Hi friends! After a day off from the blogosphere, I'm back with part 2 of my newest mini-series, Adventures of a Purple-Thumbed Gardener.

In last week's post, I left off with mixed feelings of excitement and overwhelm in the Lowes garden section...

After pacing the aisles for 40 minutes (wish I could say that I'm kidding... but I'm not), I started looking at the little "bookmarks" inside each plant container. Thankfully, they clued me in on which plants are best in the shade and which plants do well in a lot of sun.

The land for our garden sits in 50% shade and 50% sunlight. I learned that most veggies do the best in direct sunlight, so I grabbed a couple varieties of tomato plants, a red bell pepper plant, a green bell pepper plant, and a banana pepper plant . I also added a few to my cart. My sunlight plants were good to go!

Now for some color. I came across some pretty pink impatients and found out they do best in the shade. Cha-ching! I added them to the cart, indecisively paced the aisles for a few more minutes, and snapped a few photos in the checkout aisle.

Thankfully, the lady at the checkout counter loaned me a few crates for the ride home. My cute little plants endured the bumpy ride to the Suite and said hello to their new garden bed!

As I unloaded my purchases from the back of the car, my sweet neighbor walked over to check things out. I'm so grateful, because Miss Ann was such a big help! She showed me how to separate the impatients into smaller bunches so that they wouldn't look so clustered, she taught me how to stagger the plants, and she pointed out where each one should go. Then she walked around and prayed them. "God, please bless Lauren's little garden. Make it grow and grow..."