My Second Home

Ah the weekend. Time to relax, unwind, and recover from the work week, right? Well...depends who you ask. If you're like me, your idea of relaxation is obsessively pouring over every aspect of your garden and forcing your husband to take repeated trips to Home Depot (aka second home) where you mill about indecisively for hours...

But wait, let's start on Friday and see how things progressed into a gardening delirium. Friday was pretty relaxing. We had a company happy hour in the afternoon where I got to flex my beirut muscles. Sadly that was disillusioning as I was VERY rusty. Afterwards, Ryan picked me up and we drove downtown to La Puerta to pig out and drink more (so much beer). It was lots of fun and there was even a live band that started performing towards the end of our dinner. Great evening.


On Saturday, I woke up early and immediately hit the garden. Before I knew it, it was 11:15 and I was late for yoga. Luckily I hustled over in time for a very difficult class. There weren't too many students that day so our teacher decided to do primary series along side us. Man, our teacher is bad ass. The man defies gravity. And he takes NO breaks. By the end, my arms felt like they were going to fall off.


Afterwards, Ryan, the parentals, and I went to Home Depot to check out the flowers and pick up some new sprinkler heads. Ryan and Dad went off to look at manly things while Mom and I oo'd and ah'd at all the plants. I wanted to buy everything!! Instead, I got two snapdragons (one red and one yellow), a blue delphinium (goregous), a bunch of celosia, some alyssum, dianthus, and herbs (rosemary, basil, parsley, cilantro). Upon the advice of one of the Home Depot guys, I got gardening soil with gypsum in it to correct for our clay soil. I'm hoping this will improve the nutrient absorption of our plants. I also got some sulphur to make our soil more acid. Armed with supplies, I rushed home and spent the rest of the afternoon digging and planting.


On Sunday, Ryan had to wake up early for a soccer game and surprise surprise, I was wide awake and ready to garden (though I had difficulty sleeping the night before since I couldn't stop worrying about all the tree roots next to where I planted the delphinium). I continued to toil away, deciding to ditch yoga in favor of my beloved plants. By the time Ryan came home, I had decided that I needed another red snapdragon and some more fillers so off we went to Home Depot again. There I picked up another snap, more alyssum, a silver lady fern to match the other ferns we already had, and marigolds. I figured the marigolds were a cute easy perennial to grow so I'd try them out in the bed that seems kind of finicky. If they die, I won't be so heartbroken. Afterwards, we went to Henry's for groceries and then it was back to work in the garden! Later that afternoon, Mom came over to and gave me some very useful advice about placement. Unfortunately, it was really hot on Sunday and the snapdragons looked a bit droopy by the end of day. More fretting ensued.

Today, I came home at lunch, after having spent the better part of the morning cataloging the plants in my garden instead of doing work, and made an executive decision to move the delphinium and the red snapdragons to a part sun rather than full sun area. I had done some extensive googling and it seems they don't like extreme heat so I'm sure they would have died off if I left them in their original spots through the summer. I also finished planting my remaining plants and everything is looking so cute and colorful. Also, I noticed a lot of small shoots coming up from previously planted mini calla lilies that must have gone dormant over winter. Exciting! I think I can stop obsessing about the garden for a while no and let it just do it's thing - GROW.

More pictures can be found here.