Spring planting, Take I

It's not even Mother's Day and I've already started the spring planting. I know, I'm shocked too. Year's past have seen me buy my plants nice and early only to have them sit around and wait until June to get in the ground. Not this year buddy! No way.

Okay, so I've only gotten the three new planters done so far. But, in my defense, I did a really good job on them if I do say so myself. We've always had a set of mismatched planters on our front walk, and Wifey's always hated having them take up a big chunk of the sidewalk. So this year I got a set of three nice new round planters from Costco and I put some concrete blocks into the grass to set them on. And, to really top it all off, I did some research on how to design a really good planter. This is what I found:

• How to Design a Container Garden
• Thrillers, Fillers & Spillers
• Thrillers, Fillers and Spillers in Garden Pots

Although these articles did a good job giving some advice, and even pointed out a few good plants in each of the thriller, filler and spiller categories, I found that the number of plants they pointed out was fairly limited and most were way too exotic for my local Home Depot. I was getting kind of discouraged until I found this awesome PDF - Container Gardening Plants: Thrillers, Fillers And Spillers

With all this research in my pocket, and the PDF printed out, I went to both HD and Lowes and compared prices. I found that my HD was about 20-25% cheaper than Lowes which surprised me for some reason. During nap time yesterday, with my Dad along for moral support, I took a trip to HD and loaded up on all the supplies I'd need for my planters and planting beds this year. I took a while to lay out a number of different options for my planters and this is what I came up with:

looks like -

looks like -

looks like -

Altogether they look like this -

And of course the little ones had to get into the action. It was nice having them outside, showing an interest in what I was doing. I found a few nice sized worms while I was digging up the grass to place the blocks and I threw them into the new planters. With Wifey's latest foray into project work with the kids, their study of worms, Red was absolutely amazing when Wifey picked up a nice juicy one and placed it in Red's palm. I don't even like to hold worms very much (too much like snakes I guess) but Red was just fine, looking intently at it as it wiggled around in her hand. Both she and Pudge were fascinated when I moved a bag of peat moss in the woods and we found 13 worms underneath. These kids are a lot of fun, and summer is going to be a blast around here with their inquisitiveness running rampant.

Here they are, hamming it up...

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I'm planning on getting the planting beds done next weekend. We'll see how that plan works out but I'm optimistic!!!