Planting time!

It's the middle of March, and it's planting time in Texas! The weather has been absolutely lovely... days mostly in the 70's or low, breezy 80's. This weather has been so nice for my spring break! I find myself still stuck in the Illinois mindset: don't plant anything in the ground until at least April, be prepared for a rainy or even snowy spring break, hope that the weather is in the 50's or 60's. But I've been assured by my grandpa (who does know lots of things about weather and planting due to tuning in to his weekly radio horticulturist, Neil Sperry), that now is the time to plant. So, planting we've done!

We started out with planting two Red Rocket Crape Myrtles in our backyard. Although I can hardly take credit for them.... three wonderful employees of the nursery came and planted them for me. Sometimes paying someone to do it is just the right thing to do. Nothing worse than dropping some $$ for trees and then killing them by improper planting procedures. Here's the result:

Then, today we visited Lowes (along with everyone else in Rockwall) to pick up some items for our vegetable garden. Because we're still unsure of the permanent layout of our backyard, we wanted containers for our plants this year. So, we bought a big plastic bin (which is not technically for plants but seems to work very well given some holes drilled in the bottom), lots of soil, and some tomato plants. Here's the end result with some pug additions :)

We've got two tomato plants, scallions, bell peppers, and lettuce growing. I also have some cilantro, chives, and parsley in indoor herb pots. I'm overall very happy with how easy it was to do. Hooray for smaller-scale gardening (and weeding)!