Heather's Garden

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

In honor of the day:

 

What is it about the Fourth of July, idiots, and fireworks?  I hate, absolutely hate, that any tool can walk into the grocery store and buy fireworks.  What happened to the good old days when nothing was legal in CT?  And what is the definition of sparkler anyway?  I swear some of the things I hear going off cannot be sparklers.  Can you tell that my ass of a neighbor has been setting off really loud fireworks for hours already and it's just getting dark now?  Well we have the Independence Day DVD playing and we've had our burgers, dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob, and strawberry shortcake.  VPH, SS2, and I honored the wishes of our forefathers today by each pursuing our own happiness.  VPH cooked up a storm, read a book in the sun, and hung out with SS2 listening to The Beach Boys Pet Sounds.  No one asked SS2 to do a single thing today.  And me?  I gardened my butt off!  First up was the Jet Star tomato plant purchased earlier this week:

 

I decided it could stay on the bar since I really only care about it giving us the tomatoes already on it.  The weak stake the garden center used snapped over under the weight of the plant at some point.  I decided that trying to stake it back up was going to be too difficult and would only result in tomato loss or breakage, so I grabbed some heavy rocks (one thing we have a lot of is rocks) and filled the opposite side of the container which will hopefully prevent the tomato from flipping off the bar:

 

Then I gave it a haircut to hopefully allow for better air circulation.  Now you can see that there are already a few tomatoes ripening:

 

Then I turned to photograph the 4 daylilies that bloomed today and my frustration with the patio garden became too much for me:

 

I cut back the grasses that had bent, pulled the daffodil and tulip foliage remaining (if they didn't get enough nutrients to come back next year oh well), moved the struggling zucchini over to a sunnier spot, relocated the birdbath, planted a few more dahlias and caged them, cut down the stalks from the deadheaded iris blooms, and weeded:

I stopped for a moment to admire the blossoms on one of the bush beans (don't remember which one):

 

And then did some more weeding of the vegetable garden, planted some dahlias in the ground (not pictured), hooked up the hose cart (but not the hose to the cart yet since watering hasn't really been an issue), planted beans where they never came up, and spread some mulch:

 

I still have a lot of work to do there:

A friend of ours just sold her house and will be moving to Colorado to be closer to her sons and grandchildren.  We were talking about the process of divesting oneself of 30 plus years of stuff and she said she still had some left -- marble chips and bricks -- I said when can I come over?  The bag of marble chips will go down around the grill since we can always use more rocks there, and now I have 50 mostly whole bricks with which to play:

 

VPH entertained himself by making a little wall as he unloaded them from my trunk.   I think I know where I'll be putting them, but for now they'll just sit by the front of the house...fingers crossed that they don't walk away from there.   I hope you're all having a fun, safe holiday!

IT WAS A GLORIOUS DAY UNTIL...

Luckily there was no lasting damage.  A few pics from before the storm.  Royal Purple Bush beans:

 

I'm ridiculously happy to see dahlias blooming and bees in the garden again:

 

This is pretty close to what I was expecting the patio garden to look like, but not so much with the grass this early:

 

Not sure what happened here.  It's been sitting on the potting table for months without incident.  Could an animal have attacked?  I cleaned it up and put it into a large Ziploc bag:

 

And after the rain I'm even less pleased with the grass flopping all over the place.  I may very well go out and cut it all back tomorrow:

 

I really have a lot of planting to do tomorrow since my mental stop date is the 4th of July.  I'll be up and out there early, I just hope it doesn't rain.

I JUST CAN'T RESIST A SALE

Before I get started...this is the bush that I'm trying to identify.  I posted a close-up of the bloom the other day.  They're used as hedges all over our neighborhood and the blooms smell rather honeysuckle-like.  A little help, please:

Back to "I Just Can't Resist a Sale"...

But if I told you could get everything on the table and both chairs for a total of $24.34, could you?

