Autumn Photos

and all at once, summer collapsed into fall…          Oscar Wilde

The colors are slow to change this year, since our muggy-hot temperatures wore out their welcome.  We’ve spent the last week or so bouncing around freezing, so the yellows and oranges that I love are becoming more plentiful….on the ground!  Still, Fall is a beautiful Season…

Larry Garcia Gnome and his brother, Daryl, still maintain their tree-home down the hill…

My nasturtium has been amazing this year, blooming still…

Warm colors, cool temperatures…a month before we have to start scrambling for Christmas…I think I’ll sit back and have another cup of tea…

Peace

 

 

 

 

 

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All done but the eating…

All that’s left is the basil, sage, rosemary, and that patch of garlic chive in the corner…

It was a wonderful garden season, and I learned a bunch of stuff I was already supposed to know:

1. It’s all about the soil.  These beds were filled with fresh promix in the Spring.  All the difference…
2. Square-foot gardening really doubles your space, but don’t crowd the squash…
3. Mark the transplants clearly or you’ll never figure out which tomatoes are which until they fruit…
4. Even though Casey put out the soaker hoses as I requested, he watered with watering cans…  It worked fine.

We’ve cut back the hydrangea and butterfly bushes so we can see out the windows.  The roses are not to be pruned until late Winter, early Spring.  I do need to cut back the perennial herbs, but no hurry.

I feel a little sad, but restless to move on to Autumn weather and colors.  We’re already planning for next year’s edition of the gardens.  For now, though, it’s time to sit and enjoy the harvest…

Peace

Still growing…

3 weeks + 3 days post planting…

My zucchini/squash are fruiting like crazy!

I’m still a little leery about a few of my tomatoes, but this husky cherry and 2 romas are strong!

I already have 3 bell peppers ready to harvest— that’s 2 more than I had all year last year!

I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of green beans soon.  I have planted a second crop to keep us supplied…

My Cousin Jimmy gave me these banana trees.  I think the grandkids will love them, though I have no idea (yet) where I’m going to plant them..

I finished up this morning, planting some containers, a Black-eyed Susan vine, Lavender, and the green beans.  I trimmed the basil and now have a lovely lot of fresh pesto to smear on my toast.

I hate to tell you, but my roses look like crap.  I failed to have Michael water them while we were gone and they’ve been suffering ever since.  I have fed and watered them, talked sweetly, and I have hope.  A gardener has to have a Lot of Hope.

Now it’s time to sit on the porch swing and relax…

Peace

Garden Photos

2 weeks old…

The Edible Garden is In!

It’s all in…mulched and ready to grow…

I’m trying square-foot-type gardening, partly because I don’t have much faith in some of the peppers I started—not much root to them–and went out and bought some bigger ones, meaning I ended up with 12 bell peppers of assorted types, and 4 sweet banana peppers.  Same with the tomatoes:  I planted 3 better boys before the monsoons hit and they looked pretty bedraggled when it was all over, so I bought 3 bigger ones.  There are also 1 sweet cherry 100, 2 romas, and one husky.  There’s a lot of basil, some sage, rosemary, parsley, and oregano, as well as the broccoli and onions I planted in March.  I put down some carrot and beet seeds around the blueberry bushes…and don’t forget the bush beans and pole beans.   If it all grows, I’ll have plenty to eat and give away!

We’ve mulched around the entire house and it looks great…

I planted some wave petunias in an old stump (ala Pinterest), and surrounded geraniums with marigolds in the old wash tubs…

This lovely Sweet William is peeping out from under the daylilies..

When the rain finally returned, we brought out the houseplants and porch furniture…

 

Now, it’s just maintenance…and a fair bit of luck…

Peace

We are all dust and shadows…

photographed at New Harmony Labyrinth 12/25/15

“All Shadows whisper of the Sun” ….   (Emanuel Carnevali)

Different year, different garden

We have pulled out several of our garden beds to make room for a 14×14 pool for the grandkids.  I’ve left perimeter beds for vegetables, but I moved my herbs to the front porch and the blueberry bushes to another garden area.  I failed to get a good before picture, as usual, so I looked back at pictures taken a year ago…

        This picture was taken 4/4/14

4/1/15

4/5/14

4/18/14

Today, it doesn’t look much different, except you can see the circle Casey has drawn to show where the pool will go:

What a different Spring we had in 2014—I had vegetable plants put in before 4/25 and never had to cover them.  In contrast, the last 2 nights our lows have been down in the 30’s, so this year it will probably be Mother’s Day before the ground warms up sufficiently.

Don’t worry about the herbs, though.  They’ve been safe from the cold out on the front porch.  This is the first Spring with the screened porch, and it is lovely.

There’s plenty of spring cleaning to do, but I’d rather be outside, so it’s hard to be patient while the wiley weather warms, as it eventually will.   In the meantime, that’s arugula in that pot up there, ready to spice up a beet salad.