How Do You Feel About Flowers?
As a writer, I need things to do that don’t require sitting in front of a computer. I knit. I quilt a little. I love to play in the garden. But Good Golly Miss Molly, it’s hard to maintain flowers in Texas. It involves so much watering. At first it’s every other day. Then it’s every day. Then it’s twice a day for the rest of the summer. I’m not whining, mind you, I’m just rethinking this flower thing.
I decided to give my flower pots a rest this year. Of course, that means the weather has changed and it is now raining every day. Ha! I’m not falling for that. Give it a couple weeks. I know Texas! It’ll be 100 and dry.
My sister gave me a beautiful potted begonia for my birthday, so that will be my ONE PLANT for the year. Do I stop and look longingly at all the bedding plants at Walmart? I do! And then there are the wildflowers like those in the picture above. These are Indiana Blankets at our little piece of land out in the country. Aren’t they beautiful?
So what about you? Do you “do” the flower thing or not?
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And now, I need to get back to work. I have a novel to write!
V
Comments 58
Yes I plant flowers round the house and at the church I attend
Moved from Indiana to Florida. Missed Zombies so trying to keep them watered. Enjoying their bright colors.
I love flowers, especially lillies. Peonies are just beginning to blossom. Lillies are budding.
I absolutely love flowers and gardening! Making a plan for what I will be planting in the Spring is what gets me through the long, dreary winters!
I have tons of flowers. They make me feel happy. Lots of work but the reward is worth it. God is good to surround us with his beauty.
I love flowers but I have no shade and the ground here is rocky. The only thing I have are 2 rose bushes which are doing fine. No green thumb
My husband is more the gardener than I am but I do enjoy flowers. My peonies were beautiful a few weeks ago. Right now we have roses, hibiscus and lilies in bloom.
While I enjoy the flowers in our back yard especially since I can see them as I walk through the house, it’s my husband who does all that work to maintain them. This year he planted a number of hibiscus plants around the back yard because they are hearty in this hot Texas weather. They provide pops of color around the yard. On our patio, in addition to several flowers, he planted mint, tomato, pepper, and okra plants in pots. Have you ever seen the gorgeous blossoms of an okra plant? If not, Google an image of an okra blossom and appreciate God’s artistry!
I love flowers! Although where I live in Colorado, it is hard for me to grow columbines that I love! I can grow lilies though. Currently I have lilacs in bloom, some lilies, and 2 hydrangeas.
Well we live in Oklahoma , and like you the weather is unpredictable. We are blessed to be surrounded by lots of trees which provide lots of shade. I’ve gone to perennials in the gardens and flowering shrubs and annuals in pots.
I love flowers and plants. But I don’t do much in way of them. I so appreciate the efforts of others who do the work 😊😊
I can have flowers planted outside because I live in an apartment. We have flowers around my building.
I love flowers. I have perennials that I maintain each year. Then I will plant annuals in 2 pots on my front porch and in my flower beds. I enjoy looking at my flowers and talking to them when I water them. We haven’t had rain in a while here (Southwest Ohio) which is unusual for us. The grass is drying up like it would in July and August. Thank you for writing such interesting books! Love to read them! Have a great weekend!
I love flowers but certainly do not have very good luck taking care of them. My favorite is Roses and Pansey because they are hardy flowers.
I love looking at flowers. But I have the brownest thumb. Thank goodness my husband has a green thumb. We live in Florida and we don’t really get a good fall color season so the only plants I don’t kill are plastic ones. I bought a couple of fall colored garlands and strung them in my trees and they looked cool. People riding by would stop to look. And best of all, I didn’t kill them! Now in our new house, the flowers from my neighbor next door blew seeds across the fence and now I have beautiful red flower bushes and yellow flower bushes.
Since I live in Texas i feel your struggle with flowers. I longingly look at the bluebonnets as I drive to Lampasas and dream that I am sitting there among them. We do have flowers this year, but they are strictly my husband’s responsibility. The flowers mock me as I walk by them knowing that if I get here they are doomed.
