Gardening on the cheap

Miss MoneyPenny always spends way too much money on her annual gardening.  Just filling the pots on the deck alone can really be spendy.  You know what I mean, buying those gorgeous plants that you see at the garden center, and trying to recreate something that you've seen in Fine Gardening.  What usually ends up happening to me is, it is too cold for those little exotic beauties, and they end up either dying or just sulking.  This is very frustrating to me because I have spent all that money and had these big dreams about how they should look.  Not this year.

QFC had a big sale on plants at the beginning of summer.  I thought if they can live in the QFC parking lot they will really thrive on my deck.  The geraniums were 4 for $10 and they had red, pink and white.  Just your basic geranium.  No Martha Washingtons.  I also got some deep purple trailing lobelia to fill in and be really gaudy.  I think they look pretty good and they are very healthy.

So, since last year was so cold and wet, I thought about what I could do with my small kitchen garden.  I bought lots of marigolds and cosmos and a couple of dahlias.  Then I planted my beans and lettuce.  I put my two cherry tomato plants in black tomato bags, hoping for a little more heat.  My chives are huge and at least 10 years old.  They are the first thing to come up every year in the spring.  I have my herbs in big pots and they also come up every year.  I moved the herbs over by the old contractor's wheel barrow that houses my zucchinis for better bee action.  The basil is, of course, sulking. 

So what if the garden doesn't give me tons of produce - at least it is beautiful.  And everything, except the seeds (Territorial) was bought on the cheap at QFC.  I did succumb to a beautiful Italian glazed strawberry pot, though.  Miss MoneyPenny is not perfect.