I Have Flowers!

I have flowers on the deck again. After a long, long winter of deadness and barrenness outside my deck windows/doors, I could hardly wait to get new flowers in those pots. I knew better than to plant too early--it is Wyoming.

Finally, I felt safe in buying my petunias. Then, with positive weather forecasts and a lunch on the deck planned for Memorial Day, I started planting like crazy.

I can only plant when it is not too hot and I'm not in direct sun. A medication I took a few years ago with disastrous results has left me with a sun allergy. With my pale skin (oh, yes, I envy the "brown" family members, since I got our dad's fair skin rather than our mom's darker, easy-to-tan variety) I've always burned easily. Now I have weird break outs of allergy bumps if I get too much direct sun on my hide. And too much is really very little.

That means I plant in the morning while the deck (west side of the house) is shady, or in the evening after the sun is nearly down. This year I've been doing it in the morning. I got about 3/4 done before the Memorial Day lunch and finished planting the rest of the flowers I had day before yesterday. I lacked just a few flowers to complete the job (it would seem a shame to leave any pots empty!). So, yesterday Anne Marie and I stopped at the Buffalo Gardens temporary greenhouse and I bought enough to finish the job. I haven't got those last few in the planters yet.

Even though they are still babies, it pleases my eye and my soul to see flowers on the deck again. Thirty pots/planters may seem a bit excessive to some, but I love the floral surround.

And yesterday the weather was perfect for a quiet morning with a book and a cup of coffee on the deck.

(I could take a photo, but it would just look like last year's and the year before's. . . .)