Kitchen Window Box

We have a window box outside the kitchen window. There are two boxes, actually, side by side. In our first three years here, we filled them with geraniums (I don't have a photo from 2003, the first year). Geraniums just might be the national flowers of France. You see them everywhere, in the cities and in the country, nationwide.

2004 on the left, 2005 on the right.
Both years we had geraniums in the boxes.

But then I started to notice a few rebels here and there who put flowers-that-are-not-geraniums in their pots and window boxes. I felt the call to join their ranks. So in 2006 we started experimenting with petunias. But not just any petunias. These are surfinias, or trailing petunias.

2006 (left and right) was the first year we tried surfinias.

They can look great as they grow and tumble out of the window box, putting on a nice show of color against the house. The geraniums tend to grow upward, which was a problem for us when we wanted to close the shutter on the kitchen window.

In 2007 we went back to geraniums.

We've since changed the window and the shutter. Now the shutter simply rolls down, so geraniums are no longer in the way. But I still like the surfinias, so that's what we got again this year. Who knows, we may go back to geraniums next year. We're full of surprises around here.

In 2008 we put in surfinias again, in two different colors!

We've changed the soil in the boxes since we've been here, and this year I added some new soil to keep things fresh. I also incorporated some fertilizer beads since I frequently forget to feed the plants when I water them. And I have to water them since the roof overhang keeps most of the rainwater off the window box.

2009 is another surfinia year. This time, hot pink.
These are newly planted and haven't yet grown out of the boxes.