July is Over?

OK, so I forgot my blog sign in information, and I didn't have time to figure it out until today. But I guess when you work 95 hours a week, gardening and blogging become a little less important than sleep!

To summarize a month of plant activity at our home... our vegetable planter has exploded with tomato plants and squash. We've had no shortage of zucchinis (thanks in part to Mike's surgical removal of some parasites!), and we're just starting to get a few ripe cherry tomatoes, with lots of big green ones still growing.



Our backyard garden has some baby squashes and pumpkins, but the rabbits have been chewing the fruits, and the bugs have been eating the plants! Here they are a couple weeks ago... we'll see how they do over the next few. I definitely want to enlarge this plot next year, and put up a fence to keep out the bunnies.

This one has now been chewed up by our furry lawn pets, but it is still cool to have a little pumpkin that's bigger than a battery!

The most exciting development is this magical patch of lilies that showed up overnight. We figured that part of the bed was full of dead daylilies that the rabbits destroyed, so these were a happy surprise!!


And here's a perennial border I worked on a little while back...


We have a few more projects going on today, so hopefully I'll have more to post soon!

June 30, 2009

Daylily elimination. I was overwhelmed by all the unwanted daylilies that popped up this spring, but it turns out that every daylily is not the same old, boring flower, and my job as master gardener is to select the prettiest and eliminate the rest. What do you think?

Varying shades of pink, all of which could look really nice surrounded by the right flowers; we'll have to see how the new plants I choose look with them. These bright orange-red ones, however, make everything look beautiful-- even the boring tangerine daylilies that live next to the air conditioner with them!

Too bad the tangerine ones are crowding the a/c! They'll probably have to be eliminated. :(

There's also a bunch of new friends popping up that are beautiful, and now that the siding is done, I can start seriously planning and planting new ones alongside them! I'm thinking lavender, delphiniums, coreopsis...



And check out the back yard... Mike is digging up all the grass to turn it into a real little garden!



The next big project will be the perennial garden out front (just flowers or a mix with some landscape-y bushes?) and the front shade garden (Solomon's seal, hostas, astilbe, and who knows what else!)

Do you think my first real paycheck will cover all of that?!

June 14, 2009

So maybe this isn't my garden, but with my organic-farming-aspiring husband, ours will probably look something like this someday.

Those are rows and rows of strawberry plants, loaded with ripe strawberries!


I joined Aunt Mel, Connie, and Helen Jean to pick 164 lbs of berries for Grandpa.

Mel and I took some home, but Connie and Helen Jean picked just out of the kindness of their hearts... and stayed to stem them, too! Incredible people.



Now I have my own flat of strawberries to stem and freeze-- and I'm most definitely buying strawberry plants and throwing them in a strawberry pot ASAP, even if the plants already have fruit on them!

June 12, 2009

Mike and I love to garden, and now that we live in a house with a yard, that means finally having a for-real garden, with perennials, and earthworms, and all that you can't have on a tiny apartment balcony. We're starting late, mid-June, because we've just moved in, but I think it's going to be a good growing season. I've started a few pots of flowers,

as well as a pumpkin, acorn squash, and cantaloupe, planted right in the grass between our random rhubarb and daylily patch in the backyard.

The most exciting new garden addition is the amazing, sturdy new planter Mike built for vegetables.

It's true that we're more dig-in-the-ground kind of people, but this was our best full-sun option for a vegetable garden, and it looks great. I hope those tomatoes and zucchini get a lot bigger soon!

I'm also very excited about all the established perennials we have in our new yard, like this pretty arrangement of hostas,

and a beautiful bleeding heart,

although I'm less crazy about the "polite" patch of perennials planted out front.

Seriously, the irises were pretty while they bloomed, but we need some more flowers, and the daylilies have got to go! This little garden is getting a major overhaul as soon as the house gets its new siding next week.

Most of all, I dearly hope that deep-shade lovers will be able to adapt to the front of the house, where hardly a glimmer of sunshine gets through our maple tree.

I think you'll agree that space needs more than a little sprucing up.

If only I wasn't starting work on Monday, I'd garden all day, every day!