Herself’s Houston Garden

In March each year the Mercer Botanical Gardens holds a plant sale. I missed last years and was looking forward to checking it out this year.

The sale is crowded. I ended up parking a mile or two away. They run shuttle buses constantly bringing people to and from parking to the sale area.

I was told by previous attendants to bring a wagon. I didn’t listen and was sorry for that. The plant sale covers a very large area. Bring something to carry your plants, a wagon, or a husband perhaps? I saw women using the plastic snow sleds to carry plants as well.

I intended to take pictures but was too busy juggling plants to do so.

The plant selection is huge. Everything is in separate sections; herbs, vegetable plants, ferns, gingers, etc. The selection is larger than any 4 nurseries I’ve seen down here combined.

I’ll be sure not to miss the sale next year, and to bring something to carry plants as well. If you have not gone, mark your calendars to check the Mercer web site early next March for sale dates and information.

There have been large flocks of robins every where for over a month now. About 30-60 will land in the yard, then spend a couple of hours eating all my worms. They disappear only to reappear a few weeks later. It is a wonder anyone has any worms left.

Check here for a constantly updated list of Houston garden blogs. This post isn’t kept up to date.

There truly are very few gardener’s down here. I hunted far and wide and could only find 4 other Houston garden blogs, one of which may not still be active.

Black Gumbo ( new added: 7/13/07 )

Huntingwick Gardens ( new added: 7/6/07 )

Garden Obsession

Nancy’s Garden Spot

Cybertoad’s Garden Not active

Garden Spot Not active

Far too busy the early part of this week to get into the garden I did sneak out there for a little while today. It was just long enough to replace a bird feeder and stick some new plants in the ground.

One of the pepper plants has a flower. That is unexpected this soon. The peppers and tomatoes are settling in and growing like weeds. I’m told that you should pinch the first flower off your pepper plant or it will do one pepper and be done. That is certainly what this plant ended up doing.

I went to a talk last night given by the folks at The Backyard Gardener I can’t wait till I have a chance to go see the nursery. It sounds wonderful. They gave a talk on herbs for bog gardens. The talk was great. The four herbs they chose to talk about were: Pennyroyal, Four-Leaf Water Clover, Water Celery, and Comfrey.

They brought a few plants for sale and so I picked up a pineapple mint, pineapple sage, aloe, and water celery all of which I planted this afternoon.

** The humming birds are here! I just saw my first a few minutes ago. I’ll try to get some pictures later this week.