Petunia baby duck is very dependable, with adorable, small, yellow-centered blossoms.

It’s easy for me to get caught up in the wake of ambitious dreams when plotting my garden. But lest I drown in the disappointment of plans gone awry, I remind myself of the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid. And yes, I’m talking to me.

Experimenting with lots of untried seeds — hoping they all sprout, hoping they don’t fall prey to my cat’s midnight munchies, and hoping they go on to grow, thrive and bloom — that’s a lot of pressure. Of course, I go into it knowing that some seeds won’t sprout and some that sprout won’t survive. What can I say, it’s a process.

That’s why I follow the simple rule of using plantlets that are already established to fill in the containers. They can take up the slack when my great expectations fall short. I choose things that have worked well in the past. Some of my old reliables arrived by carrier today: petunia baby duck, lisianthus and salvia black and blue.

Petunia is probably the first flowering plant I had success with outside, so it always holds a special spot in my heart and in my balcony garden. I think I’ve planted some version or another every year. The baby duck has a downsized flower but big impact; it’s white with a lustrous yellow throat.

The lisianthus is all greenery right now, but I remember being delightfully surprised on first introduction — after putting it in the planters and forgetting about it — when it exploded with big, showy blooms. I ordered what is dubbed “rose bouquet,” a collection of three colors of the flowers — blue-purple, pale yellow, and pale green. And the salvia, which you’ve seen pictured in previous posts, sprouts these tall blue-tinged-with-black spires in short order.

Besides these standbys, I’ll shop soon for a couple more established plants to add to the roster. I don’t know what they’ll be yet; I like to take a day and just wander the nursery with the hope — or dare I say, dream — of falling in love.