Garden Glory

I did it. During one of the hottest summers in San Antonio, with a supposed 100 days over 100 degrees, I kept these bad boys alive!

If you can't tell, I'm pretty proud of myself. I turned this:

into this!

Sure, a few plants bit the dust, but I'd say about 95% of the flowers I planted survived the heat and are now blooming like crazy. Maybe I've found my niche in the homemaking spectrum. I have to say that it doesn't really surprise me all that much that my place might be a sunny spot, one from which I emerge a bit sunkissed and with dirt under my fingernails.

I have always been interesting in gardening. I remember my mom taking me on what seemed like hours-long expeditions around our acre of land, pointing out this current bush, and that Peace Rose Bush, and these purple irises, and those grape bushes... endlessly, or so it seemed. I have to admit that I never minded looking at all the pretty things that bloomed on our land, while digging my bare feet into the cold grass and squinting up at her while she told me the technical names of each plant, showing me its new buds and fretting over any threatening bugs she noticed.

And I loved walking through our vegetable garden, hiding in the tall corn and eagerly watching to see how big our squashes were getting each year. While I haven't had the courage to venture into a food garden yet down here in this crazy heat, I'm at least getting my feet wet with the pretty stuff.

So, here's some of that pretty stuff:

 

 

Here's the stone pathway we made a while back, much improved:
 

 

And my pretty Bougainvillea in the far corner of the front yard:

So, Mom, I hope I am doing you proud.  Just please don't look at my backyard.

Yet.