here in North Texas are quite a bit different than in North Carolina), her news gave me confidence.

I’m not ready to start bragging about my possible success, but I do want to pass onto those considering following in my footsteps to do your research. I really think the key to successfully ordering plants still takes a small bit of know-how on the part of the gardener. I think you first need to know the conditions you’re working in (sun exposure, soil conditions, etc.). Also, research the plants themselves to see if they do well in your part of the country. I felt confident in my online purchase because I was already familiar with most of the plants in the grouping and knew that they do well here.

For now, I’m excited about my purchase. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will flourish in my front yard!

Discovery Day

I put a pretty good dent in gardening this weekend. I received my “garden in a box” from Spring Hill Nursery on Friday and planted it all. I was going to blog about it today but it will have to wait.

Something kinda cool happened today when I decided to bring my ivy geranium outside from spending the winter in my house.

The plant was pretty messy and had several green, gangly shoots all over the place mixed in with brown dead leaves. No matter. I decided to just prune the heck out it and hope for the best -- an approach that has worked well for me in the past. So, I whipped out my handy pruners and got to work. In the midst of it all, I made a discovery: I found a bird’s nest.

I should first confess that this was not a huge surprise. I remember a little bird flying in and out of there last spring and early summer. But, of course, I had forgotten about it until now.

The nest was cool. I admired the bird’s handiwork. It had used grasses, a piece of plastic bag and even what appeared to be a cat’s whisker! Interesting. But, the best discovery of all came when I looked inside the nest. A perfect little egg shell sat in there completely undisturbed and left cracked open as if its former inhabitant had left only minutes or hours before. My heart did a little dance. I was pretty excited. I called the kids over to take a look and they were equally excited.

I love discoveries like these. It’s just another reminder of nature’s wonder.