Update #10

This will be a short update. We just had our first snowfall of the season, so this photo sums up the current state of the garden. Note the branches from the elm that fell from the weight of the snow.



We brought the basil and rosemary inside a couple of weeks ago, and we had one last harvest of green tomatoes along with some nice beets. I think it might go without saying that this is the final garden update before spring.

Now that it's winter I have to figure out how to entertain Aubrey when it's too cold to go out for a walk. Here's one idea I had.




See you soon!

Update #9

Hello! Aubrey has two more teeth, for a total of six. The most recent ones came in this past Thursday. They are the ones next to the two top front teeth, the lateral incisors, just barely visible in this adorable photo. Click the photo to enlarge but WATCH OUT as the cuteness will become unbearable.

Her canines look like they are about to come in as well, but they don't feel sharp so I don't think they have broken through. She complains a little bit about the pain now and then but it's not too bad. She's not crawling yet, but she hops in a sitting position, pivots, rolls around, and scoots backward on her belly. So she has lots of ways of moving slowly across the floor. Who needs crawling?

So, on to the garden. You may recall these plants in the front, which looked like weeds during your spring visit, and may very well be, but I wanted to show you what they look like now. Four foot tall spikes:

With pretty pink flowers at the top, about 1.5 inches wide.

And the butterflies like them!

But, I don't like them. Too long of a wait for too little bloomage. So next year I'm going to pull them as soon as I see them. Unless I'm too busy.

The sedum in the back corner behind the tomatoes is starting to bloom.

And the bees like it!

Did you notice in the August or September Martha Stewart Living that there was a big article about sedum? Apparently there are 450 varieties and they grow in zones 3-10 and don't need much water or sun. PERFECT!

Here is the current compost situation. I sure hope you're interested in our compost situation.

The front one is for new compost, the middle one has older compost that we hope will be ready by spring, and in the back is a crate we got for free that we are using for leaves. This past weekend, Jason helped some friends of ours build the same type of bins with the moveable levels so they can have leaves in one and compost in the other. It turned out great and they are very happy with it. It feels really good to compost and it felt good to be helping people get started with it.

We have string beans!

We harvested 5 beans yesterday and had them for dinner (along with other things of course). They were delicious! The odd thing about them was that they only seem to grow inside the fence, between posts. Any idea why that would be?

I mentioned that one of the hydrangea looked a little pink, and now most of them have at least some pink in them.

Other hydrangea around the neighborhood that is similar to ours with the cone shaped blossoms (as opposed to the round) is also turning pink. So it's probably not something we did.

That's all for now. Talk to you soon!

Update #8

Fall is in the air! It was in the low 60s this morning during my photo walk around the garden. I'm sure we've got a lot of warm days still to come, but it's time to start thinking about apples, sweaters, and not avoiding using the oven.

I'm not sure if you recall the tall weed that is ubiquitous around here. I had told you it has pretty purple flowers. I don't think I've posted a photo of those yet. Here they are:

A bunch of them sprung up around the tree stump in front. They are actually quite pretty, but they show up everywhere and it's tough to keep them in one place, and they don't look that great when they haven't bloomed yet.

We're starting to get more tomatoes. Here are some "pink caspians".

We had a couple of little surprises. One was a very late asparagus shoot. In about 4 days it grew 4 feet! It's on the left half of the photo (click to enlarge) - a wide-branched, spindly stalk. you might be able to see that it's taller than the fence.



And the second surprise: a clematis blossom! This makes a total of three: two right after planting, and one three months later.

The beets have picked up steam and whatever was eating the leaves has stopped. We should check to see if any of them are big enough to eat.

The hostas that you and Jason planted next to the brick walkway are doing great and blossoming right now.

In non-garden news, we went camping this past weekend. Aubrey really enjoyed swinging in the hammock with Daddy.

And here is a random cute photo with no context.

She isn't crawling yet but is really trying!

Hope to talk to you soon!

Update #7

The weeds were getting ridiculous so this weekend I pulled as many as I could. It was more fun than I expected and Aubrey obliged by playing in her swing on the lawn, or napping inside. There are still a lot of weeds left, but I made some headway. Also, Jason cleaned out the rain gutters, which also had weeds growing in them. So we got a lot of dirty work done this weekend.


Here's the birch tree as of yesterday.

Now that it's as leafed out as it's going to get this season, we can see which branches are dead and can be trimmed this winter. But in the winter, all the branches look dead, so we took a bunch of pictures to refer to when the time comes to get chopping.


In other news, it's been hot and humid. Jason mowed the lawn yesterday and came in drenched in sweat, and remarked that he felt like he was back in Texas. So we reminisced about that time in our lives when we were perpetually drenched in sweat.


We harvested eggplants!

They were about 7-8 inches long, the same length they were at the farmer's market that Aubrey and I stopped by on Tuesday, so I suggested we pick them. I'm not sure how many Jason picked, but it was enough for dinner: a delicious sweet Asian eggplant dish with ground beef and rice.

We've also been harvesting zucchini, maybe two per day on average.

You might be able to tell that we've had to pull a couple of plants that died, on the left side of the photo. Not sure why but it could be that they got too much water, being at the bottom of the slope and not having much drainage.


In addition to eating zucchini and yellow squash for dinner a couple of times per week, we made zucchini bread, which was really good and I want to grate some zucchini and freeze it so we can make it again this winter. And we made a second batch of relish. It was more successful than the first; all of the jars sealed, as opposed to just one in the first batch, probably because we wiped the rims clean, heated the jars and lids (ran them through the dishwasher) and used a water bath.

This photo shows a volunteer squash/melon, the pepper plants, and a tomato that is working on ripening.

