🌼Plant Haul!🌼Cottage Gardening

Hello magical creatures!

Ever since the weather turned consistently warm (which, here in the Midwest, means nothing) I have been obsessed with my garden. Not long ago, Stutzmans had a big sale where they had select perennials at a hugely discounted price. Of course that meant I had to go and buy a bunch!

I had my pick of flowers because the day they had the sale, it was freezing. The wind cut through my jacket in a way that previous days in the week had left me unprepared for. If you live in the Midwest too, dear reader, then you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that the temperature at one point doesn’t necessarily mean it will remain the same later on. We are in the thorough of a true Midwest spring—the mornings are freezing cold, around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the afternoons have been reaching up towards the 60s and 70s. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, it’ll get up towards the 80s. This weekend was the hottest its been yet. Almost 90 degrees!

This spike in temperature filled me with a renewed longing to work on my garden. A lot of what I originally bought had died out because, when we were having a long bought of rain, I thought it was getting watered enough by that. It was only afterwards when I looked outside and found most of my plants had shriveled up that I realized they actually probably didn’t get any water at all, because I had them under an awning.

But here are the ones that somehow managed to survive!

I’ve had Petunias before and found that they weren’t too difficult to keep alive. I also wanted something vibrant and I loved the bluish-purple tint to these ones. I was actually surprised to find how well these were doing despite not getting to get planted right away. I used to keep petunias in the house, but the ones that I did keep in the house were the ones who struggled the most to live. I think it was because where I had them before didn’t have enough sunlight. Because I’m going to put these in a windowbox under an awning (don’t worry, I learned my lesson about watering them even if its raining when they’re under an awning!) I’m hoping that they don’t meet the same fate!

I’ve also had marigolds before, but for me they weren’t as easy to keep alive as the petunias. My previous marigolds were always planted in the actual flowerbed along the side of my house, so maybe they’ll have better luck in the windowbox?

This is my first time planting snapdragons, and it already seems to be struggling! These are the ones I’m most worried about in terms of where they’re going to be in the windowbox, because I think they’re just not getting enough sunlight. But they’re still green, so does that mean they’re still alive? If you know, let me know in the comments because there’s a very real chance I might be deluding myself!

So fun fact: Dianthus are butterfly flowers!

Or, at least, I think they are. When I was outside taking pictures for this post, I turned back around to grab the dianthus flowers and a fairly large butterfly was just chilling out on the white petals. I really hope this is true, I’d love to have a ton of butterflies flying around my house!

And this is everything after I got it put into my brand new windowbox! Fingers crossed that it’s not all totally dead, since there’s so much green, but even if it is I can just replant with something else later.

Thanks for coming by!