Little By Little

I have a feeling this is going to be the gardening season that starts slowly and then all of a sudden is upon us.  The temperature is depressingly south of 55 degrees still.  Yes I remember Easters with snow on the ground, but I'd be willing to bet those were Easters in March or really early April.  Usually a late Easter like this year would find us in Easter dresses by the tulips, but there's not a tulip to be found in my garden.  And it looks like I no longer have an azalea either.  The Mother's Day garden is showing lots of hostas, but the azalea that SS2 gave me two Mother's Day ago looks like it's a goner.  Could it have been all the snow?  I'm really sad about this:

 

And I'm missing the ivy that our neighbor cut down suddenly in the fall (it's his fence, so I can't complain too much), but we're going to try the potatoes in this sunny spot and see if we get better production this year:

 

Lee's not 100% happy with how the recycled garbage bins look, but I think he did a great job of placing them given the hillside and the almost complete lack of topsoil in that spot:

 

The strawberries are looking pretty good:

  

But by far the most exciting thing I did on Saturday during a lull in the rain was potting up the Husky cherry tomatoes in the big hanging containers:

 

One of them even has little flowers starting:

The $6 of pansies from Walmart went into 3 hanging baskets along the driveway:

 

Friday afternoon Lee and I did the grocery shopping for Easter Sunday and I decided I needed new ramekins for the dessert I had planned (my inner Martha couldn't deal with 6 mismatched ones for our 7 people for Easter dinner).  A quick trip to Walmart after the grocery store yielded not only the required ramekins, but 4 nearly in bloom hyacinths for $1 each!  Potted up quickly on Friday afternoon, 24 hours of warmth in the kitchen has them almost ready for centerpiece duty:

 

And hiding away under the leaves of each of them is a bonus second flower stalk.  Quite the deal for $4!  And the pot was only $5 at Ocean State a few days earlier:

 

Wondering what would be in those ramekins on Sunday?  Chocolate pots de creme of course.  There are two more in the fridge already:

 

All I have to do is whip up a little heavy cream and confectionery sugar right before I serve them and it's about the easiest dessert I make.  I hope chocolate and flowers await you tomorrow too!

Comments

[Mummer]

Oh, yum! The chocolate ramekins look delish!
Don't give up on your azalea yet - it may be hiding some live roots that warmer weather will develop into sprouts.
What a wonderful deal on your hyacinths, and how nice that pot looks with your table.