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You Have To Know, This Pains Me.

August 23, 2010 By Laura 10 Comments

This is the wicked sad story of the rapid death of a beautiful squash garden, and the culprit.

You know, nobody told me, that so much heartache can come with gardening. <sigh>. Each and every year of gardening, well…..wait, this is only our second year….but we’ve learned a little bit more. I enjoy the learning process. I really do! Just as in life, I can handle learning through little mistakes along the way. But I prefer NOT to learn, through sheer devastation. You know?

But this year, we learned a really hard lesson. We learned about one of a gardener’s worst, ugliest, most destructive enemy:

The squash vine borer.

I was confused about the sudden rapid decline of my beautiful squash plants, in this post, when my friend Maria clued me in about this common squash plant destroyer, in the comments of a previous post. I researched immediately, and found she had indeed hit the nail on the head, and correctly identified the dasher of all of our squash hopes and dreams. This year anyway.

Well, actually, we were pretty done with the summer squash and zucchini. The kids had had enough, (just because we ate it every night), and I had shred and blanched pa-lenty, for the freezer for eventual soups, breads, etc.

But still……just look at what happened to our squash bed!…

I mean, this is in our front yard, remember!

There’s nothing like gardener failure, for the whole world to see. It’s embarrassing!

Seriously though. We were just so happy with how well we grew squash plants, and how lovely they all looked.

Let me refresh your memory.

Look at that beautiful bed.

Now, scroll back up, and take another look at what happened.

Are you feeling bad for us, yet?

So for those who are also learning, as we are, allow us to show you what you start to see happening, when squash vine borers are at work:

Do you see how the trunks of the vines are starting to look a little hollow, translucent, and wilty?

Clearly, you can see things are going very wrong, and it is starting at the trunks of the vines.

Now, I’d like to show you, exactly who is to blame.

Excuse my french, People. But these things are damn nasty.

If you are squeamish, you may not want to see this. Just squint real good, to see nothing but blur, and skip through the next 3 photos. But if you are trying to grow squash, I wouldn’t recommend not getting to know these nasty little things. (Unless you live in the west. My friend cyber-buddy Kim, the Inadvertent Farmer (in the west), said they do not have squash vine borers there! I took that as an invitation to grow my squash for me next year, and ship it to us. Wasn’t that wicked nice of her?)

Anyway, if you are the type that has to look anyway, despite any well-heeded warnings, even if you have bad dreams later, …… go for it!

UUuuGHHH! Couldn’t you just toss your cookies?

Once we figured out, via Maria and internet research, that these guys looked like the problem we were having, I had Michael start slitting some vines (because “I” was sure not doing it!), and looking for these nasty white caterpillars….and boy did he find some!!

He kept finding more, and more.

He enjoyed taking them out, one by one, and throwing them out into the street, onto the 200 degree black pavement, to cook in the sun.

Guys.

Although I had a smug smile myself, looking at them all out there, with no way to save their little nasty-selves.

“Take that!”, I said to them all.

Funny, once he got out all he could possibly find, the squash plants kind of started coming back!

“Well I’ll be a blue-nosed gopher”, I said to myself.

I have read extensively about these squash vine borers, how they work, and the various very challenging ways to be protected from them. But rather than get into all of that here, I am just going to offer you a couple of links I found helpful, to save for yourself, if you are interested:

Here is one. Here is another.

But as I said….we were done with those kinds of squash this year. I was just bitter about it anyway. So we just ripped them all out, and are going to plant some sunflowers to enjoy for the remainder of the year.

But the heartbreak does not end there. No…..it has to get even worse.

And if you have been reading about how excited i have been about our first pumpkin patch, you can only imagine how deep my pain runs here.

Tell me…..how much does THIS bite?

I’m going to be honest with you here. I’ve cried about this.

I’ve also cursed.

The. same. culprits. got. my. pumpkin. patch!

Because of course…..pumpkins, are squash. Oh how I wish they weren’t. I never thought that pumpkins, being squash, would matter to me. But it does now. A LOT.

We were doing well! We had ELEVEN pumpkins growing!

And THIS, was our prize pumpkin…

She’s a beauty. Isn’t she?