Good morning, yes, I love, love flowers and I do plant flowers every year. I plant flowers and my husband plants the veggies. I love seeing all our desert flowers her in west Texas where we live, it is something, Thanks be to God that they just grow wild and they are all beautiful, without no care from anybody except of course Gods care. Thank you for sharing your post , I enjoyed reading it. Have a Beautiful and Blessed weekend.
I love bright colored flowers they remind me of something my grandma would of liked she passed away March 2020.my mom does most of the planting and gardening.
I sold my 1250 sq ft, 3-bedroom home near Sacramento, CA and moved near Conroe, Texas early 2022 after my 640 sq ft, 1-bedroom home was built on my oldest son’s property. For the first time in my 74 years of life, I was able to help design and then choose every detail. The only thing we share is a laundry room. It really is the greatest setup. But … talk about a life-changing affair! It is totally different in every way possible. What do I miss most besides many family and friends I left behind? It is the Delta breeze at night even if we had 110 degrees that very same day. It is the delicious fruits and vegetables always plentiful at every grocery store and local food market. It’s the gorgeous flowers seen in nearly every neighbor’s yard and even my own with carefully planned bulbs exposing their beauty at different times for a continuous showy display and amazing fragrances. Well, right here and right now … after the shock of being in a Zone 8 or 9 planting area, I have finally been able to hire someone to plant a Pollinator Garden the length of my new home so I can enjoy the view and fragrance again. My oldest daughter came down from Indiana for a few weeks around Mother’s Day and we shopped for outdoor plants we both love and that was her gift of love to me. She potted them and set them up with a movable wire fence to keep our chickens out. I enjoy these so much. They sit in front of my screened-in porch along with a bird bath and bird feeder. So awesome! I water by hand, but I enjoy doing this and the reward is way greater than the chore it involves. Getting a bit wet in the Texas heat is actually refreshing! LOL Now, if I can just find a place to buy fresh fruits and vegetables that don’t spoil before I can eat them! UGH … ENJOY your day, everyone. Make it wonderful! It really is up to you to make it that way! And … thank you Vanetta for the great escape your books allow all of us to enjoy!
I love flowers and have lots of house plants, inside the house and outside under the shades. We have flower beds with roses, amaryllises, and more. I have discovered drift roses and really enjoy them as they are so prolific to bloom and grow low to the ground.
I loved seeing the pictures of your lantana I live in the South and love this beautiful perennial.
Happy Summer🌻
We used to have a lot of flowers, but life got hectic and I had to let a few things go.
I had to look up your Indian Blankets because the looked like the gaillardia that my grandmother used to grow. Yup, same thing! Love flowers, our lilacs and iris are done but the roses and peonies are blooming now. It been very dry in the Chicagoland area so we’ve been watering. Today the veggie garden is getting watered.
We LOVE flowers! It is our goal to plant perennials enough to where when we can’t no longer that we can sit on the porch and be amazed by their appearance every year. We just returned from a trip to some of the Amish communities in Wisconsin and Iowa. The greenhouses on their private property put the Englisch ones to shame. The one we thoroughly enjoyed the most wasn’t actually IN a greenhouse. An elderly Amish lady had her huge yard all in flowers. About the 8 ft. border around was her private flowers and not for sale. However, she had no grass but rather like 3 to 4 ft. flowerbeds the length of the property with little walking paths on either side. When you found something you wanted, you pointed it out then she would dig it up and put in a pot. The conversation and time spend gathering more flowers to bring home with her literally made our day and left her smiling. Through out the trip, hubby had to squish what we had and figure out how much more space he could pack the vehicle with plants. Upon arriving at the motel, we would both shower and then put the plants in shifts in the huge walk in shower for their “shower” rain. They would then drain and be ready to be moved out of the shower into the main part of the bathroom for the next day. Thankfully we only changed motels twice and getting a handicap room with a roll in big shower was beneficial not only for me but for the plants too. While in the car they enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air through the sun roof. Arriving home, we weren’t worried about doing laundry, catching up on the mail or even seeing to supper after a long trip. No, we had to tend to both the plants we already had at home and the new ones we had brought home to add to them first. It’s all a matter of getting your priorities right! 🙂 Oh the wonderful life of being retired!
I love flowers! Especially pansies and sunflowers! It is hard sometimes to keep up with the watering, I agree.
We are pretty dry right now here in our part of Iowa.
