T Stands for Tuesday-Gardening

   It's time for T over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's-find link in my sidebar to visit or join in with a drink related photo.

 I spent a 3-day weekend in the garden-weeding and planting. I bought way too many plants this year. I have decided except for the petunias I will grow annuals from seeds next year-which will give me a big savings in the end.

  Friday I spent most of the day adding more garden soil and planting ground cover thyme and a few flowers up on top of the hill. That ended up being quite the job-once it fills in will be nicer than the weeds that grew there

  Here is a look from the top down to a row of bushes-the lake is on the left-down hill and to the right is the driveway

  Saturday morning though I shopped around outside of Versailles, Mo visiting Amish greenhouses and stores. I had bought my plants last week Monday but our friend that comes over to visit and join Larry for a cup of coffee said him and his wife knew of several different nurseries. So his wife called and wanted to know if I wanted to go with her-Yes. Which is a big treat for me to get out of the house with someone else driving-smiles-I never enjoyed driving even when I had to commute to work

     I did not grab my camera as the Amish do not want their photo taken, so out of respect I didn't want to take any photos in the greenhouses either. I think after this trip I have it my mind finally how to find things without bringing along my GPS.

    We did start out at Zimmerman's greenhouse as my friend wanted several annuals. She thought the same as me, that the plants were not as nice as last year, and much more expensive than last year too.  I did find several nice herbs when I shopped before along with new to me mints. 

   The next stop was a huge nursery and greenhouse. I think I will visit this business first next year as they had lots of perennial plants and in nice size pots. I bought two lovely lavender plants and one columbine.

 

    These are the nicest lavender plants I have seen. The columbine was gorgeous too. Late Sunday after weeding and getting most things planted-here are a couple photos

I had planted fennel seed last year for the butterflies-nothing came up-but surprise here is one large plant from the seed-it is to the right of the daffodil plants and in the back by the stone wall-would you believe that is a huge plant of chocolate mint? I will need to pull some of this out as from two little plants it is everywhere now.

Another view-in the back right is a new to me weed that grows crazy here-easy to pull out too-that's my next project-clear all that out-add some bags of garden soil and plant sweet woodruff from seed-as an aromatic ground cover there. More rocks need to be hauled up to these hills as well

These stone pots were here when we bought the lake house. I moved them here and usually plant geraniums in them

  I started from seeds German Chamomile which you can see in the middle, and I planted vinca with the pink flowers In front of this photo I planted red yarrow from seeds (in the bottles too) which is at the corner coming down the steps. That green patch in front is chocolate mint

I will take a photo to share next time of the columbine as I see it wasn't in these photos.

  Our last stop was at the very large Amish Dutch Country Store-which is on the same highway as the perennial nursery. In front of the store they had a small greenhouse full of plants -they were gorgeous and the best we had seen so far. I only bought a garlic chive plant as I spent my limit already.

  

 Sunday was pancake day-Larry has his breakfasts planned out now-pancakes-then omelet-and then yogurt & granola day haha  Here is my gluten free version with fresh blueberries in the pancakes, topped with fresh strawberries from the Amish grocery store-soooo delicious-and a little whipped cream for fun In the back is my decaf coffee

We still have had no rain, it keeps missing us here in our area of the lake. Saturday and Sunday we were in the 90's-ugh so not ready for the heat just yet. I think it is at least a month since we have had any rain.

   So please send us some rain if you have extra-smiles

Happy T and new week everyone Yes the lake was packed with boaters over the weekend-enjoying the first hot days of the year