Garden Pic Wednesday: Blooming Ground Covers!

This morning I was out picking beans.  They get ahead fast. Also watered all the veggies, hydrangeas, blackberries and daylilies with some Miracle-gro. 

I enjoyed a fresh cucumber on my sandwich for lunch. They're a container breed that makes 4 to 6 inch cuc's, so they're ready quick. Fresh cucumbers taste so crisp and light and full of water, like watermelon. No comparison to store bought!

Lots of Butternut squash, purple peppers and zucchini as well!

Today's Garden Pics features 2 blooming ground covers I have out front my the mail box:
Creeping Basil and Creeping Thyme. They've expanded much since last fall and they plus the Golden Creeping Jenny are there to cover the whole surface of where they are.

Creeping Basil

I didn't know there was such a thing. It was a door prize I won at a event at the library sponsored by a local Garden Club last fall. Since then it's expanded to about a 30 inch circle. The leaves lay very low to the ground and these cute little bloom stalks are only about 4 inches high. 

It's perennial and, here, just stays green thru winter. It's very nice. Edible, of course. It's Basil.
 I harvested some of it's leaves last fall for drying. 

Creeping Thyme

This I ordered last spring: two tiny Creeping Thyme plants came in the mail.  It thrives in poor soil and full sun and is even drought resistant---all characteristics of the spit of land out by the mailbox I wanted to turn into a naturalized bed I didn't have to mow any more, since grass wasn't growing there anyway.

I was careful to keep those tiny plants watered and fertilized in hopes they'd get well established. I guess they did, because they'd expanded into 30 inch wide circles as well.

Creeping Thyme lays very close to the ground and blooms tiny lavender-pinkish flowers all over. It, too, is edible and also perennial and, here, stays green thru winter.

It's possible to have both a beautiful and edible garden! Lots of flowers and herbs are both.