Heather's Garden

ABOUT AS CLOSE AS I GET TO MY GARDEN THESE DAYS

It's been a hellish work week, my volunteer responsibilities have sucked every free minute out of my life, we've had two days of torrential rains (coincidentally the two days I worked from home this week), and I've seen 2 Shakespearean plays in a week.  Is it any wonder that this is the closest I've been to my garden in 2 days:

The good news is that those tomatoes are from my garden (though they're from the cheating greenhouse-started tomato plant) and they were delicious.  I also got my first ripe cherry tomato a few days ago -- a Husky Cherry tomato -- and it too was delicious.  I've got to stop volunteering for things and damn we need to get the new shed up!

PLEASE SEND AN ARK

Tuesday brought us three inches of rain according to my cracked rain gage.  Thursday another 2.5...again cracked rain gage.  Think it might be leaking?  This trash receptacle is at the roof line (no gutters on our rental home):

 

As I write this brief post we are in the middle of yet another set of thunderstorms complete with downpours.  We really don't need any more rain.  But this afternoon the sun was out and we enjoyed sitting in the sun relaxing.  At one point VPH called me to the patio.  "Come here!" he shouted.  "This spider's been busy."  I'm kind of amazed that I managed to get this pic considering the wind and sun:

 

Is it calendar-worthy?  Tomorrow is predicted to be a sunny day, but I'll be volunteering for a fundraiser for my local library.  Seriously, this is the strangest summer since I've been gardening.  I've only had to water twice and remember I'm growing almost everything in containers!

WHY WOULD I GO ON VACATION WHEN I CAN STAY HERE?

It almost goes without saying that I mean stay here and do nothing!  Which is pretty much what I did all weekend.  I did manage to take a bunch of photos though.  My beautiful Endless Summer hydrangea:

 

I'm sure you've noticed something's missing here:

We love having a huge vase of hydrangea blooms on the kitchen table:

 

The veggies benefited from almost a week of sun.  You read that correctly...a week of sun!  Of course, as I write this post we're in hour 12 of absolute non-stop rain.  The Kentucky Wonder beans on the trellis are exactly what I pictured when I planted them, well they're a little sparser than I thought they'd be, but maybe I'll plant a few more for a late crop once the rain stops:

 

Same with the Scarlet Runner beans:

 

I still haven't thinned the carrots, but I did pull a pretty big one and eat it (and yes, it was delicious):

 

My cheating tomato plant has given us a few tomatoes, but uh-oh, that doesn't look good:

I don't think it's late blight, but whatever it is, it isn't good:

And my last veggie photo...eggplant!   The Japanese eggplants are doing quite well.  In fact they're already about 3x the size they were in this photo:

The patio garden is making me so happy:

Especially the big yellow daylilies:

And at least one of the zucchini plants is flourishing:

 

The bee balm isn't blooming yet and I have to imagine it's because it's not getting enough sun, so I switched it with the dahlia that was on the little table:

 

But I am loving how this container is filling out:

 

Since the dahlias here are so tall I hope that the coleus will fill in down there:

 

But overall, I'm quite pleased with this portion of the garden:

 

I love photographing this container:

 

But I realize I hardly ever show you the other side of it:

 

My Mother's Day garden is looking great:

On Sunday we drained the little pool and rinsed it out (how does it get dirty so fast?), so to cool down while sitting in the sun I used the mist nozzle on the hose.  It was a little windy that day and a lot of the mist landed on this row of dahlias:

Photo op!  I think a bunch of these are calendar worthy.  My mother wants me to request opinions from readers on which photos should go into the calendar.  I suspect it's because she has something to say about it, but I will be a dutiful daughter and request that you readers comment on which of these photos you'd like to see in this year's calendar.  Number 1:

 

Number 2:

 

Number 3:

Number 4:

 

Number 5:

 

Number 6:

 

Please do let me know what you think!

