A little dirt under my fingernails...

I spent the majority of Saturday afternoon planting all of the flowers I bought in the last 10 days. The Thursday before Memorial Day, I hit Home Depot for some impatiens for the front garden. Six-packs of impatiens were $0.98 each, so I bought 12 packs. That's right...when it came time for planting, I had 72 individual impatiens to plant. Surprisingly, once I laid them all out along the front sidewalk spaced "just so," the actual planting only took about 45 minutes. I alternated white and purple in two rows and I am hopeful that with a little rain and a little sunshine, they'll spread out and fill in the entire space. 

72 little impatiens along the front sidewalk.

To add a little more "curb appeal" to the front of the house, I put my double shepherd's hook in the front garden where the spring daffodils were and hung two pots - one with purple trailing lantana and the other with yellow trailing lantana. The flowers should both fill in the pots and trail over the sides of the pots and hang down quite nicely. I bought the one-quart lantana plants at Lowe's last weekend for $3.98 each and I already had the hanging pots.

Yellow and purple trailing lantanas.

Finally, based on an idea I found in Lowe's Creative Ideas magazine, I did two flower pots with "shade-friendly" plants. I bought the two flower pots at Wegmans for $3.49 each last week. Each pot has a dwarf coleus, four wax begonias, and a licorice plant. I bought these plants last weekend at Sammis' Greenhouse in Centre Hall. I really like the selection of plants at Sammis'; the staff is friendly, too. In one of the pots, Chris added the little garden gnome I bought at Wegmans recently. (Chris sprayed him with Rustoleum clear-coat first.) I put a pot on each corner of the front of the porch. These should do well in the morning sun and afternoon shade.

Front porch "shade-friendly" pots.

My little garden gnome - he's so "cazh" with his hands in his pockets!

Finally, I put out my newest garden flag acquisition. At the end of April, I went to Ocean City, MD for a weekend with my parents that morphed into the ERAPPA "Summer" Board meeting that Monday through Wednesday. While I was visiting with my parents, we went to The Kite Loft on the Boardwalk. They have an incredible selection of garden flags in all kinds of themes. I probably had six different "favorite" flags in my hands while I was looking through all of them...until I found THIS one. THIS one became my favorite and came home with me!

Flip flops!!!

Around back, I planted some basil in a pot, as well as planted several plants in my large square pot. Both of these pots will eventually reside on the deck, but Chris is in the process of power-washing the deck ahead of staining it if we can string together a few nice days for drying. The basil and the plants for the square pot were also purchased at Sammis'. The plants in the square pot are rosemary, another dwarf coleus, some wave petunias, and calibrachoa. Again, the idea for this pot came from Lowe's Creative Ideas magazine. Subscriptions are free, so if you don't get it, you should! You can sign up to receive it at the bottom of the Lowe's Creative Ideas webpage.

Mmm, basil...and my big square pot for the deck.

A few other items of note "around the Homestead" from the past weekend:

Some "bunny" came by for a visit...

...and then hung out in the front garden among the foxglove.

Stewart the Bullfrog continues to enjoy live in our pond...

...and may, upon further inspection, be a girl. A girl named Stewart!

Our "left-most" bird box has BLUEBIRDS!
Here, Momma Bluebird sits on the nest of two babies.

The grapevine our friend Clay sent us last year is growing! Homestead vino, anyone?!?

It was fun to play in the dirt Saturday afternoon, despite how dirty my fingernails were when I was done. Besides, it's nothing a little soap and an old toothbrush can't conquer!