When we lived in the house, used to garden. In the condo, no gardening unfortunately. Love flowers and have plants.
I love flowers but alas we bought a house 36 years ago that was built on top of a former gravel pit. Nothing will grow in our yard but crepe myrtle.
My favorite flower is the Lily Of The Valley. They only bloom in May. It is now June and The Lily Of The Valley are just about gone. There is only one left.
Joan
Hello Vanetta I Love all the Beautiful Flowers and we love planting our garden in the summer time then we do our canning of the fresh vegetables Hope you have an amazing and Blessed Day!
I love to grow pansies and zinnias but I am not a successful flower grower. I do better with tomato plants and sweet basil. My hat is off to all your followers who are successful flower growers!
When I was younger and lived in Florida I planted lilies and Azaleas and Bottlebrushes all over my yard. My Favorites were Amaryllis but they only bloom once a year…now it is a spectacular bloom as big as a plate but still…sigh. I also planted Carolina Jasmine and Hibiscus. I now live in Alabama and have half of Ace Hardware in one of my legs so it is difficult to get around….so…I have one small bed of small red Amaryllis and a Weeping Cherry tree that has spread all over the yard instead of lifting itself up to the heavens.
I don’t do flowers, as I kill just about everything I try to grow. My husband has a green thumb, and I leave growing the flowers to him.
I grew up with so many different flowers all around our yard!! My father was a great gardener and I married someone who also loves flowers!!
Any plants that enter the house die as I don’t have a green thumb. We have some outside that I have not killed! Daffodils, day lillies, azaleas and a rhododendrum,
The Gladiola flower hods a special place in my heart. Growing up my late father always gave my twin sister and me a bouquet of Gladiolas for our birthday.
Marilyn
I love flowers and try to get ones that attract butterflies! Then I get the bonus of checking out both the beautiful flowers and the lovely butterflies.
I love all flowers! I’m amazed at the many varieties and colors. I definitely don’t have a green thumb but I have had wildflowers in my small flower plot. Every year I wait for my daylilies to reappear. They are always so beautiful. I just wish they lasted longer.
Pansies are in my heart as they were my mother’s favorite because they were her father’s favorite. Morning Glories are close to my heart. They were the only flower that grew in the back yard of our Brooklyn apartment..
Marion
I love flowers, at my previous house I had 34 different varieties of roses in my yard. I have several different flowers at this house, my favorite is the peonies.
I I have 4 rose bush plants, tiger lilies, purple iris’s, mums, Yucca plants, and Live Forever. I love my flowers and have my granddaughter enjoying flowers.
We moved to the Pacific Northwest last summer and now live in a 55+ community with a back patio rather than a big lawn to deal with. So I’m doing container plants this year and trying my best to remember to water them. Not one of the things I do best, but I am trying! I have always loved planting bulbs and annuals in beds as well as pots. But then wasn’t good at all with follow up and my husband ended up with watering duty. We’ll see how it goes this summer!
I love flowers and buy a few every year. My yard is just so dull without them, and I also try to buy plants that will entice my hummingbirds to linger.
I love real flowers. i have back problems and with 3 back surgeries and 83 years old i am limited on what i can do so i have found some beautiful fake ones and put them out and enjoy looking those planted at my neighbors
I love my snowdrops that sometimes come through the early spring snow, and the crocus blossoms soon follow. During my later spring I enjoy the lilacs. Oh how sweet smelling. Then in summer, my peonies bloom, with the help from some friendly ants who chew the ball open an allow the bloom to emerge.
This year, I added bleeding hearts. Such dainty heart shaped blossoms.
Yes, we have flowers during the summer with my vegetable plants. Today my mom and I bought a small Lantana, blond pepper and a huge cherry tomato plant. We ran into an old friend from my graduation class at Lowes. She told us the Lantana attracts hummingbirds. This is great since we set up our hummingbird feeder last Saturday and seen 4 hummingbirds! Looking forward to reading the Allison Smith series soon. Hope the rain stops soon and your lawn comes back.
I love Christmas cactus plants indoors, and geraniums outdoors.
Yes I love flowers and have many gardens.
I love flowers too and your books!
