Flowers and Vegetables

                                                                                                        2/1/11



purple pansies



       After wrestling with this desert climate for a year (this climate is formidable!), I am beginning to learn what flowers and plants do well here.  I went to Lowe's.  That's the only "garden center" around here.  They had a so-so selection of spring plants.  Nothing that would compare to the real garden centers back east, because not a lot of showy annuals grow here even with irrigation.  When the temperature hits 100 or more and stays that way for 120 days most flowers give up.  I purchased purple and yellow pansies.  The pansies will do well until  mid-April.  The petunias I bought will stop flowering in June.  I got some soil to put in a vegetable garden.  My husband built me a raised bed to plant my vegetable seeds.  I will plant spinach, chard, lettuce, radishes, carrots and later put in tomato and pepper plants. A salad garden.  I will plant the first seeds today.  Maybe nurturing some seedlings will provide some anchoring to this place.