Oh yeah, I'm planting things too

When I started this blog, I promised it would be for cooking and for gardening, and thus far (thanks to Seattle's weather) it's been all food, all the time. No more! We just had this bizarre stretch of nice weather (which is now MIA, but there's rumors it will return), and I promptly headed out to my patio, cleaning up the winter's mess and getting things going for the spring/summer. About a month ago, I started a few seeds in those little cups that break down in the larger pots - no replanting required - and am now, with a few exceptions, gradually moving them outside. I am 100% a container gardener - I have a patio of a decent size, and that's the end of it. Which is perfectly fine by me - no weeding! A few years back I tried to garden in a patch at the back of my parents' yard, and it was a disaster. Granted, it was the summer of May and June deluges, so the shallots and garlic drowned and rotted and things that lived were stunted at best, but on top of that I felt like there was a daily losing battle with the weeds. And this was when I was unemployed, so had plenty of time to be out there weeding every day - and I still couldn't keep up. So, containers are how I roll now.

It's still early in the season, so the only thing that's actually "grown" so far is my lavender. Lavender grows like crazy out here - I accidentally created a wild lavender offshoot in one of the apartment complex-maintained planters when nature sent some seeds/pollen floating over from my pot. My plant had gone dormant over the summer, and having never grown it before I wasn't sure what to expect. It lives in this cool ceramic pot that I like, but which doesn't slope out enough at the top for easy repotting. So, I left it be...then two weeks ago, looked out my window to see the thing had just about doubled in size!

                             

So, a good start out here, as with the mint plant that also refuses to die. Other struggling holdovers include rosemary and sage, both of which got a little more rain than I think they would have liked. But they're hanging in there, and I'm hopeful. Bring on the sunshine!