Flower Power

I just L-O-V-E planting and working outside this time of the year. Last Saturday and today, my mom and I went plant shopping around the city and ended up with some really good deals and some beautiful plants. As of today, I have most everything I want for the front porch and yard, with the exception of two plants, I will have to get those later. I havent started on the back yet so that still needs to get done but so far I am happy with how great the front looks. We only rent this house so I am not big on landscaping, since we cant take that with us when we move, so I usually plant in pots or barrels. Here is what I planted in the front:

I have two baskets like this, one has Oxalis (above) which opens in the morning and closing in the evening. I also blooms little pink flowers that do the same thing. In the other basket is Lemon Licorace vine (not pictured).

This is an agave plant. I bought it with 3 baby plants already groing from the base so I hope to have a few more later this summer growing independantly.


This is a Gallardia plant which I am told is the state flower however, Matt and I thought the state flower was Indian Paintbrush. I guess I need to double check that.


This is plant is called Royal Candles. I bought a purple plant and a pink plant.

In this barrel are orange and yellow Million Bells, Blue Laguna and magenta geraniums in the middle.

In this barrel are two orange bromeliads, a Lemon Licorace plant, and a Cordyline (the tall purple leafy plant - the leaves are green when they are new then they turn dark purple).

This is a red hibiscus and I also bought some yellow ones as well but it didnt have any blooms yet.

This is a purple dollar cactus that I bought last May in Phoenix. It is the only cactus that survived the winter and it actually started budding a flower or another limb in the middle. Right now it looks kind of like a wart :) And behind it is a big red geranium plant that the Meredith's brought me for my birthday when they came for their last visit.

This is an orange Kolancho. I keep calling it an Kolache!

And these are the beautiful Irises that I salvaged from the backyard when we first moved in. I moved them last year this time so they never bloomed but this year they did and they really add a lot to the front porch area.

Here is the whole thing! The pictures arent as vivid as real life but I wanted to share with you all that dont live here or havent been to our house in a while. Also on a good note...today I offered to bring the owner of Trochta's our leftover cardboard boxes every week from work and she in turn said she would hook me up with lots of flowers!! I am pretty excited about free flowers! As I said before, the front almost complete, I am still going to get some more water hyacinth when I go to Jenks next and a plant called a Bougainvillea plant which blooms beautiful pink flowers all over. Sorry for the long post about flowers and stuff but it makes me happy to have lots of pretty plants to look at so I had to share. Now, I just need to find those porch chairs that I want for a good price!!