Getting Started in the Container Garden

I started out with a tomato and some flowers here.

One of the things that I start with is touching up the paint on the patio furniture. These days I have to use spray paint to reach everything but I would love to find a more environmentally friendly alternative to get the job done.

Here I've set one of the seating areas up for a tea with friends.

 We also took an old arched bench apart and will be attaching the Arch to the old chain link fence so that we can cover them both with the roses from the other side of the yard.

This is my rolling garden that includes herbs, flowers and vegetables. A few of the things here are lettuce, radishes, carrots, green onions, turnips, spinach, marigolds, poppies, daisies. Too many to mention here.

Here are some lily of the valley plants that I divided to share or save for a new flower bed.

The large Brown pots have a raspberry bush, beans, petunias, marigolds, a tomato and an assortment of other things in them.

Here's a long shot of the area that holds my container garden and three different seating areas.

This area is where we have morning coffee. these pots were just here the day I was dividing lily of the valley plants. They're out of the way now.

Out in the garden again...almost

Until I get a wheelchair with all terrain tires I won't actually be able to get out in the yard and garden so for now I'm contenting myself with rolling up and down the driveway while deadheading the lilies and tending to some of my plants in pots.

All the yellow lilies and the daisies have finished blooming and the only color left is the orange lilies and pink cone flowers.


This is bad news for the painting I'm working on unless I want to change what sorts of flowers I was in the middle of painting. The only other alternative would be to work from the photos I took before.

Walker Gardening

This year I'm going to be making things a bit easier in the yard and garden. I'm turning one end of the driveway into a makeshift patio and container garden.

One thing about the walker I've got is that the basket and seat on it allow me to carry a lot of things around as I work.

There's no budget for plants or flowers this year so I'm just making the most of the plants I've got by dropping them into a lot of old pots that I had on hand.

These 2 mums are from my Dad's birthday party last year, it's nice to see that they made it through the winter and are off to a good start this season.

Weeding peas and carrots from a chair

There wasn't much to do today except to pick up maple seeds and thin the carrot seedlings. I'm pleased with the amount of growth there's been in the last few days. We had some rain and that helped a lot.

 This arrangement might not work for everyone but I'm enjoying it so much that I'm going to drag 2 more big planters out here and bring up some chives from the back yard. I may even pick up a tomato plant or other veggie plants. Yes, I'm really out of seed. I got a little carried away and planted things too tightly...Again!

Armchair Garden, Morning Coffee

When I came out for coffee this morning the planters had blown full of maple seeds so I thought I'd start by picking them out.

 There's nothing like sitting back to enjoy playing at the garden instead of working too hard at it.

Under all of this the peas, carrots and poppies are coming up nicely.

This is by far the easiest and most fun way I've found to garden yet.

The nice thing about this is that the planters are alongside the edge of my driveway next to my work table so it's super easy to keep an eye on my plants and always remember to water them when they need it.

There sure were a LOT of maple seeds. On days like this I'd recommend a coffee cup with a lid on it.

Transplanting Lilacs

As I trimmed the big lilac bush back for the season I decided to move some of the baby plants away from the base of it.

There were 3 nice ones so we decided to move them into the border on the front garden.

 
I got some help digging them and then just put them in the basket of my walker to take them up to the front yard.

Moving this thing across the grass is hard work so I stopped in the front yard to rest a while.

 We put all three transplants into the front border where we hope they'll make a nice backdrop for the bench someday.

A tool belt for the walker

We just used a standard tool belt from the hardware store and wrapped it around the back rest of the walker. Here's the view from the front.

Here's the view from the back.

Here's the view from the top. We ran out of cable ties but will strap all 3 layers together in the morning when we get more of them.

Resting after a job well done.

Getting around the yard and garden with your walker

Here's the working end of my place. Behind the wheelbarrow are several large planters that are tall enough to sit in a regular chair to do your planting, weeding or picking.

The walker rolls well over the sidewalk and driveway but is real slow going through grass or dirt. The bright side of that is you're not using your brakes so you can stick some of your long handled tools through the hand grips so they won't fall off if you hit a bump or a rough patch in the grass.

The thing I love most about this style of walker is that it has a basket to carry small tools, plants or weeds and it has a seat so that you can sit down whenever you need to.

We're looking into all terrain wheels, some sort of a tool rack and a few modifications that will make things work better and as always we'll keep you posted with our progress.

So many people talk about having to use a walker as a bad thing. I think that anything that helps you do the things you want to should be celebrated. I love this thing!