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!