Container Gardening Avec Les Chiens

My mother in law came to visit for the weekend and wore me out! Actually, I think it was mutual at one point, but she's still standing while I ... am ... not.

Our big success was Container Gardening With The Dogs. Yuki came outside to supervise the entire thing, but I hope it wasn't because she was eyeballing which ones to uproot later. Fingers crossed she won't revert back to her old shenanigans! She did a truly commendable job of being companionable without being intrusive, which is to say she stayed within 2 feet of us the whole time, never stole anything, gave polite kisses, didn't knock over anything and actually curled up behind me to lie down once near the end. She was so well behaved, she could have easily passed for Katy, who was inside napping the entire time. Lazy bones had a good excuse though — she went on a giant walk the night before.

Just like usual, I bought more plants than I needed to fill the containers left over from last year so we had to root out the plastic ones from the garage. I also had to get 2 hanging planters of petunias. I love them and get 2 every year just to make the porch more cheerful. They usually bloom until October so it's well worth the cost.

Salvia, zinnia, snapdragons and some others I forgot the names of make up the rest.

Snapdragons are my favorite garden plant mostly because they grow extremely well here. Because Yuki destroyed most of my snapdragons from last year, the only ones I have growing now are either in their last year (perfect for gathering seeds for next year!) or got started this year from seed so they're really tiny. They will be amazing next year, as will the newbies who just moved in. The last few years I had red ones and also peach with yellow ones. This year and the next we'll have white, yellow and rose colored ones in addition to whatever takes from the seedlings.

I plum wore myself out! But, I did so in fantastic looking toes — we started the day with pedicures. Purrrrrrrfect!