Spring cleaning

I did spring cleaning on the deck, but not in the sense of making things literally clean. I cleaned away old dead plants from last year, pulling them all out of the pots so they are mostly pots of dirt right now.

In my herb barrel everything looked dead, and most of it was, but when I pulled the dead stuff out there was some new little tarragon growing.


And I had two pots that had a few green peppermint leaves. I still was quite ruthless in tearing out the dead stuff, then I stuck the little green parts back in , more in the middle of the pot, whereas it had been at the edges.


Peppermint is actually quite difficult to kill, so we'll see if these come back. I've read, too, that it spreads like crazy, so it's good to grow it in a pot rather than a flower bed.

A little bit of ivy had also survived, which I pruned drastically and stuck it back under the stairs, where it usually is. As it grows, I train it over the tubes and plumbing of the manneken pis fountain to cover the works.

After pulling so many plants, I planted the ones I bought a few weeks ago, some pansies, some parsley, rosemary, and thyme. I forgot to take pictures of those. All have suffered from insufficient sun. I think most will survive, except the rosemary looks the least healthy. We'll see how it goes.