How does your garden grow?

Not too well at the moment!

But I am already excited about planting some fun, new seeds this year. A local store had seed packets for 50% off AND I'd been reading through an adorable book on potpourri so I got a little excited and did some shopping.

I already have lavender, sage, thyme, lemon thyme, and spearmint in the herb garden. I even had nice enough weather to go out and trim them all the other day - I smelled pretty good by the time I was done!

I also have plenty of roses and a couple of cedar trees which are also in many of the mixes found in the book.

Here's what I plan on adding:

I'm also a huge fan of cut and dried flowers (and also need some more for the potpourri mixes). So here's what I intend to add:

I suspicion I won't be able to leave it at that though. There's a specific area I want to till up and plant to all flowers of this variety so I can always have fresh cut flowers that last and enough pretty petals to add to all my potpourri mixes.

Another plant that's considered useful (and grows in horrific abundance) is calendula. The petals are supposed to be good for dyes and also for cold sores? Honestly I've never tried that. I just wanted to warn you that this stuff can and will take over if you don't keep on top of it. I have a HUGE garden and it almost filled the whole thing. I was pulling up enormous piles of these things so that the vegetables wouldn't choke out and die. Scary! They also seem to attract some gross looking beetle things that hang out in them and scare away any other attractive insects. Fan. Tastic.

Do you have any favorite flowers or herbs that you grow? Or would like to try? If you suggest something I'd love to try it out.

I'll leave you with some older shots of a few of the garden areas to perk you up and make you hopeful for spring!

Two colors of sunflowers with zinnias, African daisies and the odd cosmo.

One of my zinnias.

Two evil plants looking benign and lovely: morning glory and calendula.