Stress Relief

I finally got around to planting my latest garden additions today. I don’t remember the name of the red-leafed plant but fortunately the locally-owned garden center had a sign that said to plant it in the shade—otherwise, I would have put it on the sunnier side and wondered why it didn’t do well. This garden center has begun posting full-color printed signs with name and care instructions for various plants. Not only are they helpful but they look neat (in both senses of the word☺) And the good old cobalt blue lobelia can do reasonably well in part shade or mostly sunny. I feel as though my garden isn’t complete without it. The intensely deep blue flowers cascade over the edges of pots until it gets really hot and then again in the fall. Deadheading the tiny flowers is tedious but when it gets overwhelming you can give them a full haircut. However, once you cut them back, depending upon how hot it is and how far back you cut them, they may or may not come back until fall. I had to buy a six-pack of lobelias in order to get a couple—I wish that retailers would make 2-packs or even 3-packs. The slightly larger individual plants that sell for almost as much as six of them isn’t all that helpful either since they’re harder to fit into small spaces in container gardens. It was a beautiful, sunny morning to do my planting. While I was at it I added some organic nasturtium seeds to my salad pots and hyacinth bean vine seeds (not edible) to a hanging basket. We’ve had so much stress, and activity lately, it felt so good to be outdoors working in the garden then sitting in it, enjoying the fruit of my labor.