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Remember that awful post about a month ago about coming attractions?  Where I mentioned lighting and some products heading my way for review?  Well this arrived a week later:

 

Unfortunately that was smack dab in the middle of the June of rain and no sun, so I couldn't really set out the solar lights to charge until last week:

 

They work!  And thank goodness because I had a fit of cleaning in the early spring and tossed the ugly mismatched half-broken lights I had scattered around the garden:

 

Now where to put them?  I love copper and have touches of it around the garden.  I definitely wanted to light the patio garden and had to have a light by the copper bird-bowl:

   

And look at the nice reflection I got in the water:

Two in the veggie garden:

 

This photo is from the opposite angle:

And what's a pool without lighting?  And though I haven't decided what to do with the birdfeeder yet (don't want birds hanging out over the pool), the copper accents together are pretty:

 

Reverse angle again:

 

Many thanks to CSN Lighting for the quality product and good customer service. 

WHERE HAVE YOU GONE?

I'm getting 15% fewer hits per day all of a sudden.  Am I boring you?  Is everyone spending more time in their garden now that the weather is nice and less time on-line?  My blogging productivity usually increases when the weather is nice because I spend more time outside, have more to photograph, and more progress to report.  That said, I don't actually have that much going on out there right now.  I'm a little overdue for thinning the carrots (and still wandered away after pulling just those four): 

 

The scarlet runner beans are blooming away on the fence:

 

We picked these and ate them 5 seconds later -- delish:

 

The Hootenanny dahlia in front is kind of blocking the rest of this grouping, but after those few blossoms flower I'm going to cut it way down:  

 

The poor man's hose pot, but it sure keeps those 40 feet of coiled hose more organized.  But once the new shed goes up, those stakes will finally get out of that old container:

 

And I saved this for last.  Is it raccoon poop?  In the veggie garden again for the first time in weeks:

 

Sorry to leave you with that disgusting photo, but I'll be back soon with a product review.  Aren't you excited?

AWAY FROM HOME

We spent the day with friends celebrating a certain little man's 2nd birthday.  I always bring dirt cake to these gatherings and this year I decorated it with herbs from my garden.  A little lemon grass, purple sage, purple basil, and peppermint:

 

It could not have been a nicer day for a party.  Last year for his 1st birthday it had to have been 100 degrees in the shade and the soil around their house was baked clay and the brown grass crinkled with every step.  This year it was lush and soft (as you can see in the photo above).  Just another example of what a long, wet, cool month June was.  We came home to the newest daylily in bloom:

 

Love it!  Loving the whole patio garden:

Looking forward to sitting on the patio and reading a book soon.  It's supposed to be 80 and sunny on Monday so I think I may even try the aqua lounger during my lunch break.  Hope you had as nice a weekend as we did!

ONLY A MONTH OR SO LATE

The rainy month of June put us behind on a lot of our garden chores and many of the plants behind in growth.  All I can say is we'd better have a mild fall to make up for it!  It took a while, but we've finished nearly all the garden chores and the plants are behind the norm, but catching up.  The hosta/azalea bed is done:

The hosta/rhododendron bed looks great:

He not only mulched, he made us dinner!  VPH and the perennial shade garden:

  

Yummy mustard glazed pork, grilled zucchini (wish we had our own zukes to eat), and brown rice:

 

The veggie garden on May 16th:

 

On July 9th:

Let me take you for a little tour...always left to right.  Bush beans, carrots, habaneros and Brandywine tomatoes:

Habanero, dahlia, lilac bell pepper, dahlia, lilac bell pepper:

Same lilac bell pepper, scarlet runner beans, carrots, habanero, carrots, Kentucky Wonder beans, purple bell pepper:

Black Russian tomatoes, bush beans, peppermint, lilac bell pepper, Perfect plum tomatoes, habaneros, and another dahlia:

The Green Zebra tomatoes are one of my favorite things in the garden right now.  They're so beautiful in their blue pots.  The planter table looks great too with Royal Purple bush beans, nasturtiums, and the one cucumber that survived the rain:

