Tin Planters

I have a hard time keeping plants alive. I would love to have my own herb and vegetable garden, but I know I'll never be able to keep up with it. I always forget to water my plants and end up over watering or who knows what. Lily doesn't allow anything other than grass and random mushrooms grow in our backyard, so that doesn't help either. We have a small area in between our deck and our fence where Ryan put in a rock bed, since it would be too tight to try to mow and too much shade for grass to grow. We bought a bunch of pretty succulents to plant in the rock bed, went out to dinner, came home and Lily tore each succulent we planted into tiny little pieces. Not a single one could be saved.

For that reason, we tried hanging planters along our fence where Lily couldn't reach them and put in various herbs. I forgot to water them, bugs and fungus started to grow on them, some got too much sun, others didn't get enough, and then squirrels were coming and stealing things from the planters. Somehow, the chives have survived through it all. We thought they were dying, but they are making another comeback. I even used some in my lunch today, so at least we have one herb out of all of this! The hanging planters are still up with nothing in them (except the one with some chives).

I also tried to put some cactus and succulents in a small terrarium inside the house. Apparently you do need to water cactus....

Obviously, I can't take care of plants. As much as I want to have a nice garden, or nice looking plants... I just don't take proper care of them. However! While I was at Canino's (a farmers market near us), they had some soil and plants out front that caught my eye while I was leaving and decided to take another chance. I picked just three different plants. I also picked up metal tins from the dollar section at Target to plant them in- the tins were $3 each. I then printed off a design I liked to make chalkboard labels from chalkboard contact paper I got from Michaels. I traced the design on the contact paper, cut it out, and put them on the tins. I guess I could have put the labels on both sides, but I just put it on one. It has been about 14 weeks since I put it all together and they are still alive! I put them out on our front porch so when I pull into our drive way, I see them and am reminded to water them. So far so good...

FYI if you try to use chalkboard contact paper, using regular chalk wipes off really easily and was sort of hard to use on there. I had to buy some chalk markers, and they work so much better.