Gardening By the Seat of Your Pants

When we moved into a house with a yard, i had such lofty notions of the beautiful and well-cultivated lawn i would keep.

And now, 10 months later, i'm STILL dreaming about the perfect garden.

My very first goal for my yard was to plant some tulips. Tulips are beautiful and one of my favorite flowers. They love this climate, so it seemed like the perfect idea. Well, the prime time to plant tulip bulbs is in the fall. It coincided perfectly with the onset of our money troubles. Tulip bulbs were definitely a frivolous expense that i had to surrender. It wasn't just the cost of the tulip bulbs themselves; it was that i had no gardening equipment. I was going to have to buy a shovel, some dirt, and other things. So unfortunately i didn't plant any tulips in the fall.

But then in late March, the craziest thing happened! I picked up our recycling bin to take it out to the curb for trash day, and underneath the bin were tender little green shoots! I felt so sorry for them having to push their way upwards with the recycling on top of them. I was so curious to see what would happen. After a week or two, they turned into this:

I got my tulips after all! Sadly, it only put out these three flowers. There were a few other buds that i was waiting to bloom so that i could cut the flowers and bring them inside. Those poor buds never bloomed. Maybe next year!

Since then, we've had so much fun watching all the surprise flowers pop up! We have a rose bush:

and this other thing:

I honestly don't even know what this is, but it's beautiful! The roses and mystery flowers are now dazzling our house with their elegance:

My flower-arranging skills are definitely not as advanced as Laura's, but i did my best. Now if my yard would spontaneously grow some tomatoes and cilantro, then i'd be in business!