A Glorious Day!

I have this Pride of Barbados on my mind today. Can you imagine this in your garden? I certainly can 'see' it in mine!

Today is a beautiful day! Is it just that at my age, all days are beautiful? Anyway, today, the sun is blessing us, and I have plans for gardening- planting, weeding, mulching, and planning. I am ambidextrous too, I can do all these things at once! Or, is that called multi-tasking?

I have Brazilian buttons blooming. In the greenhouse, I have a gardenia blooming. The Chicken rose is blooming. That pale yellow lantana is blooming. Periwinkles left from last summer are happy they survived and are showing off with rose colored blooms. S. coccinea has begun the new year with scarlet punctuation marks here and there, and the 'Black & Blue' salvia is blooming too. Moraea iris are blooming, some creamy yellow with maroon eyes, some white with blue and yellow centers. Plumbago is calling for my attention, waving blue hands in the winds.

I have seen esperanza that are covered with bright yellow blossoms, although they are not in my garden. Just breathtaking, so beautiful, especially this time of year.

In my vegetable garden, the little transplanted 'Butter Crunch' lettuce is making little rosettes that start the lettuce head that will be my salad. I love to watch plants develop. like they are showing me they know what to do now.

Alas, some things are blooming in the vegetable garden too. Mustard is maturing and waving their little yellow flowers on tall stalks now. Some of my salad greens, the mesclun mix, are going to seed too. One in particular, smells so wonderful, and I don't know it's name!

Sweet peas are a wall of pastel colors now. I saved seeds of pastels in years past because I wanted those, and when I planted them, they bloomed all colors, dark and light. Last year, I just saved all the seeds, and planted them in October. I have not seen one dark bloom on all those sweet peas! Not my planning.....

'Laura Bush' petunias are starting to bloom too. Little Laura reseeded beautifully last year, and I have a LOT of LB petunias. I am going to move some of them later today, so that I can get them started in other parts of my gardens. It would seem to me that they would be a wonderful ground cover. They bloom a long time. I wonder why I didn't think of that before?

I have some plant combos that I want to try. I am going to plant blue plumbago with firebush. I saw this picture, and I am thrilled with the idea of having this in my yard. I think it is just gorgeous!
I have talked about my trailing lantanas, both purple and white, planted as one plant. They will grow to look like one bush, and it is stunning. Plus, they have the charming habit of blooming when nothing much is blooming, in cold weather!

I want to plant more Pride of Barbados, the orange/yellow/red variety. There is a yellow variety as well, but it is kind of dull and mousy looking. The orange Pride of Barbados can be seen a long way off!

Happy Gardening, today, everybody!