The garden has a way of tantalizing you. It is dead winter (zone8) and despite some very frosty mornings there are all tsorts of things beginning to poke their way through the cold ground. It is a reminder to me to get them a good dose of soluble fertilizer . And for all the other bulbs doing the same. I usually use a balanced fertilizer and sprinkle a time release bulb blooming fertilizer for the beauties to come.
Today I and the Zen of Watering Your Garden were the feature story in the “Living Section” of the Tallahassee
Democrat a Gannett owned newspaper at
http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=LIVING.
Or just go to the Tallahasee Democrat at www.tallahassee.com
and click on the word ‘LIVING’ in the left hand column of bars
then click on ‘Find Peace in the Garden’ just below the photograph of me and the entire story opens.
As promised here is a Johnny Jump-up that has done some growing and is interesting as a photo because it shows the flowers in all stages. these are easy to grow in my part of Zone 8. Surprisingly this plant survived two frosty mornings with temperatures below 20F. This may or may not be due to being under a partial over hanging canopy. 
I initially intended to show photos from the book in the sequence that the photos appear in the book. But I broke that rule when I went to the pansy photo. And as you can tell some of the other photos are already out of sequence with the previous comments. c’est l vi ! I am learning to use the blog software so please be tolerant as I hope the photos are dazzling. I had to struggle to get the wet quince photo into the blog in a size that was not a postage stamp.That said, in addition to breaking the sequence rule I think it will be fun for the readers particularly those in zones higher than 8 to see what is going on in North Florida. Hence the pansies below and the viola above and if I master this, then some more violas and Johnny Jump Ups will follow!