 

VPH made chicken salad on Wednesday with some leftover grilled chicken (which had been seasoned with herbes de provence).  It was delicious (like all his food), but we both wished we had fresh tarragon on hand.  I know that at some point in the spring I asked him if we should grow tarragon and he said no, but I should have known better.  I also never got around to dividing the 2 eggplants and using the funky new box/planter for one of them (now that they're flowering I'm loathe to mess with them), so I had the brilliant idea of buying one of those nursery tomato plants with fruit already growing on them that I've been seeing all over the place (including the grocery store) so we could get a ripe tomato before August (even if I do agree with Carol that it's cheating).  I had a $15 certificate for Van Wilgens so off we went.  I used the $15 certificate to get tarragon, fernleaf dill, silver thyme, and fernleaf cilantro and paid $1.02 out of pocket (I know, I wouldn't normally pay $3.99 an herb plant either): 

You're wondering where the petunias and ornamental edible peppers came from?  The tomato plants at Van Wilgens that had fruit already were $25 each.  Well I may be crazy, but I'm not nuts enough to pay $25 for a tomato plant, so I passed and decided to go to Vaiuso.  I'm telling you, I love that place.  Remember the $1 perennial herbs I picked up there a few weeks ago?  Just about everything's a $1 now.  I got tired of waiting for this:

To look like this:

 

That's marigolds, coleus, parsley, and basil all $1/each.  I'll transplant my grown from seed tiny little plants into larger pots and see if they'll do anything for me, but like I said, I am tired of waiting.  Speaking of being tired of waiting I picked up this tomato plant for $8.  Yup, $8.  I love Vaiuso so much!  More on this tomato when I get it into a container:

 

I took a brief walking tour of the garden and found tiny little flowers just forming on the scarlet runner beans:

Then I sat down for a well-deserved hour reading.  Every now and again I looked up from my chair to the freshly mowed lawn, my humongous hydrangea, and blooming/nearly blooming dahlias: 

 

Then I'd look a little to the left and think about all the work we still have to do putting up the new shed, taking down the 2 old ones, a new project I'll tell you about soon, reorganizing everything...oh well back to my book:

 

Before I headed inside I did a photo session with a spider on the eggplant cage.  I can't decide which of these photos is more calendar-worthy.  A good close-up:

 

Or a more interesting composition:

 

Do let me know what you think.

IT SMELLS LIKE SUMMER

The rain's back, but hopefully not to stay.  At least it's much warmer than June was, even on an overcast, rainy, cloudy day the thermometer's at about 75 right now.  These photos range from 1 week ago to today, but give a decent view of what's developing in the garden.  First up -- zucchini flowers!  Not likely that we'll be grilling our own zucchini on the 4th of July as we have years past, but at least they're flowering at last:

 

Beans!  I'm hoping it stays warm and dry enough to get the rest of my beans in this weekend, but all the bush beans that survived the rains are flowering: 

 

And the vining bean varieties are growing (and yes that's still the new shed under a tarp, hopefully this next week will see the shed project get underway):

 

I can't for the life of me remember what kind of bush my friend said this was.  Can anyone tell from the flower (it's about 3 inches long)?  It smells rather honeysuckle like and wafting in through the living room window reminds me of my childhood:

 

I was pretty excited to see hosta leaves at long last from one of the bareroot hostas I planted this spring:

 

The beautiful blooming lamium that I can see from the living room (and I don't care if it is practically a weed in your garden...it's pretty in this container!):

VPH has since raked this area, but I'm too lazy to go out and take a new photo:

 

And then today in the middle of the rain showers another daylily (this looks orangey on my monitor, but it's almost burgundy in real life):

 

And the first plum tomatoes:

 

The first Parkland Glow dahlia, but it's a much darker red in real life:

 

The eggplants are flowering!!!  VPH was very happy:

 

I wanted to get out into the garden today but it's so cloudy that the mosquitoes are out in force and I just can't do it.  Tomorrow, even if it is supposed to be "humid" according to the weatherman, will be better than spending days scratching bites.

IT'S AMAZING WHAT A FEW DAYS OF SUN WILL DO

I had a completely different post drafted with photos that I've taken over the past couple of days, but I went outside this afternoon and found such a different garden after 4 days of sun in a row (shh, don't jinx us) that I just had to start a fresh post.  My very first blooming day-lily (unnamed passalong from my friend Mary) in the patio garden:

 

The hydrangea is insane!  It's waist high and the blooms are bigger than my hand:

The Bay State Angel dahlia is blooming away:

 

And the Parkland Glow is about to pop:

The moonflowers suddenly decided to send out a scouting party:

Overnight one of my peppers was attacked, but I think it will survive:

 

The first heirloom tomato has set (and frankly I'm amazed given the June we had).  The winner of the race to first tomato is the Green Zebra, now the question is will it be the first ripe tomato:

 

The Kentucky Wonder beans are climbing the trellis quite nicely:

 

I hope I get a better spider photo at some point this summer because I don't think this one is quite calendar-worthy:

 

Now if I did a vertical calendar, I would consider this photo:

 

And who knew creeping jenny blooms?  Not me:

 

I'm loving this container...the colors, the textures:

 

I can't wait to see what a few more days of sun will bring!