Plant status

Rest in peace my short lived friends! I'm sorry I brought you out of a nice cool nursery into the sweltering heat and sun of my garden where you bravely fought a losing battle for life. For what it's worth, you were beautiful, and I really thought for a day there that you were going to make it. Goodbye my four green plants, my four flowers in a variety of colors, and my four green plants with bright pink flowers. You may be joined shortly by two magnolia plants, I'm sorry to say. For those of you who have been repotted and placed inside, best of luck to you. I hope you muster the will to live.

But there is hope for the future of this garden! Today we took in five petunias. I have it on good authority that these will survive, and if our neighbor's yard is any evidence, I trust it. They have a number of petunia plants hanging in their backyard and I don't think they bought them yesterday. Our new flowers now sit over the ghosts of plants gone by, safely in their pots to give them a fighting chance at life (not to mention height). I thought these five would be enough to cover the length of the garden, but I think I might need 3-4 more. We're going to see how these do first. Live my little petunias, live!

Finding my green thumb

You know what grows quickly and has crazy roots? Bamboo! Guess what's all over my backyard? (If you can't guess this you really aren't following my train of thought here). Yeah, so even though we cut the bamboo down - not all of it, but some of it, to make room for something else - I'm discovering that the root systems are vast and the bamboo itself grows horizontally underground. So I bought a hatchet. I think I never knew until today that I really wanted a hatchet.

So far in my little plot of dirt I have planted two what I believe are magnolia bushes, four purple plants, two large green plants with white flowers (for lack of a better description), four pink flowering plants, four small green plants, two bushes, six little plants, and a jasmine tree. And I have four flowers waiting to be planted.

And so far I've managed to kill four purple plants, two large green plants with white flowers, and two of my little plants seem precarious. Someone tell me this is normal? The problem is, the extent of my plant vocabulary in Chinese right now includes, "Does this plant like a lot of sunshine and heat?" (literally, "Is it afraid of sunshine?") and of course any self-respecting plant seller will say, "No, it likes sun!" because their goal is to take my money.

Thankfully, they haven't taken much of my money because plants are cheap. We'll see what continues to grow and what has just been brought here to die.