I love perennials for their persistence and their return. The sign of things to come. But I also love annual flowers because they are this instant burst of light and color and beauty.

Many of our perennials take a season or seasons to grow and then flower. But As soon as the local plant nurseries open for the season we can go buy some fully bloomed and beautiful flowers. And we love to adorn our yard with flowers.

We were planning to go a week earlier than we did. And it turned out to be a good thing that we were delayed because that ended up being a cold week. As it would have it we would visit all our favorite greenhouses on what ended up being a gloomy and rainy day. But it was a light rain and not too cold at least.

We found many beautiful flowers to bring home and love and hopefully keep alive. Not always our strong suit. We are trying to be a little more strategic this year. Having some degree of a plan.

We paid closer attention to how certain types of plants did or did not grow where we had them planted last year. This time we are trying to plant them in the areas that will serve them best. We are trying to coordinate how to arrange our plants a little bit more as well.

My wife has arranged her flowers in the raised garden beds in a colorfully symmetrical way. I bought a few perennials to add to the yard, but the plants I focused on for annuals were Dahlias. They have become my favorite.

This year I planned to create a raised garden beds out in the yard specifically dedicated to a variety of Dahlias. We also have a section of our porch that does not get a ton of light so I found some varieties of Dahlias that were noted to only need partial son and planted those flowers in the raised garden beds in that area.

Luckily we have these raised garden beds etc. on our porch with a roof overhead because there were cold days right after buying the flowers where it could have frosted. And it looks like there are more cold days in the future. The roof will protect the more fragile annual flowers from the frost. And I have delayed planting the Dahlias in the yard for now. Hopefully I can get those planted soon.

I have many more plants I have overwintered in the basement and I would really like it to warm up enough to be safe from frost soon. That way I can bring all those flowers up and put them out in the sun and determine what I managed to successfully overwinter and what did not survive. I am really just looking forward to more plants growing and more beauty in our lives. And maybe a few more things to photograph.

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