Garden Update

Finally, I can show you a few garden updates. Above is the newest flowerbed, and this year it seems to be coming into its own. It's a mix of perennials and annuals, and a lot of the flowers here came from my sisters' gardens. Ignore that pigweed in front of it! I'm letting that grow until tomorrow, when I'll harvest it for greens. I know it's a weed but my goodness it's delicious. I don't mind it being in the gardens for a bit in the spring.

The garden I think of as the Spring garden is doing better since Larry dug a drainage ditch. I loosened the soil along each row of plants with a shovel because the heavy rains in May had packed the earth. It's thriving now, even the forlorn onions in the very back. A little TLC brought them along. The tiny plants in the center row are celery; behind them is peppers and snow peas, and to the right is regular peas and carrots. We've had peas for dinner twice--they are so good. We've had a few carrots too, as I tried to weed out my enthusiastic planting.

The mulberry tree continues to produce even after the heavy feeding by the Cedar Waxwings two weeks ago. I think even the birds are tired of them! It's nice, though, to stop and pick a handful as we pass by.

I caught this bumblebee in mid-flight as I was preparing to photograph this lemon lily.

The walk up from where Larry parks his truck. This garden at its lower end is infested with bindweed, making it a real struggle to maintain. The shade of the maple at the top is another challenge, but wormwood and coneflower don't seem to mind.

The cardinal in this shot was a surprise--I wanted to capture the sunlight through the trees. This long flowerbed used to be really poor but years of mulch have improved the soil so much that it's a rich garden now. I think my camera was a little on a slant for this one!

This one is still in progress. I realized that I should have pruned the lavender after it was too late so it will have to wait a bit, after the blooms are finished. I have baby lavenders I'm nursing along and hope to plant here. The planter is a combination of the base of a bird bath and a pot I got at the Rockport auction. I almost gave the flowerpot to my sister Julie, but couldn't quite part with it! I think it will be lovely when the Wave petunias in it really get going. The rose is a floribunda and blooms all summer. I love that I can look out my kitchen window and see it.

Volunteer daylilies and annual hollyhocks rub shoulders along the wall by the root cellar. This is a catchall garden--I fling weeded stuff up there, and dump dirt, etc when I'm cleaning out the gardens so it's always interesting to see what survives. There is a peony in there, and I think some iris and once a chrysanthemum surprised me.

This little garden, along the other side of the walk up from Larry's parking place, was almost destroyed by bindweed. I had given up on it, but decided to make one more try this year. It was a tussle, believe me, but it is mostly cleaned up. The bindweed is still there, however, and I doubt I will ever eradicate it---see it coming up in the Southernwood? I stuck a few petunias and coneflowers in there, along with a few yellow pear tomato plants and I know I will be working all summer to keep that aggravating weed at bay.


No more vegetable garden pics this time around--I'll try to take some soon. The tomatoes are all staked now thanks to Larry's hard work, and even the late garden--the one we wait until June to plow because of its heavy clay soil--is planted. Everything is finally caught up. It's been a difficult year for planting, but now we can slow down a bit and hopefully start harvesting a little more of our work.