Welcome to a New Gardening Season!

Friday, March 13, 2009

I know it's been way too long! I started going to college in August 2008 and there wasn't much time left to garden blog and hardly time to garden! But Spring is well on it's way and garden fever is hitting strong. Don't we all love this time of year.

Every year at the beginning of the gardening season, usually February or early March, Bruce & I head up to Tallahassee and go to all of our favorite nurseries. This year was no different! We went last Friday and had a blast. We went to Tallahassee Nurseries first. They really didn't have a lot of the new spring stock yet. We have had a lot of late freezes here in Florida this year so gardening season is a little behind. We did purchase, some Euphorbias, Southern Charm Verbascums and a "Sawada's Dream" Camellia and I got one unmarked Sedum that I liked. Oh, and we also got a Styrex tree "Silver Bells".

After we left TH, we headed to Espositios. Much to our surprise, we found "Pink Pearl" Azaleas there! We were tickled. We have been looking for them for a few years. We use to have them in our Brudaca Gardens and have missed them. Haven't been able to find them anywhere and even had nurseries looking for us. What a surprise to find them obscurely tucked away at Esposito's. We bought 11 of them. Can't wait to get them planted. We are going to dig up some Red Azaleas that our planted in the front of our house (they were purchased as a different Azalea, but were labled incorrectly). We will plant 9 of the Pink Pearl's there and 2 in the Baby Memorial Garden with the "Conversation Piece" Azaleas. We did see some new Azaleas at TH that we liked. They are Encore from the "Autumn series". Our favorites were "Autumn Princess" & "Autumn Twist".

While we were at Esposito's, we also got a "Sawada's Burgundy" Camelia that was on sale and some pinky-apricot Nemesias for the Baby Garden. Next we went to Native Nurseries. Bruce found some treasures there that he was real excited about. We got 3 Native Anemones and (I forgot what the other was, I'll have to look it up). All in all, we didn't buy near as many plants as we usually do on this annual trip, but we were happy with what we did get. The selection really wasn't very extensive yet and again, I think that's due to the late freezes. The nurseries really haven't stocked up yet. Also, Tallahassee Nurseries looked kinda messy. They haven't gotten cleaned up from winter yet.

We had a blast though. It was so wonderful to spend this precious time with my husband and doing something we both love so much. These trips are always great fun for us! Now, we will have fun getting everything planted. Bruce has already gotten half our vegetable garden planted for this season. I've been too busy with schoolwork, but he's very excited about it. We have some different kinds of lettuces, brussel sprouts, broccoli, strawberries......we also just a couple different kind of peppers and tomatoes to plant. We've ordered some leeks and I think Bruce planted some type of onion also. So, we are off to a start. Lots of work to do to get things open and breathing again and looking it's best.