how does your garden grow?

By all accounts, I have a black thumb. I'm a chronic over-waterer and no matter how hard I try, I just can't keep any plant alive. I give them to my mom for rehabilitation - she's so much better than I am. But recently, I was over at my friend's house celebrating her birthday and I spotted several ranunculus sitting pretty in a pot on her front porch. The blooms were so beautiful that I was inspired to try my hand at potted gardening again.

I went to Home Depot and Lowe's to find the perfect plants {by the way, Lowe's had the best and healthiest-looking selection} and pick up a couple of extra pots, then spent the weekend planting and praying that my flowers make it more than a week.

To help me from over-watering, Mark bought some Aqua Globes. If you look closely, you can see the green and blue glass bulbs peeking out from behind the foliage.

Mark also helped me clean off the back patio - which for some reason always collects an astonishingly large amount of bouganvilla flowers, leaves and dirt - by using one of his favorite yard toys...the electric blower. I have to say that I'm not a fan of the gas blowers {they're pollutants - both in the sense of noise and air}, but the electric blower is much quieter and doesn't spew gross gas into the atmosphere.

~please note the fashionable footwear~

And in case my flowers do fail, I picked up a lovely little succulent for the front yard.