Happy 2016!

Happy New Year to everyone.  2016 has to better than 2015, right?  Let's hope so.  I am going to start out catching everyone up since my last post.  As you recall it had been a really nice Fall season.  Well, that changed eleven days later.  On November 21 we had our first snow.  A lovely 8 inches of extremely wet heavy snow.  Great for taking pictures!

 

Luckily, this happened on a Saturday that I wasn't working.  I was able to just sit and enjoy the show!

Little did we know that this would be the only significant snow we would have through the end of the year.  December was down right enjoyable.  Warmer than normal temps was wonderful.  It made our Christmas Day travel plans totally stress free.  We didn't escape December totally snow free, but just about.

And just like turning a page on a new calendar, we woke up to snow and cold today!  The nice Fall/Winter weather make the annual arrival of the seed/plant catalogs that much more enticing!

Ah, let the planning and dreaming begin!

May you all have a very safe and prosperous 2016!

Thank You to All Our Veterans!

I just want to start off saying a great big Thank You to all our veterans and active duty military.  You all are awesome!

I really didn't mean to let so much time lapse between posts.  I do apologize, but sometimes life gets in the way.  Since I ended my last post with the container garden, let's begin there.

This is my garden.  It has been this way since the fifth of July.  It will stay this way probably until next Spring.  To state that this has been a strange Summer would be an understatement.

These are my tomatoes on the same day.  They look pretty good, don't they.  Yeah, I had MAYBE a dozen tomatoes.  By the end of August they were done.  I didn't take any pictures after these two.  To be fair, the cherry tomatoes did produce off and on, but they just didn't have the same taste!  It's really a shame because I always put lots of tomatoes for marinara sauce and chili in the freezer.  It's going to be a long Winter.





Now the big guy's Ghost Peppers, on the other hand, went CRAZY!

We just picked the final batch of peppers this week.  That's how nice the weather has been this Fall.  He has made a couple of batches of sauce using my habanero recipe.

I made him cook and process the peppers outside.  The house would have been unlivable if we had done any of this inside.  And believe me, outside wasn't much better!  One or two drops puts a nice Zing to whatever you are making.  More than that, someone is going to be hurting!

Life After the Summer Doldrums (or a Bad Case of Writer's Block!)

I'm not sure what happened, but I'm back.  I think I just needed to give the brain a rest.  That's it, my brain took a summer vacation.  Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right.  Anyway, I believe I promised more pictures of what I planted at the beginning of summer.

The rest of the pink garden was just as nice as the hydrangea.  This garden is pretty much geared for Spring and early Summer, except for the Sedum.  As it continues to spread, there will be plenty of Fall color also.

I once again put out the little red wagon my boys had when they were little.  To change things up a little bit, I put all white flowers in the pots, plus a very traditional coleus.  The Diamond Frost Euphorbia, the Compact Innocence Nemesia, the Obsession White Verbena, the Alyssum and a white Petunia all look very nice together.

I struggled for a lot of years to figure out what to put under the family room window.  Once these lilies fill in, I think they will add a nice pop of color to an area that has kind of transitioned from totally sunny to partial shade.

My new favorite spot is the area behind the fireplace in the back yard.  We put arborvitaes on either side of the fireplace and I moved my bleeding hearts to the space between them and the house.  I've had various containers with varied results.  But I think this year's combination is a keeper.

This container was constructed with the "Thriller, Filler, Spiller" concept.   The nice big Caladium is the thriller, the Vinca vines are the spiller and pink Cocktail Begonias and the spike are fillers.   

Oh yes, and the container garden saga goes on!

Nighty Night

The garden has officially been put to bed.  The gigantimous (sp?) piece of black plastic is in place.

I would pick the warmest day in weeks to put plastic on the garden.  But hopefully this will cook whatever weeds are in the soil.  If not, I may just make this my new flower garden.  This would look lovely covered in sunflowers, marigolds and zinnias!

Of course, I couldn't go without any fresh tomatoes.  It's container gardening this summer!

There are even little green tomatoes on there already.  I can taste them already! Yumm-o!!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!  Weather is great today....upper 70's, sunny, a great day to grill burgers and brats and then watch fireworks.  I can garden tomorrow!