The squash/melon has grown to about 4 feet long, and has had a couple of blossoms but I don't think it will fruit because there aren't any other blossoming squash/melons around.

Some wildflowers in the foreground, and the pole beans in the background.

The wildflowers are in constant bloom and are really nice to have, not only to look at but also to attract the bees which is probably why we are getting lots more zucchini this year. And we both agree that the pole beans are by far the healthiest, fastest growing plant in the garden. Apparently there are no bugs in the vicinity that like to eat pole bean leaves.

The hydrangea are also doing great.

Lots of big flowers on those little bushes! I'm looking forward to seeing the bushes come back bigger each year.

Here are the violas. Notice anything missing?

That's right, the violas are no longer with us. They seemed to be totally dead so Jason pulled them out. Maybe the heat got to them? Or maybe they are only supposed to last until August? They did great until mid-July, then started to go downhill. One basket is still doing okay, but looks pretty tired.

Below are our herbs, from left to right: mint, pepper that got planted late and the sprouts were immediately eaten by something (the one tiny plant you see is a weed), basil, rosemary, mystery squash/melon, and two basil plants in front that we just planted, mainly just to fill up the pots that I picked up at a yard sale. We've got a blue pot theme going.

I'm making lavender oil, which simply involves crushing up lavender leaves and flowers and putting them in a bottle with olive oil, then shaking them once a day for a month. And hopefully, when I open the bottle at the end of the month, it wil smell more like lavender than olives. That reminds me, I haven't shaken the bottle yet today.

This past weekend, in addition to weeding, gutter cleaning, and mowing, we made black raspberry jam!!! We started with 15 cups of berries that we had frozen.

We wanted it to be more like jam than jelly, and were okay with having some seeds, so rather than just use the juice, we took out about half the seeds. We tried a couple of methods, including a potato ricer, and this combination of a pestle and small sieve. They both worked pretty well.

I almost put the seeds in the compost but luckily Jason reminded me that that is a bad idea. We would have had a very thorny 2011.

The 15 cups of berries yielded 7.5 cups of absolutely delicious jam.

We had to divide the jars between us and label them, because one of us is likely to eat the jam faster than the other, which would not be fair to the one who spent a lot of time tending the berry patch.

Aubrey helped Jason with the watering (it was set to "water only", so no fertilizer was being sprayed at the time).

Otherwise, we are doing great, and thinking of you! Hope we can Skype one of these mornings.

Update #6

Hello again!

Here are the "black-eyed susans" that sprang up after we cut the tree down. They may not be black-eyed susans but they look similar.



The clematis and daylilies in front of the garage.

Every day Aubrey and I pull off every dead daylily around the property, and I think it has helped them bloom better this year than in previous years. I don't remember having that many blooming at once before.

The ivy. It's surviving and growing slowly. I imagine next year it will take over the wall a little more. We should weed that area better. I left the volunteer tomato and volunteer squash/melon plant because I can't bring myself to pull them up.

Aubrey wants the camera because, she says, she can take better pictures than I can.

Asparagus (left) and pole beans (center). The asparagus seems to have dropped seeds which sprouted and grew little tiny asparagus shoots, really ferny, not edible. Jason and I are wondering if these will be producers next year?

Mystery plant in the compost. Any ideas? Click photo to enlarge.

Hydrangea!

The sweet peas are blooming! This photo has poor lighting but you might be able to make out the blossoms at the top. They smell terrific! As you can see, we've made no move to rescue the baskets from full deterioration.

Yesterday's zucchini harvest! The biggest harvest we've ever had. Very exciting! Before yesterday we had picked about 4 or 5 total. These will be made into zucchini relish one of these days. Thanks again for the recipe.

Remember last year when I planted lilies in the front yard and the squirrels ate the bulbs? They missed one, which laid in hiding for a full year before finally growing this spring. It doesn't match the other lilies as I had planned. But it's gorgeous! About 7 inches across.

That's it for the garden for now. I made an appointment for Aubrey to get portraits at JCPenney this morning, but she conked out for a nap and slept through it - I didn't want to wake her up, particularly since she had been putting off the nap all morning and finally fell asleep. So I rescheduled for tomorrow.

Have a great day!

Update #5

Hello! Here is the photo I picked for us, with just a little enhancing in Photoshop. I didn't have to do anything drastic. I thought you might like to have it, but if you already have your own picked out, c'est la vie.


And here is our family picture.


I think you can save them by clicking on them and then clicking File...Save.

Since this is a garden blog I think I can post about your garden as well! We really enjoyed being able to see it.


I love the colors in these flowers.

Now for our garden. A lot happened while we were gone. Some of the hostas are blooming.

We've got about 5 tomatoes formed, including this guy:

Something is eating the beet leaves. :(

The wildflowers are lovely! Lots of blues, pinks and purples. Since I took this photo a couple of days ago, there are twice as many flowers now.

Some pretty lilies in the front yard.

The hypericum is flowering nicely.

The eggplant produced one fruit, which got eaten by some animal, but there is another fruit on it now and Jason is going to sprinkle the plants generously with chili powder.

The black raspberry is producing more than ever before! Here's what we picked the day after we got back.

Two pints or so. And every day since then we've picked about a cup. Jason made a couple of tarts for dessert the other night, but we've frozen the rest so we can make a lot of jam.

We've picked 2 zucchini and a yellow squash, and 7-8 more will be ready in a few days.

Where we cut down the tree between us and the neighbor, a lot of black-eyed susans appeared - the sunlight helped them really take off. It's nice to have that tree gone.

That's all for now! Hope you are having a nice week.