After the Vacation

Had a great, relaxing week of vacation.  Went to North Carolina and did the tourist thing.  I made sure all the flower beds and the garden were in good shape before I left.  We pull in the driveway and things are all in bloom!  Then I looked a little closer.  The bane of my existence....Weeds!  We had had tons of rain while we were gone and the weeds took full advantage.

This is the end of the garden that is all pepper plants.  These crazy weeds are actually taller than some of the plants.  Below is what the tomatoes look like.

Very sad.  The weed is predominantly purslane.  And you can't just hoe the garden to get rid of it.  It is a succulent and any part of the plant that you leave laying on the ground is a new plant.  You hoe it into pieces and it's that many new plants.  So it's manual labor around the plants and in the rows.  It took three hours to weed just the peppers.  I'm still working on the tomatoes...between rain drops!  All the rain does make for easy pulling.

There were still a few roses blooming last week.

Both the pink and blue delphiniums are still blooming.

And the day lilies that had to endure being crushed by road construction equipment several times last fall are even going crazy.  That's a flower bed that needs lots of work.  The rock that they were planted around is now outside of the bed. (At least they didn't take it away!)

By the way, if you see anything like this in your garden...take immediate action!  It is an EVIL weed!!

A Gardner's Work Is Never Done

It's so nice to have everything planted!  I had all three Memorial Day weekend days off (Yippee!) so I went on a gardening frenzy.  By the end of Memorial Day Monday, I had the garden in, I had all my pots planted and scattered around the yard and everything that was going in the ground was in place.  I even found time to watch the Indy 500 and the Coca-Cola 600!

This year in the vegetable garden, I planted 12 Celebrity tomatoes, 2 heirloom tomatoes and a red cherry tomato.

Don't ask me what variety of heirloom they are.  The tag said "Organic Heirloom Blend".  That's what my husband picked out.  I cut back on the jalapeno peppers and only put out 4 plants.  I still have tons in the freezer from last year.  I increased the green peppers from 8 to 12.  I also planted some cayenne, habanero and sweet banana peppers.  I've already had to go kamikaze on the weeds.  Not good.

The roses are coming along nicely.  I planted 4 new roses.  The yellow brick road I talked about in an earlier post, Astounding Glory (a dark pink), Summer Nights (a red/yellow combo) and Sheer Magic (a cream/coral combo).  Should be nice additions.  The existing roses are starting to bloom, one or two bushes at a time.  (I STILL need mulch!)

We are starting to think about how we want to do the new patio area.  We went and bought new pots and set those up to see if we like how it could look in the future.

Then we put the table and chairs where we think we would like them.

As you can see, we have quite the construction zone going!  And those tiki torches won't be staying that close the the fence.

P.S.  This is what that barrel is for.  Quite the Memorial Day weekend!