How Does Your Garden Grow?: Indoor Plants Growing Like Weeds and an Update on the Outdoors

Hello dear readers. Today's post is the promised update on the progress of my indoor plants. The paperwhite narcissus bulbs are sending roots down and sprouts up. They grow so fast that they make me a little nervous. I highly recommend paperwhites for a super easy indoor growing project. All you need is a container, rocks and water. Easy! I'll post more pictures when we have blooms.

The pumpkins are reaching the end of their capacity, I think. I read up on growing pumpkins and apparently they just love full sun. Way to sell the seeds in October, Target. I've been keeping them inside to try to simulate as much warmth as possible, but I don't think I'll be seeing any "great pumpkins" out of these seeds. It was fun for $1, though.

Even though there is a lot of activity going on indoors, the fall continues to be an interesting time outside as well. I am in the process of amending the soil in approx. 180 sq ft of garden beds in the front yard, planting 646 spring bulbs (tulips, oxalis, daffodils, grape hyacinths), a wildflower garden and other assorted bushes and flowers for a spring and summer show.

I'll leave the tales of fall planting pain and misery to another post, now let's take a look at some planting that has been successful. I bought a raspberry plant from a local nursery a few weeks ago and it has been producing like a champ. Check it out:

I also have a little knock out rose bush out back. Its cohort died because this full-sun loving plant apparently doesn't actually love full sun. ANYWAY, I thought that after the 3 blooms it put out all summer it was kaput for the year, but then I noticed this itty bitty little bud.

Finally, during the summer I ordered 50 late-blooming mum plants. My husband was incredibly supportive, helping me to dig 3 50 foot long trenches on the rocky, hard clay hill in the backyard. For a week in July (when the plants arrived) he and I toiled and dropped big pools of salty sweat on that hill to get the mums in the ground. He installed sprinklers to keep them watered and then the summer sun burnt every single one of them to a crisp. Seasoned gardeners all said I was crazy for having planted them so early, but what reputable nursery sends live plants out of planting season? After being angry about the mass die-off for about a month, I forgot about the mums. And then one day, one miraculous day, there was inexplicable color on the dry, weed-choked hill:

A few of the mums, 13 of the original 50, survived! And are in bloom!! Crazy! This is a shot of a row of 5 or so mums that have bounced back. I wanted to have 3 rows of 50 mums dotting the hill in the backyard, but this is lovely and I will take what I can get.