Our tame-flower bed

It's now been over two months since we seeded the area next to our front door, where those big bushes used to be, with the "Northeast Wildflower Seed Mix" from American Meadows. The description of this seed mix promises "27 different wildflowers, both annuals and perennials," that will "create show-stopping color all season long, year after year." The idea is that the annuals "burst into blooms" the first year, and the perennials take over in subsequent years, so I expected that within a few weeks, or at most a couple of months, we'd have a riot of multi-colored blooms.

Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, what we actually have is not so much a riot as a subdued murmur. In fact, you'll probably have to view the picture at full size to see that there are any blossoms there at all. There's a generous sprinkling of white baby's breath, a few small blue ones that appear to be Baby Blue Eyes, and two yellow California poppies, and that's it. And you have to get pretty close to the bed to see even those. Our neighbors probably think we just took out the bushes and then let the whole space fill in with weeds.

At this point, I'm not sure what to think. Did we just not plant enough seeds? We bought the smallest size bag, a quarter pound, but the site says that should be enough to cover 50 to 100 square feet, and this bed is certainly no bigger than that. Did we not plant them deeply enough? The instructions on the bag said to scatter the seeds directly on top of the soil, and we gave them a nice fluffy bed of compost to take root in. Did we plant them too early? The instructions on the site say to wait until after your last frost date to plant, but the instructions on the packet itself didn't say so, or we would have waited until May to put them in (and thus would almost certainly have had no blooms by now). Or is the problem just that they haven't had enough time yet, and I need to be patient? Will I get my "show-stopping color" next year, or later this season? Or should I call this experiment a negative result, be grateful it only cost us $16, and start shopping for something else to plant in that space?

I sure hope the portfolio of stocks that I let ShareBuilder select for me performs better than this portfolio of wildflowers. Or at least that both the stocks and the wildflowers turn out to have significant potential for long-term growth.