First Blooms

Last Saturday I was sitting on the balcony with my friend and neighbor, Maggie Christie, reflecting on the state of our little garden oasis. "I want flowers for my balcony," Maggie confessed. So, we hopped in her car and headed over to Green Gardens located on Cass Street in San Diego. They offer such a great selection of perennials, annuals, shrubs, and succulents. Well, just anything and everything you could want. The staff was extremely helpful, available to answer any questions their customers may have.

I purchased a beautiful purple ranunculus and red anemone, bunking them together in the same pot.

Maggie purchased geraniums for her balcony, mingling the pink and white flowering plants together in a single pot for a fabulous effect. But I really loved the geranium with the multicolored leaves (left); I'm not sure if I've ever seen that one before!

I've been toying with the ideal of starting an herb garden in a contractor's garbage bag, so I picked up several packets of seeds. I had hoped to start them on Sunday, but didn't get to it.

Although up for a DIY project, I decided to take a look around the Internet to see if I could find better ideals. I want to go vertical off my banister, but I don't want to junk the place up. I found one ideal on that I thought was good; re-purposing shoe bags as vertical planters. I think this would work great for me.

You can learn more about ideas such as these on GreenUPGRADER.com. Another cool site I found was Windowfarms.com offer vertical indoor gardening solutions, sustainable year-round.