May is about to turn the corner and June is ready to arrive for her annual visit. She will bring with her a suitcase, over packed with hot humid days and temperatures in the high 90s and perhaps pushing past 100. However, summer is the season I so love so I dare not complain about weather conditions.

Many of the spring early blooming perennials have come and are finished with their show of bloom. Though some are short lived I appreciate every minute they are showing off in my garden. My foxglove had two large flower stalks both at the same time in bloom, one a deep purple the other with a lighter pinkish twinge to it. Yesterday’s thunderstorm took the lower flower petals to the ground, and now I will wait for its graceful elegance to return next year. The bleeding heart was heavily laden last week and I picked a sprig of it to put into a tiny old medicine bottle of green, clouded with age, glass for the bathroom sink. Amazing how the flowers of bleeding heart hold on to the stem with one little thin sting.. So strong, so sturdy and so balanced they are… they remind me of my own heart strings.

Herbs are growing like weeds and the cilantro is about to seed. The fennel has been munched as well as the parsley and the dill by caterpillars...butterflies soon to be...I was happy to see them nourished in a garden that isn't sprayed with chemicals. Basil is growing and always a nice summer taste to add to the table. Borage will soon have star blue flowers to use on salads and I will freeze some ice cubes for tall glasses of freeze squeezed lemonade. Some lavender’s need cutting back already, some are flowering now, and others are just beginning to get buds.

It is time to pull up the pansies (in the south we grow them as winter flowers) and they are now straggly and stressed from the heat. It is always hard for me to do that task because each face on a pansy is different and beautiful to look out…perhaps I will let them go a little longer till they give u completely on their own. I will pick the last of them and use them under clear glass plates for a dinner first for certain. After dinner they will rest in a book being pressed for cards or just because I like to open a book and be surprised with a pretty pressed pansy to see.

Always in May, after I have tended my beds, I like to plant in containers and add some interest to the garden other then the ground area I have to plant in. So why is it that we have to buy pots for planting in? Could it be we are programmed in this life not to use our imagination any longer? Creative minds are so fun, so confusing and blurred often also. My mind is always on overload from one thing to the next and hardly able to take time to think trough the original thought before I am off and contemplating something else. I've always been one to think, outside the box, but I also think about the pot when in the garden.

I've planted old galvanized buckets full of zinnias. I've used an old hand plow as a structure for climbing moon vine. Shutters add interest with a basket hanging from one filled with a tiny flowering annual in pink against the deep maroon of the weathered paint peeling shutter. A simple sign that says Garden, hangs on another of green chipped paint, top layer is green and goodness only knows how many layers are beneath the top and last coat of paint they received before taken from an old farm house and sold at an antique barn. A strawberry basket holds one little ever bearing tiny strawberry plant, a treat for a bird when the berries ripen, a new runner lifted from the heartier plants, and planted in the balsam wood strawberry basket, to sit on the table. An old colander waits for others to be planted in but first I must line the colander with moss. This colander is unique to me as I found it in a thrift store and when I took a look at it I noticed the holes were punched out as Stars of David. I might not have bought it since it was missing a foot but the Jewish faith it represented touched me, I could only wonder who punched this colander with the stars, ad the condition of it told me it was done many years before, so home it came for the garden, to become a vessel for berry plants.

A rail of the post and rail fence has begun to rot out and since replacing my fencing this year is out of the plan of things that need doing I gutted it, added soil and planted it, covering the top with a thin layer of moss to hold the plants in place until they root well. It is a shaded area so Lobelia and impatience and some strawberry begonias that will get runners and small plants will hang down from the original mama plant, resides there in the fence rail. I can hardly wait to see it grow more and fill completely in.

My favorite thought for planting outside the pot this year was the use of antique sewing machine drawers. They are two, stackable, and I knew when I saw them sitting on the floor of Ray's, a building loaded to the hilt with the best finds I ever come across, exactly what I would do with them. Besides always finding some treasure there, hidden under or high on top of pile, a visit with Ray is like a day of sunshine and warmth. He is a burly sort of guy, attractive looking, and a twinkle to his eyes like Santa Claus, with a full beard of graying hair and he always makes me think of Jerry Garcia. I've only met Ray recently, through my friend Tami, and the first time I met him I knew he was a gem, a person with a good soul, with an appreciation for the things that life has discarded, much like my inner feelings about those sorts of things. His place is a favorite now for me browse through. He has no standard hours, no signs, but if the garage-like door on his metal building is up he is there and you are welcome.