I love looking out at fields of wild flowers. I love looking at the well maintained garden at our home, but I am not a gardener, never will be!That talent ( my father had ) skipped me. If I touch a plant it does! I guarantee it! Flowers in the house make me sneeze and my eyes water! I am a quiet observer of gardens! Lol
I love flowers. I just can’t keep them alive in this heat.
I’m in Northern Illinois and we have a short growing. I love geraniums so I put them in pots outside bring them in for the winter. I had some as long as 5 years till last year a chipmunk decided to eat every one of them. So I’m starting over with my geraniums. But I love sunflowers too
I love flowers! However, I’m terrible with any type of plant…outside or indoors. My mother can tell you the names of so many flowers and plants and how to care for them. Sadly, I did not inherit this skill. I have the skill of killing an air plant! I didn’t water it enough and it complete dried out. LOL! I have some silk flowers and greenery inside my home. Outside have 3 crepe myrtles, but nothing else. I am content to just look at flowers around.
I flowers around the outside of the house like Gardinas and other plants. We live in SC so we get enough water so don’t have to do extra watering. I did talk to the air conditioner man about the water that comes off running the AC if bad for plants and he said no is just water so I have couple plants over there that need more watering, and they are thriving. This year pansies came up in the same area so have been enjoying those as well. Then have an open field across the field love the wildflowers.
I love flowers especially daylilies, gladiolus, penioes, petunias….yellow is my favorite color…I haven’t been able to plant any flowers this summer because I’m dealing with a sciatic nerve in my left hip & leg….I am enjoying the flowers that come up every year….so until next summer I will enjoy the ones I have…and am blessed to have them…
My current landlord doesn’t allow us to do any planting: flowers and vegetables. I guess I could do container planting, but I tried that once and wasn’t successful.
I do have three plants at my parents. Two rose bushes: one pink recently given to me by my elementary student and one red rose bush that my fiance gave me five years ago for Mother’s Day. The third plant is a vineyard bush for butterflies that my fiance and I got four years ago.
I love flowers. I’m not an outdoorsy person and my body doesn’t handle gardening at all. But I remember well when our state began a wildflower program where swaths of wildflower seeds were sown along highway roadside and it was such a joy to see them abloom during the summer. Then they began planting red caliah lilies (not sure of spelling) on knolls along the interstate and later smaller yellow lilies were planted at interstate intersections. So when traveling across our state or locally for errands, I had the joy of flowers. Then my husband planted a slew of the knockout roses in our yard as a border. Lovely when in bloom during the summer until the Japanese beetles consumed them. Finally had to have them removed. My children lavish me with floral arrangements on special days and sometimes “just because.” Yes, I love the beauty of flowers. I’m not good with indoor plants and am struggling to keep alive a couple.
I do love my flowers. We are south of you by a few miles in San Antonio, but I am able to be very successful with many different types. I have dozens of varieties of daylilies (full sun), tropical hibiscus (in pots – full sun), plumeria (also potted – partial shade), plumbago, spider lilies, roses of all kinds (full sun), amaryllis (spring), gladiolas, Bougainville (full sun – bring it on!), and Mandevilla (full sun). I wish I could post photos here. It’s an amazing plethora of color!
At our farm in Gonzales county we keep a few plants around like Vitex (Texas Lilac) and trumpet vine for the hummingbirds. But with 17 acres of nothing but wildflowers there is plenty of year around activity in the fields to satisfy our wildlife exemption!
The trick to getting plants to thrive in Texas is plant them in the ground in well-prepared soil, if you can! And if they can have a little shade break in the afternoon, even better. Also using a thick mulch will help preserve that much needed moisture. Then you just might have to water every other day! Ha ha!
“The earth laughs in flowers” is one of my favorite garden sayings ! My flowers fill me with joy , and wonder… at an almighty God who created such beauty, and in so many varieties! As a bonus, they attract butterflies, bees and hummingbirds… so pretty to see! My favorite spot is on my backyard porch swing. The yard is surrounded by a a tall hedge, and I have multiple flower beds in bloom. The air is full of birdsong, and a variety of birds visit my feeders and birdbaths! It’s my little sanctuary, a peaceful place.. and I’ve spent many hours over the years immersed in a book on my swing!