But we’ve had a few other pumpkin patch lessons this year. First of all, we planted toooo early. They were ripe and ready too soon.

And also….the squirrels got to a couple.

It truly hurts my heart, to look at this. I think to myself, “I hate squirrels.”

I know the good Lord created them. But WHY?

I’m going to ask Him someday. It’s on my LONG LIST.

013_pumpkin-guts Here’s another.

The fly is a nice touch, don’t you think? I was going to edit it out. But the fly is part of the ugly truth.

Part of this squirrel/pumpkin tragic story is our fault. I’ll get to that in a minute.

But we did go ahead and harvest all of our pumpkins, because we had to.

Best to enjoy them (way!) early, then let them rot in our pumpkin patch.

I guess I’ll be paying for my pumpkins by the pound, for one more year. But next year, I’ll know better!

So then, as if my beaten heart had not had enough, I look out my sun room window one morning, to see this on my railing…..

Hmmm. I see it is a jalapeno pepper. I know this is not good, because jalapeno peppers do not walk.

That I know of.

I go out for a closer inspection.

Look at the bite marks. I know it was a squirrel. I’m quick like that.

Notice he didn’t eat much.

But I am hoping….maybe praying…..that he bit in just enough, to get a good bit of juice from the pepper in his mouth, and he is suffering somewhere in a corner, with his evil little paws over his mouth, crying in burning pain.

: )

Then I go out to my garden to see what other damage may have been done, and look what I see….

Oh! Look! A poorly buried jalapeno pepper.

Now I know this was probably the same squirrel, because jalapeno peppers don’t walk. Or jump off their vine before their time, and bury themselves. More likely, the squirrel was thinking, “One for later, and one for right now!”. Buried one, and took the other to the deck railing to enjoy. Although things didn’t seem to go quite as planned, now, did they.

I left that buried pepper right there, hoping maybe, that squirrel will remember the buried pepper, and forget all about it’s previous suffering.

: )

Now, I wanted to tell you about a repellent that really has been very helpful with our gardening.

This Deer Off spray, which we spray all over our wooden beds, and around the base of our plants. Even though we haven’t seen deer on our road, it really worked in deterring rabbits, squirrels, and the like, from touching the fruits of our gardens. I think the only reason why the squirrels had gotten to our pumpkins and jalapeno peppers, was because we didn’t spray again, soon enough. We had had some heavy rains, and a lot of it probably was washed away, so we should have re-applied right away. But we didn’t.

Here is a closer look at the label. The stuff smells horrid at first, until it all settles. The label says it tastes really bad too, but I haven’t tried it. But I know it works! So I do recommend it.

This is just my experience and toot of this product I like. Not a paid advertisement of any kind.

Ok…almost done here, but on to happier thoughts before we wrap it up.

All has not been lost, despite our couple tragedies.

There is still lots of beauty in our gardens around!

The tomatoes have been SOOO GOOD!! I just LOVE going out to get a fresh tomato, for a salad, our my favorite….a tomato sandwich at lunch.

Still a good number of jalapeno peppers growing. I just need to come up with a plan for them real quick, before I pick them. Jalapeno poppers? Dried pepper? Pickled? I’ll figure it out.

Just a few cucumbers. Not the variety we thought we were getting. But they are beautiful none the less. We’ll eat them, and grow a kind that is best for some pickling next year.

Here’s a little more beauty, that is often found among the garden beds….

My best-est little gardener. She really loves to work alongside me.

So yes, there is still lots of good things growing, and I am happy for that, and happy to end on a cheerier note for you. But please don’t forget the beginning, because I could really use the sympathy. <sniff, sniff>.

More gardening coming up soon, I am sure. I love talking about this stuff with you all, and learning from you too!! Thanks for making our journey all the more pleasant! It’s nice to have friends to share our successes, and failures too, with

Tell us, do you garden? Have maybe some porch potted plants? How many years have you been at it? And what have you found, to be your most challenging garden/growing pest?

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Pumpkin Patch Progress | Gardening

August 10, 2010 By Laura 10 Comments

It’s 2010, and we are really new gardeners, learning as we go. Much of our gardening is guided by Googling, trial, error, chatting with others, and more Googling. This gardening post about our pumpkin patch progress well-reflects that.

