Starting the Clean Up

With our wedding party less than a couple of weeks away we started doing some real clean up in the backyard. This Spring the backyard was dirt and some weeds. First we put down the mulch and border along the sidewalk and we've also seeded grass a couple of time. Yesterday we cleaned up the shady corner of the yard where no grass was growing and we filled in the bare spots with some more grass seed.


Well, as you can see the corner does get some morning sun but it does not last for long. Here are the purple marconi peppers - I have yet to taste them:


My brussel sprouts:


Two different eggplants:

Consuming: The All American Way

Here is the new little patio set we got on sale at Home Depot:


You can kind of see, in the middle to the right, the 70's-esque planter stand I got at the thrift store for a few bucks. It has six round stands and is perfect for my plethora of houseplants. It helps add to the jungle feel I'm trying to get going in the back. You can see The Beast trying to eat this corner of the house, too.

Nightshades in the Morning

I used one of the banana peppers a couple weeks ago to flavor up a quinoa dish. Otherwise we haven't picked any at all - and we definitely need to start! Can you see them - over there in the back?

Look at all the little jalapeños!

This is Schuster our foster dog, he wants to go for a walk. How do I know? Because he always wants to go for a walk.

This bed works great for the eggplants because, as you can see, they are growing big and healthy.

Eggplants are one of my favorite vegetables to grow because their color is so amazing...and they are so shiny! I count four baby eggplants in this shot-

But here is the real baby, Robbie!

This beast is threatening to eat our house...

It's Outgrowing Itself!

It's been a couple weeks since I last posted...and my garden is HUGE! Here's a picture from around two weeks ago:

Now here are a couple different angles from this morning:


You can see that I went way overboard with the kale. Every week I have been picking bunches and giving them away to the neighbors and co-workers and I still have more than our little family could ever eat. And if you look in the back right you will see my cucurbits going absolutely insane. They need more room!


The picture above is from the backside of the garden where the squash and zucchini are taking over. Below is what I found when I went in there to try and train some of the vines to come outside the fence instead of choking out the rest of my plants...


...they ended up on the grill just an hour later - with just a little extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, and sliced garlic, delicious! Below is our back garden and, yes I know, it is very weedy. It is next to impossible to keep it weed-free so I've been doing some drive-by weeding to make sure no plants are in danger of succumbing to them. Most of our corn was knee-high by Fourth of July, so we must be doing something right. The mammoth sunflowers are indeed mammoth.

Busy, Busy

We had lots and lots of rain last week, which was wonderful. My last okra plant lost it's ongoing battle for life. I've been picking broccoli florets about every other day. I'm also eating about one radish and one sugarsnap pea a day. Some of the tomatoes are looking like they've caught a disease, I snapped off some yellow and brown leaves this morning hoping it - whatever IT is - doesn't spread to all of the plants. My beets are getting huge, as is just about everything. Here's some pictures I took over this past weekend - or maybe it was the weekend before?


I love, love Tahitian Bridal Veil and can't wait for this plant to really start going nuts! We don't have many hanging hooks outside so I got creative and hung one of our wind chimes from the bottom of the plant. These particular wind chimes were a present from mom-in-law from a recent trip to Texas.


Here are the peas!

More Blossoms

My early variety, Swallow, of eggplant is already starting to blossom. I can hardly wait for the beautiful purple fruits!


I've been munching on the broccoli...


I already have some fruits on my Yellow Pear tomato plant. I tried taking some pictures this morning but they were too blurry, another day...

First Harvest

This past weekend I finally cut off the big head of broccoli since it looked like it was going to start flowering any day now. It was so delicious fresh from the garden, almost sweet.


The beets I planted from seed, on two different occasions, are coming up strong and happy.


I was so excited yesterday when I saw the first (yellow) squash blossom.


I think I've talked a little bit about the back plot we started. Next to the garage Jim had a makeshift compost bin and when we got the new compost bin this Spring he disassembled that old one. He spread out all the compost that was in there and we had this whole area in front of the new bin that was not being used...and, quite likely, has some very healthy and fertile soil. We weren't sure how much sun the area got and how well anything would grow back there so we didn't want to invest too much time or money in that plot. We planted, by seed, a couple different varieties of sunflowers and three rows of sweet corn. We also put in a couple of the pepper plants that Jim's sister gave us. The sunflowers started popping last week and the corn started coming up this weekend. A few of the sunflower cotyledons have been snipped off by animals, but it looks as if we'll have a fabulous crop of sunflowers this fall.


The picture I took of the rose bush last week didn't do it justice, so I went in for a close-up this time...


And I put in some arugula yesterday, too. One more plant to add to the list!