Decked out

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The next morning after we saw the first hibiscus bloom, we awoke to this:

Fortunately, that was, as you can see, in the daylight. No more neighbor troubles at this time. She has been home, but she's been quiet! Thank you for all the well wishes and commiserations.

I was most disturbed when Michael told me he saw a cat in our neighbor's window! Actually, I think it looked more like this. Our 4th of July party briefly considered a cat rescue mission.

I wish I'd put my hand in one of these pictures...the flowers are HUGE! The only downside to these beauties is that they only last a day, and by the evening, having endured a warm wind all day, their petals are flowing with the breeze like the skirts of a swaying dancer. These are actually Swamp Hibiscus...although the name sounds awful, it just means that while they love bright, direct sun (a must for our deck), they drink water like fish! They even love to be planted directly in water.

But you want to see the rest of the deck! Here's the view from our deck door:

We got the great pots at No Mas! Productions and thought they were a perfect size. Then we went to Pike Nursery. We had talked to a lady there who has done lots of urban decks, and she had advised us to pick pots first. Unfortunately, she wasn't around when we first got there. Another lady tried to help us, but she kept telling us that our pots were too small for everything we wanted. When we would finally pick out something that would "fit", we'd say, "Well, what else can we add?" And she'd say, "Oh, no...that's going to take up the whole pot. Your pot is really not that big." OK, lady, we get that, but what about the store display of container gardening we're standing by that has three plants this size in a smaller pot than ours??? We couldn't make her understand. Fortunately, she finally left us alone (out of frustration, I think), and our original helper showed up. It only took her about 10 minutes to help us pick all these plants! And you should have heard her telling me to "mush" the Creeping Jenny in with the hibiscus! The other lady would have fainted! She was definitely all about the plants...it was more important that the plants be happy than us, LOL!!
Closeup of the first pot...

...and some of its residents. This is an Egyptian Starflower (or pentus), just in front of Quicksilver (or Silver Shield). It's insane how much the Quicksilver has grown since this picture!

These are the fan flowers, behind which you can just make out the Mexican Heather. It has doubled in size since this picture, but it's still dwarfed by the other plants, which have just taken off! I'll have to move it to a different pot next year. Um, if it's an annual. Excuse my "new gardener" ignorance, but I can't even remember what's an annual at this point!

Moving from here around the deck towards the hibiscus...which, by the way, is skirted by Creeping Jenny and its wonderful electric greenery...

We encounter one of our more "succulent" pots. At least, the Ice Plant (with the pink flowers) and the euphorbia splurge are. We thought the Medusa Rush was as well...but...we've lost a lot of it because we didn't give it enough water. I should have recognized it as being similar to the grass that used to grow around the lake where I grew up. There are two pots like this, and two of the hibiscus...

...but the sixth pot is a little different. While it does contain some Quicksilver and fan flowers, instead of another Egyptian Starflower, it has some Angelonia instead. I love the Angelonia, and it's been blooming constantly!!

And look what else "grew" while I've been away!

These are the Pomatomus socks (or Hippopotamus socks, as DF Jill calls them...because I could never pronounce them right!), knit it Knit Picks Dancing (sadly, discontinued). If I had them to do over again, I'd probably add a half a repeat to the leg length. I did only two instead of three, because with my short legs I thought they'd be too long. They're knit top down, though, so I couldn't try them out except by holding them up to my leg. They really stretch wider/shorter when you put them on, though, so I might have been OK with three repeats. The pattern didn't make "sense" to me until the first repeat of the second sock. Before that, it was a super-tedious chart-reading exercise. After, it was like, Duh! These are definitely not beginner socks, but they could be accomplished by anyone who's knit a pair before. After all, they're my second pair. =)

JiffNotes
I came, I planted, I knit. The deck looks exactly like a tropical paradise now. Well, not exactly.