Last year, when we started the raised beds, I planted strawberries, flowers and herbs in the holes around the edges.  This sounds like a great idea, but in actual practice, not so much.  The basil and marigolds got huge and loomed over the vegetables.  The strawberries never produced much, but tried to move into the rest of the bed anyway.  And the thyme, cilantro, chives and parsley were too far away to be convenient for cooking.

So, Chuck is moving the herbs to the porch and I’m keeping the flowers around the house.

The thing is Chuck used all the pots for herbs and I needed one for camellias.  Randy gave me a little pot that has 2 little camellia seedlings in it that he started from seeds he collected from his bushes.  We have no clue what color they will be and they may not even match each other.  It is quite the floral experiment.

But they are teeny and I don’t want them to be so abused by weather that they don’t make it.  I have already had 3 camellias give up on me in exasperation.  So, I want these little guys to get a shot by putting them in a pot and bringing them in for the winter.  When they have some real size, I”ll put them in the ground at the corner of the house.

This means I had to get a pot and I was allowed to go to Lowe’s unchaperoned.  This isn’t always a good idea, but today I only came back with seed packets.  And the bee watering thing and the pot.  The seeds were the only things not on the list.  And they are all good bee flowers.  Really.

Anyway, my choice was to spend $20 on the size of pot I wanted or get a lily in the correct sized pot on sale for $9.  I win!

There are seeds in the herb pots.  The camellias are in their new pot.

The lily is in the flowerbed.

And the elderberry has been planted.

Randy gave me that, too, and I spent the afternoon getting the worst rocks I have ever had to deal with in this yard out of the new bed space.    And I had to go back to Southern States, where I only got one bag of mulch for the new bush.