Audrey, where did you take the landscape photos you've recently uploaded? They are so beautifully arranged and nicely maintained.

Thank you Bleu They are pictures in my garden.

Wow! Have you counted your containers? So many and so very beautiful all of them! And your plants are so healthy, too.👏👏👏 The succulent containers show very happy plants. How long have you been collecting plants and containers?

I stopped counting pots a long time ago. To be honest I really don't want to know how many I have I enjoy my pottery almost as much as I love the plants in them. When ever I see a good deal or a bowl I can drill I bring it home. They rarely stay empty for long I just can't help myself when I see an empty pot or anything that looks like it can hold dirt. I got the really large ones from a craigslist couple I met selling plants. That was a major score!

Hmmm.... how long have I been collecting? I had to think about that for a minute. I have had the odd house plant here and there most of my life but I started getting more serious with my collecting habits (addictive money drain) I guess almost fifteen years ago.
My current garden has been in the making since 2012. In 2011 I bought every flowering perennial on the sale rack at Lowes that had been damaged by the first small freeze. I got lots of great hardy stuff like salvia for 25 cents a gallon pot. That plus some seeds and really great craigslist finds my 2013 garden started coming together pretty quickly. This picture is the same area but looking from the other direction in 2013. The garden has changed pretty dramatically every year. I keep changing things up trying to find how I really want it to look. And then I change my mind again

Well, you have a great eye for plant combination and color. The way you design your garden is very unique. And that green, lush backdrop really accentuates everything. Some of those containers must weigh a ton (I'm sure you are not planning on moving any time soon! 😃). You know, it never occurred to me that one could buy plants on Craigslist, I mean, of course, people even find housing there but I just didn't click. I guess I should start looking. I did try OfferUp but I haven't looked consistently, I guess. Lowe's now, at least around here, has a clearance section with very damaged plants at $3 each. The 25 cent deals are long gone, I'm afraid.

I see you have a nicotiana tree. I used to grow nicotiana in the Northeast, I loved that plant. It wasn't a tree, though, but those gorgeous flowers, oh, how lovely they looked in the twilight!



And now I know where Esperanza came from. What a fantastic tree! I have a couple of Carolina jessamines here but the Esperaza flowers seem to be much larger, almost like a trumpet vine, yes? Are they fragrant?

I have tried growing the fragrant nicotiana from seed several times and never had any sprout. The tree showed up on our land as we were building. It took me two years to figure out what it was. I called it my hill country eucalyptus weed. It makes tons of seed. I have heard it can be invasive but so far mine have remained mostly behaved. Any I do not want are easy to pull out as seedlings. Some years they freeze back to the ground. So far this year it has not really gotten that cold for us.

Esperanza does have a scent if you stick your nose in the flower. It smells kind of like banana candy. It freezes to the ground every year but grows back to 6-8ft by the next fall. This bush blooms like crazy all summer until frost.

One of the reasons for a lot of my pottery is the fact that we are on the side of a cliff with no top soil. Any decent soil that is here now is from years of me hauling it in. The horses add their special touches to the gardens also.

Yep those big pots are heavy. My husband gets so mad at me when he sees I have been moving them around. I don't even want to imagine how many truck loads of pots and plants that will be whenever we do move.

I think your right about the 25 cents days being over. I have not come across that good of a deal since then.