A close-up of the gazillion blossoms on the Royal Purple bush beans:

We have teeny tiny eggplants growing:

 

This nasturtium is blooming despite it's 2 relocations (note to self--a little grass seed here wouldn't be a bad thing): 

 

The marigolds are doing their job and attracting pollinators to the tomatoes on the gravel patio (calendar-worthy, no?): 

 

I think we'll have a daylily bloom on the other plant tomorrow.  I have this sneaking suspicion that it's yellow:

 

These are our old trash containers.  I hate to replace them, but both have gaping holes in the bottom and no longer do much in the way of holding trash or keeping the raccoons away from it.  Rubbermaid apparently would replace them (they're less 3 years old), but only if I had the receipt.  You'd better believe that I kept the receipt for the new ones.  We will drill more holes in these and use them for composting:

 

We're enjoying the garden and being able to spend time on simple maintenance like weeding rather than looking around and seeing all the things still undone.  We still have the shed project and a couple of other little things to do, but really, we're done.

OKAY, DON'T LAUGH

This is what happens when you ask your husband to plant while you're at the office.  Once I got home and we stood together staring at the 12 coleus plants in the ground, he said, "Yeah, it might have made sense to put the tall ones in back along the rocks and the short ones in front."  I added, "And maybe mixed up the colors a little?"  Well he's sweet to plant them regardless and they'll fill in soon.  Plus he mulched the whole bed, so really I'm not complaining:

 

Remember how it rained for June?  At some point during those weeks of rain, I decided that the sun would return and we would need a way to cool off.  But this is the summer of cheap and as you know we don't own this property.  4 years ago, before we started gardening, we asked the landlords if they had any objection to us putting up one of those big blue inflatable pools...they did, turns out their insurance premiums would have gone up.  Which is retrospect really worked out for the best.  We never would have started gardening if the yard was dominated by a big blue pool.  Do you see where I'm going with this:

 

Hey, it was only $20.12!  Though it's on clearance now for even less.  This is the sunniest part of our garden with full sun from about 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.  We put down a tarp we had on hand (luckily it was about the right size and blue) to try and protect the bottom of the pool since once the grass dies (sigh), there won't be much between the pool and the glass and rocks that seem to be the main components of our soil:

 

This is also about the flattest section of our garden, but it's still not level.  There will be a deep end of this pool.  I should stop calling it a pool.  The package called it an aqua lounger, which amused VPH to no end:

 

We also picked up a solar cover at a local overstock store for $33.  But even the smallest one they had was more than twice as large as needed, so we cut it in half and stored the rest for future use, so I'm only going to include $16.50 in the aqua lounger expenses.  (The directions for the solar cover recommended letting the cover sit for a few days to straighten out before you did the final trim to size and shape, lest you think we're just dumb.)  Another $7 got us a skimmer.  So that's a total of $43.62 -- well we already got an afternoon's amusement out of setting it up, in my mind that's money well spent.  VPH included in photo for scale:

 

I am so excited to see what color the daylilies on those tall stalks will be and still taking endless pleasure in the patio garden:

  

The Green Zebra tomatoes are definitely going to have the first ripe fruit, I'm just not sure how I'm going to know when it's ripe.  Lots of squeezing tomatoes I guess:  

  

The first beans are Burpee's Stringless Green Pod, though the Royal Purple Bush beans (not pictured) are running a close second:

 

See how much better the weather is (knock wood) -- basil that's not rotting: 

 

The mystery bush in a long weedy hedgerow on our evening walk:

 

We walked down to Dave & Dottie's house, which we do several times a week.  Remember them?  They gave me my first dahlias last year and serve as inspiration for all who pass by their home.  Walking by their garden these days smells like walking into a florist shop.  They have easily a hundred lilies blooming right now.  Their dahlias are all in, growing like crazy, carefully staked and labeled:

 

I love all the different types of hosta under the tree:

 

Some of the scads of lilies:

 

I don't know what this was (can anyone identify it? I remember seeing it on someone's blog not too long ago), but it was sharing space on an obelisk with a clematis.  Each bloom? seedhead? was about the size of a silver dollar.  Definitely calendar-worthy:

 

Nor do I have any idea what these Dr. Seuss-like plants were:

 

But the bees were loving them:

 

I have to go into the office on Thursday, so no time in the aqua-lounger for me, but VPH is going to complete the mulching and mow the lawn, so he said he might relax in it once he finishes if he and the weather are warm enough.  Remember, don't laugh!

