Garden Update

We've had enough rain showers to really help the garden along this year...and the weeds and lawn! I will have to mow and weed after this next batch of rain passes. I've started picking peas. The third row from the right is not behaving very well. It has grown so wild that it has filled the pathways which will make it tricky for picking.

You can get a sense of how many pods there are to pick, shell, blanch and freeze!

The tomatoes are doing well and I should tie them up again soon.

Some of the bushy plum varieties in the foreground. I have 2 kinds of Roma, 2 kinds of San Marzano and a purple colored plum that I can't wait to see and try!

Zukes to the right of the tomatoes. There are some nearly ready for picking and lots of flowers.

Oh, there are quite a few small, green tomatoes on various plants, but these are getting really big. Wouldn't you know it, this is the one plant I'm not sure of the name for?! Ack!!

Eggplants coming along.

Peppers.

I left some tomatillos to reseed themselves and you can see they do well that way. This is a thick clump of them!

Peas for dinner!
Although the peas have white blooms, we found a couple of plants with pretty purple blooms that almost look like orchids. I don't know if they will produce pods or not and I can't keep track of which flowers they were in the wildness of the pea patch...

This is a branch of purple toadflax in the butterfly garden. I love this flower!

By the patio, the lollipop lilies have begun to bloom.

And the feverfew is pretty by the patio as well.

Now, I'd better go shell some peas!!!

Hanging Out in the Yard

In between working on some projects and the garden, we relaxed a bit in the yard on Sunday.

Here is a newly sowed portion of the garden. Hopefully we can remember to keep it watered enough until things come up!

There are quite a few butterflies around, though I haven't gotten a very good picture yet. They are lingering rather high up on the shrubs and rarely stay still for long.

Silas decided some of the trees needed trimming and did his famous leaps to reach them.

Success! A branch to shred.

Saffy is so much lazier. She wanders around eating grass clippings. Fortunately, she's leaving that row of romaine lettuces alone on the edge of the garden! You can see her shaved patch from surgery is growing in.

What she loves best though, is being carried or being a lap dog. She is SO spoiled! Here she is contemplating planting a puppy kiss on Jeff.

Happy and smiley as Jeff carries her over to a lawn chair.

How many labradors get to be lap dogs?!

Oh, life is so hard!

Slowly Getting the Garden All In

It was a hard spring for starting a garden, but nevertheless, it is slowly starting to come together. It was so cold and damp that plants didn't want to start growing and it was hard to move the indoor seedlings outside. Then, the weather seemed to do a 180 shift and got warm and sunny and the garden soil went quite powdery and dry! That was followed by cool, fall-like, very windy days.

Many of the peppers were planted out over the Memorial Day weekend.

The eggplants were also planted out over the weekend.

During this week, Jeff tilled again and we put down more plastic mulch for the rest of the peppers and the cucumbers. I need to do some direct sowing and hook up the drip lines asap.

Wednesday evening, we were in a tornado watch area, but we were lucky that all the storms missed us. We had a little shower of rain and some wind, but nothing bad enough to hurt the garden. I feel for all the people to the north of us with so much clean up to do. I hate to imagine all the new little gardens people just planted that got hailed on or ripped up by wind!! I was surprised the next day, when we did get a lot of wind the weather people didn't bother to mention. The garden really got beat on and a lot of leaves were torn. It was strong enough to blow the lawn furniture around and I kept getting leaves in the face when I went out to round it up! I am going to have to try to tie up some of the peas. Hopefully everything else will be ok.

Here is a view of the peas. I got 4 different varieties, which is why the heights are different. I kind of wish I'd gotten all tall ones...the low ones are kind of back-breaking to pick!

There are a lot of flowers to take pictures of now, even if they are all listing to the east.

The weigalia flowers are looking beautiful. When I leaned in to take this picture, a bunch of sparrows started to flit about inside the shrub and I wasn't sure what direction they would burst out in! I didn't get crashed into, thankfully!

They give off an amazing scent that drifts all over the yard, especially in the evenings.

These are Buxton's Blue hardy geraniums around the patio area.

Snow in summer, around the lilies that will bloom later on.

Daisies.

Lupines.

What's left of the Hesperis...it went by a little fast with some help from the wind.

Knautia, which I think look like little pompoms.

Some blue Salvia.

A detail of a poppy.

Hope you enjoyed the little garden tour!