Sunday Stroll: Seed and Sprout Surprises

This week, it seemed that the theme of all that is growing around and within me was one of surprises.  First, I’ll get to the big surprise for the week: on Monday I had my first sonogram and learned that we are having a boy!  I can’t tell you how excited I am, not to mention how blessed I feel too.  I call our learning that our baby is a boy a surprise because during the first part of the sonogram, the technician showed us that we were having another girl (she even froze “pictures” and marked the frame with “It’s a girl.”)  Several minutes after she told us that we were having a girl and I had started planning out how to repurpose baby clothes and materials to welcome a second girl, the technician stopped and apologized, saying, “Oh no!  I’m so sorry but I’ve made a mistake.”  My immediate reaction was worry . . . I had no idea that she was talking about the sex of our baby.  She then froze several more pictures of our baby and repeatedly showed us our baby’s little boy part to prove that we were indeed having a boy.  Secretly, I do think that I wanted to have a boy so the tech’s mistake was a welcome one for me  (though healthy was most important to me).  In the meantime, I am hoping to relax and enjoy the remaining 20 weeks of my pregnancy, getting to know my little guy before he arrives to the world later this summer, and getting our home ready for him too.

In my garden too I was surprised.  As I mentioned in this post about my gardening journeys, I picked up a small gardening journal this week so that I could organize my thoughts and plans for my flower, shade, herb, and vegetable gardens (no, we do not have expansive acreage but I do utilize all of our square footage for sake of growing as much as possible).   From there I mapped out what my gardens look like now using graphing paper, and then I researched native perennials and annuals that would do well in a zone 7 garden during spring, summer, and fall (I relied on the sites mentioned in my last gardening post as well as several gardening books that I hope to add to my Goodreads page later this week).  While I prefer perennials for their endurance and beauty, I do think that we will rely on annuals too for color and variety (not to mention that many of our vegetable plants have only one season in them).

Now, back to the surprises in my garden.   I wanted to make sure that before I headed to the gardening centers with any serious intention of buying plants, I wanted to survey my gardens to see what we already have from last year’s garden (if you didn’t know, this is only my 2nd year gardening).  To be honest, I didn’t expect much, aside from my hostas and liriope, which are hardy and take up much of my front flower garden.  Well, as alluded to, Mother Nature did surprise me.  Not only were the hostas sprouting and the liriope beginning to grow back, but my mini hydrangea, ground cover, ivy, and mint are returning again too.

Other surprises came from my more recent gardening experiments: several weeks ago, Annabelle and I planted spinach and pea seed in my vegetable garden as well as parsley seed in a large pot.  A few days later we had an unexpected snow storm.  I was certain that none of these seeds would germinate or even grow into seedlings.  But, lucky for me, I was wrong.  The spinach and peas are both beginning to peak through (though I have to tell you that I can’t say for certain which is which), and now that I’ve moved my parsley inside, it too is sprouting up.  I really felt as though Mother Nature was giving me a bit of encouragement with these seedling surprises.

Um, but there is potentially bad news too for my garden . . . remember my post on potting bulbs?  Well, according to the gardening center’s manager, I should have kept them inside until May 1.  When I returned home from talking with him, I brought all of my pots of bulbs inside with the parsley.  You should see my kitchen floor right now!  Our kitchen is probably about 10 X 10 and half of it is full of pots!  Oh well, this doesn’t bother me too much since I don’t really like to spend much time in my kitchen anyway (my ongoing joke about myself is that I am the world’s most amateur preparer of foods and the world’s worst chef, :-)).  So at least, my kitchen is now being put to good use!

Last but not least, in my flower garden, I had transplanted an unknown perennial that our birds love to eat, and at the end of last season had cut it down to the roots. I forgot all about this plant and again was excited to see that it is returning.

Okay, okay, I know that I am writing a lot today, and you’d probably prefer to go peak into my garden to see what I’m talking about.  Well, here she is:

unknown and plentiful ground cover in my shade garden is flowering.  Whatever this plant is called, she is reliable, steady, and doesn’t seem to need much care.

my hostas are making their way back,

as is my hydrangea (hooray!),

little peas (I think) peaking up from out of the earth,

and spinach sprouting too (my parsely is growing in a similar fashion),

more hostas,

and a new friend in my flower garden, candry striped phlox.

my pansies are still doing well, though I’m not certain how many more weeks we’ll spend with them,

and last, my unknown perennail is shooting up, looking ever so beautiful in spring’s dew.