WHAT A TEAM!

VPH and I are quite the team.  On Monday morning he weeded the hosta/rhododendron bed (which could use a little mulch):

And weeded the hosta/azalea bed and put a circle of stones around it (which needs a lot of mulch...and don't laugh at his odd circle, he's going to adjust it as he finds more stones):

He finished weeding the veggie garden and driveway for me too -- that's love.  Once I completed my workday I went out and did my share.  Peppermint and a calibrachoa in the veggie garden:

 

It's tough to see, but those are marigolds in with the tomatoes and dahlias planted in the actual soil (gasp!) between containers : 

 

More marigolds in the tomato containers -- those with blooms are nursery grown, those without were grown from seed:

 

The rest of the herb seedlings I grew from seed went into larger containers cause I just couldn't bear to toss them.  This is about the sunniest spot in my garden (at 6pm):

 

The coleus I stuck in the empty spot in this container looks really red for some reason.  It's much more burgundy in real life:

Some really pink impatiens in the blank spots here:

 

White in this one:

 

I trimmed back the petunias, moved the basket of glaring pink petunias to another hook elsewhere and replaced it with a different hanging container with the 2 recently purchased and newly planted coral pink petunias:

 

One of VPH's tasks for Tuesday is to plant the rest of the coleus in a row along the rocks here, which involves pulling up the tree roots growing in a mat on top of the soil:

And that is it!  The table is clear:

Now we're down to mulching and tidying up.  For instance I want to come up with a better solution for the coiled hoses here.  Any suggestions would be welcome:

And the shed, we still need to do the shed project.  We've run out of more urgent tasks though, so I should be able to guilt VPH and SS2 into helping me get this done.

OUCH

Every part of me is sore.  It's been so long since I could work in the garden for 2 days in a row.  I think I might have over done it just a bit.  But I got a ton done.  Not exactly what I set out to do, but all things that needed to be done.  First -- finally planting that box up!  I drilled large holes in the bottom of the box, put some large pieces of styrofoam in the bottom (didn't need to fill the whole box with soil, it's huge!), lined it with a large garbage bag (I cut big holes in the bottom of the bag for drainage), and trimmed the bag down to a few inches below the top:

 

I love it:

 

Those are ornamental edible peppers in the middle and clockwise from oneish: purple sage, silver edge thyme, Italian parsley, golden sage, Italian large leaf basil, and cilantro delfino:

 

I'm so happy with how it looks and hopefully it will be part of my garden for a long time:

 

I did a little work on the herb barrel too.  I cut back the chives hard, moved the creeping thyme over a little, relocated the nasturtium to the other side of the barrel (which will be its 3rd home) and added a golden sage: 

 

On the very left is the variegated pineapple mint (replacing the old spearmint which never thrived this year), front and center is French tarragon (I can already taste the yummy chicken salad), purple sage on the right, fernleaf dill went in with the ones I grew from seed, and more Italian large leaf basil in the back row (the other pots in case you don't remember hold rosemary, lavender, and lemon thyme):

 

I made zero changes to this container, but if the hot & spicy oregano doesn't do some growing soon I may direct sow some basil in the blank spot:

 

But look how the golden oregano is thriving here:

 

I have a few half-planted containers sitting by needing just a little more soil, some seedlings to get into larger pots, and then just this little bit left to plant:

My plan is to have this table empty of plants by Friday.  Wish me luck!

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.