He, Ray, perhaps has eyeballs like my own. We both have blue eyes and there is something special about blue eyes... they see things in a brighter light has always been my interpretation of a person with blue eyes. Have you ever noticed how much bigger blue eyes are then those of brown or especially those of gray or greenish tones? It's so they can see the goodness in antique relics others over look perhaps...they look deep, around and under things too to find the best of the goodies. (Just a little humor I felt as I write this). It is what I choose to believe about the big oversized blue eyes I was blessed with at birth.

So now back to the sewing machine drawers. I pulled out the underneath drawer just a short ways and planted in that, a lavender. In the top drawer there is a sage plant and some marjoram that has already gone to seed with flower heads. I will trim it today. I placed a tin sign with the letters cut out spelling SAGE above the sage plant, and a placid marjoram plant marker made of hand made pottery painted a blue greenish color sits within the space of marjoram. This was a purchase along with a Thyme marker on a trip to Asheville NC many years ago. This potter opened her porch and had her wares displayed for sale. She was a wonderful craftsman and I also bought a bowl from her that was slab pieces, but I dropped it before I ever used it. Sometimes things like tat happen but I have her face and her hands in my mind when I look at my plant markers in the garden. The drawers have so much more character now, then abandoned sewing machine drawers left behind from the machine that once was housed in a casing where they shared the space as a piece of furniture that had its purpose hidden by the cabinetry..

I loved seeing the sewing machine drawers planted even before I got them planted up, and I got another treasure the same day at Rays. I am now the proud owner of a wonderful old, dated back to 1956, green battered, yet intact fully, Falcon tricycle, with fenders! It is the sweetest thing and every time I pass by it my garden, I get the urge to jump on the seat and take it for a spin. My legs perhaps are short enough to manage getting the pedals to turn without my knees hitting me in the chest as they come back up but it might not appreciate my weight. How many little children learned to pedal a bike upon that seat with their feet pushing on the pedals with all their might? These kinds of thoughts always make me feel connected to old treasures of time that has past. The what, the where, the when, and the whom contained within its existence. . On the back foot push board of it I planted a basket of colorful zinnias and ganzani's. It needs a small handle bar basket, of course, but I haven't come across one yet...but I will, one day.

I have another item on my wish list from Rays and will save for it and hope it is still there when I can get it. It is an old washstand, with a galvanized tub in it, nice high fancy back board on it, painted a strange green, but I like the color...has a sturdy bottom shelf on it. So, the question is, what would/will I do with it? I will use it as a potting bench. Soil in the bowl, with a big old scooper for planting up pots...clay pots stored underneath it and what a treasure it will be.

It's the things we look forward to that give life an uplift and make the waiting for a new day to dawn special. If I am to have it I will...if not someone else will but I will always cherish my thought and vision was for this old wonderful piece that has so much character to be renewed.

So what is that you have you can plant and think outside the Pot?

I'm planting an old corn crate with cosmos today. Cosmos flourish here well in the fall so with grow just in time to be blooming then. Remember, a gardener always needs to think ahead of herself. The seasons rare with vigor past us.

Here are some quick thoughts of things you might have around to plant in. An Old wooden tool box, a watering can that no longer holds water and has made its own drainage Keep in mind whatever you plant in it needs good drainage, drill holes in it, or take a nail and hammer holes into it if you're not comfortable using electrical hand tools. Got an old wringer washer in the shed? Now imagine that, with cascading petunias and tall plants in the center. How about a wire egg basket or an old milk crate? Look around, you’ll find something of interest, put it to use rather then house it in boredom. It might actually smile back at you when you smile at it growing, alive with spirit once again.

To view pictures of my plantings outside the pot that I wrote of in this entry click on the below link and it will take you to my picture page of "Thinking outside the pot".

Gertie's Garden in May

Happy gardening, in anything that amuses you to plant in. To revive something from the past is to bring it back to a full life and in turn add joy to your own. Go for it, you will be glad you did. Write to me and share what you were inspired to plant, not in a pot but in......

Enjoy your creativity,
Garden Gertie

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