Okay, you know I love flower surprises.  They happen all over my yard.  But....what is wrong with this picture.

Yes, those are regular purple cone flowers in with my dwarf orange cone flowers.  I'm really torn over this.  They are doing really well, but they don't belong here.  They belong around the corner in the big perennial garden.  If I leave them, they will probably crowd out the orange ones.  Yikes!

I really like how my color combos are looking this year.  It's such a departure from what I usually do.  The only problem are the snapdragons.  They were supposed to be shorter plants, but as you can tell from these pictures, that's not the case.  They look out of proportion with the other flowers.  Oh, well, They still add a nice pop of yellow to the pots.

This combo also looks great in my fancy pots on the front porch.

And I have three of these hanging baskets.

But, never fear, I still have lots of pink around.

These begonias look amazing.  They have tolerated the rainy June weather this year quite nicely.  The hydrangea has really enjoyed the weather, too.  It has gone crazy!

I wonder if I could put another one of these somewhere.  Hmmm.


Anyway, that's just a small part of my garden.  I promise more pictures real soon.  In the meantime, go out and enjoy the day!  

R.I.P.

Yes, Rest In Peace to an old family friend.  This old, concrete, refurbished bird bath finally held it's final bowl of water.  It had once been part of a bigger piece with a smaller bowl and a fountain on top.  We have babied this for years.  But the past winter was just too much for it.  It would no longer hold the water the birds loved.

Hail to the new birdbath!.  Doesn't have quite the character that the old one had, but definitely brightens up the garden.  And much easier to clean!

I could have also title this entry procrastination.  Our internet has been incredibly slow (thanks ATT!) for the last couple of weeks.  I have used that as an excuse for not updating my Spring garden pictures.  Well, here they are, slow internet and all.

As I hinted before, I went with a different color palette than I have before.  Mainly reds, yellows and oranges with lots of white thrown in.

                


These colors look really nice in the new front pots too!

And all white flowers look crisp and clean in the wagon sitting in the rose bed.

It wouldn't be my blog if I didn't mention my pink garden.  This has been a really strange Spring.  Instead of everything blooming at the same time, it's been kind of one at a time.  The roses were that way too.  All these pictures were taken on different days.

The hydrangea isn't even in full bloom yet.  If it rains much more, I'm going to have to change my profile picture to a duck!


The improvised tomato garden is doing just fine, too!

Bad News, Good News

Yes, I am starting with the bad news first this week.  We finally took the plastic off of the weed...I mean vegetable garden.

   

I'm not sure if this is a failed experiment or a testament to how bad the weeds really are in this garden!

Now to be fair, the solarization did actually kill the regular grass that was in the garden, but little else.  I am now resorting to the nuclear option....weed b gone.  Which also means, that the only veggies we will be growing this year will be container grown.

This is how the garden looks eight days after spraying.  I even had to get special weedkiller for the clover and chickweed.  After a quick raking out of the dead material, we are going to try solarization again, using black plastic this time.  The hubby takes great pleasure in letting me know we should have used that in the first place.  I still think the clear could have worked, under the right conditions.

Now for the good news.  I have mulch around the entire house for the first time in at least two years!  And it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.  My two guys did the majority of the rose bed and I did the rest of the way around the house.  Much smaller beds!

There was even enough mulch to do around the shed, too!  As you can tell from these pictures, my Bleeding Hearts have bloomed and are doing quite well.  I haven't put the mulch down in the bed on the east end of the house yet.  I sprayed for weeds and I'm waiting for that to fully take effect.  But I should have plenty of mulch left to finish. I ended up buying 25 of the 3 cubic foot bags of cypress mulch.  A lot better than 40 bags of the 2 cubic foot that I used to buy!   I have also put plants in all the empty pots that are in these pictures.  I'm waiting for a non-rainy day to go around the house taking pictures.  I went with a different color scheme this year.  I went with a brighter palate --red, yellow, orange and white.  Should look good.

I guess you could say the best news of all is Spring is finally here and I'm outside getting to do what I love to do.....GARDEN!