We Really Should Be Writing This Stuff Down...

So says my better half.

Of course, that was why I started this journal...

Anyway. I'm going to try and play a bit of catch-up.

Here is the massive bed of potatoes, looking toward the porch.

I've never grown potatoes before. There don't seem to be any spuds visable, and they seem happy, but we wonder if they need more dirt?

And here are some shots I took from the porch, through the screen, a week or more ago.

 I love my hydrangea. It is a very vibrant pink right now, and there is more of it now than when the photo was taken. I do think they started out pink last year as well and turned blue as the summer wore on.

We also decided to move the round table to the space where the red bench is in this photo, and we like it better. The view is lovelier unless you happen to be the unlucky one stuck at the seat facing the fence!

Here is a shot from this morning, and you can see how different things look now.

This weekend, we finally got around to corralling the run away tomatoes, cucumbers, and winter squashes. Paul and his favorite 15 month old assistant drove to Tractor Supply first thing Saturday and bought a couple of cattle panels and some fencing stakes.

It only took a few minutes to provide some vertical structure to contain the sprawling squash plants. It is hard to see in the picture, but if you look closely, you can see there are three panel pieces in this  bed. Two make a V to support the spaghetti squash. They were already massive and too unwieldy to try and train very differently from the direction they were headed, but the V shape keeps them off the ground and tidy. They've already grown up and over the edge since Saturday!

There is also a panel perpendicular to the V, and there are cucumbers growing on it vertically.

The sun dial came with the house but was a little lost out back in the shade, so we gave it a new home.

Then Paul found enough long pieces of scrap wood to rip down for staking tomatoes. I used a technique I saw from an old issue of Martha Stewart where you use 5 stakes per plant and then wrap the string in a star pattern.

My first marigold blossoms are peaking out!

Our stakes were a little wobbly, so they ended up shaped a bit like a teepee. I think that once the plants relax and are accustomed to their loss of freedom they won't look so much like "little fat ladies in tight dresses" to quote my dearest. Their wobbliness and varying heights make them a little less Martha Stewart like, but we do like the look of the staking.



Paul hung the baby swing in the magnolia low enough that the baby can crawl in and out on his own. It also means that the swing hits the ground if a bigger boy sits in it and doesn't over stress the branch.

We had originally wanted to construct wooden cages to match our obelisks, but ran out of time. Now we are thinking that next year, if we don't use the string again, we might try a method where you suspend cattle panels horizontally and add layers as the tomatoes grow. One thing we've reconsidered is storage during winter, and stakes or panels will be easier to store than wooden cages. We might also just invest in some heftier hardwood for making beefier stakes.

We put in some late cucumbers (in the bed under the weeping cherry that I managed not to photograph) and finally got the watermelon patch out and planted. I don't know if you can tell, but this is sort of around back of the porch from the more formal part of the garden.

Here you can see where the boys started this morning laying out more cardboard to be covered by the (new) massive pile of woodchips currently in the driveway. It is really a mess of weeds back here, and we hope to control them with the woodchips and better utilize this space next year, perhaps moving some of the more unwieldy crops (like the winter squash) from the front?

Just up and to the left and out of view in the above picture is where the garlic is. There wasn't any where else for it to go when I planted it in the Fall and all this was a nebulous dream, but it doesn't get enough sun at all. Would that cause this?

It was looking so happy in spite of the lack of sun, and now it sort of went pfft. Maybe it needs more water? Another feeding? Or maybe its just too shady?

In the foreground of that same picture, you can just see the start of an unfunctioning water feature we inherited.

We aren't sure what to do with this place, but remember that toad we wanted?

I think he's got his work cut out for him. In addition to the slugs I spoke of, we also have earwigs.

And caterpillars.

Not sure who it is who's done the most damage to these cabbages and broccoli, I think it has been a group effort, but when we first harvested the broccoli, I made my beloved pick off the caterpillars. And were not talking half a dozen. Paul picked no less than 40 caterpillars off the first two heads we harvested. YUCK! We DID manage to clean it off and eat it, but we're not sure it was worth it, and  I'm a little skittish about collecting all the new stuff. A dear friend said that she just stopped growing it for that reason. We're going to try again for a Fall crop and see if there are fewer icky invaders than in the Spring/Summer.

Speaking of caterpillars and hopefully butterflies, this bush is a butterfly magnet.

We don't know what it is. We thought it was terribly ugly when we first moved in last March, but in the summer it develops a lot of little pink blossoms that the butterflies and hummingbirds seem to love, so we didn't get rid of it. Before the fence was built, it sprawled over in front of the dining room windows, but it keeps mostly to itself now with the fence as support.

We also inherited some lovely roses in the front that were at their peak a few weeks ago (though, last year they kept coming back into November!) just after Paul built and installed the gate. The green does make a lovely backdrop! There to the left of the gate, I planted some Zinnias. There aren't as many coming in as were planted, but I'm hoping they will fill in later in the summer.

And just around the corner from the zinnias, you can see the patches of corn and rows of sunflowers coming in along the front of the fence. We eventually want to have blueberry bushes here, preferably a variety with red wood as a winter ornamental, but for now, we're hoping the sunflowers will offer late summer color and that the corn, in addition to a couple of meals (we plan to manually pollinate it just in case it isn't thick enough), will be seasonally attractive for Fall.

And back inside the fence, you can see that strawberry patch that was the first thing I posted about!We have cute little pansies and heads of romaine bordering in the block.

And we did manage to collect a few strawberries for eating in this first year. I did not pull off the blossoms as is done for a traditional patch since I did not want to encourage runner growth (the reason it is done). I want to keep the pretty formal design with bigger berries for eating rather than a filled in patch with high numbers. We'll see. It seems to work for Mel Bartholemew in his square foot gardens!

And here at the entrance, we have long beds with romaine, bachelors buttons, and cosmos.

I am so thrilled to find the first happy cosmos bloom peaking through. I've never grown them before, and I was nervous that I was going to name my blog for this favorite flower only to somehow fail at growing any!

Phew! That was a LOT of catching up! If you made it this far, you deserve a medal. Hopefully I can become more disciplined in blogging about little things along the way. Afterall, it is all those little joys that make gardening such a delightful journey, and I would like to take more time to revel in them!

 (I normally use Firefox, but for some reason, Blogger gives me fits with inserting pictures now. I try to write posts in Explorer, but some of the pictures don't appear in Firefox, though I have no idea why! So, if it looks like pictures are missing, you might try switching browsers.)