There’s a price one pays, for procrastinating. This I know well. When it comes to planned posts, when I wait for better light to get one more photo, take one more peek for a really updated report, or wait for a better opportunity to blog without having another pressing agenda….things happen. The story grows, and often, ends up a more overwhelming task, than the simple one it could have been, a little sooner. Over whelming tasks, are often a new excuse for me, to procrastinate even more. Because I know I tend to struggle with the simplicity of a post, as it is.

So now, what once was a story with a hopeful ending, now ends in a questionable future. It almost pains me to do this post, in a gardener’s drama sort of way, as I cannot revel in the joy of blogging about this, as I could have a couple of weeks ago.

But I must be strong. So here I go.

You may remember I mentioned that we decided to have a go at our own home pumpkin patch this year. Michael dug out an area for it in our front yard gardening areas, back at the end of May.

I have been beyond excited about this new gardening project. I simply love fall decor, pumpkins in particular, and I simply detest paying for them by the pound.

We love having simple natural pumpkins around the homestead, but we also enjoy getting creative with them, as we have in past years.

So growing our own pumpkins was my answer, and the thrill of the progress was an additional a perk.

We created a ‘patch’ as big as we could get away with, in the front yard space we had available. Ideally, it should be bigger. Realistically, it wasn’t going to be.

So last year, having the thoughts in our heads of growing our own pumpkins for the next season, (in part because of the staggering price total at the pumpkin-purchase-checkout), we harvested a handful of pumpkin seeds, from our expensive pumpkins.

We washed them, let them dry, and put them away.

And by golly, come spring this year, we actually still remembered where we put them.

So we soaked them over night, and kept them wrapped in damp paper towels for 2 days, in a warm place, like filtered sun. Which, if you aren’t aware, isn’t easy to keep paper towel damp.It dries so quickly, especially in window sunlight. But thankfully, the kids were always on it, with the bottle of water, misting and re-misting.

What would we do without them?

They all peeled the edges of the seeds, and kept their own to plant.

Then we got to planting, in the awaiting patch.

We thought we’d have a little pumpkin growing competition. So the boys had their seeds that they planted together in one corner.

And the girls had theirs, in the opposite corner of the ring.

(Sounds like a real fight heating up here, huh?)

We also planted the extra seeds, in the middle.

Now, we also had bought 2 piddly pumpkin plants from the nursery. Not to say that I didn’t have faith in our ability to grow great pumpkins with our own seeds, but, I wasn’t really sure if I did. So…just in case.

Because I was not paying for pumpkins by the pound again.

So, we had 5 mounds where seeds or plants were planted.

Before we knew it, the starter plants, and the boys and girls planted pumpkin seeds, were neck in neck.

Or is it neck and neck?

Gosh, I’m stuck on that, and thinking too hard on this now. I don’t get it. Does this phrase about necks come from giraffes and their neck-wrangling behavior?

Whoa…way off topic. Re-focusing.

But I’m going to google that saying about where it derived from, if I remember to!

Anyway, every mound of plants, were looking pretty good, pretty quickly. Anyone random visitor would be hard-pressed, to figure out which were starter plants, and which we planted seeds.

Soon, we all realized that the competition was going to be nearly impossible, to monitor. All of the vines were growing into each other’s space, and they were hard to follow or keep straight. I mean…I sure wasn’t going to be the referee on this one. I have enough confusion to straighten out in my head in a day.

But one thing was for sure. We were very excited. Most-especially-ME.

Of course, there was that little fear they would forever remain plants, just like this, never to birth a single pumpkin.

Or so much as a gourd.

But by golly, it started to.

All over the place.

I told you we were completely capable of this pumpkin growing business!

I mean….please.

What do we look like….amateur gardeners?

The patch was getting downright out of control, and took some redirecting the vines, or even cutting some back.

But the pumpkins were in there……everywhere!

So I hope you enjoyed all of that, because the story is about to get ugly.

We had noticed 2-3 weeks ago, that our squash garden was starting to look a little….desperate. Needy. It was struggling in some way….and I did not know why.

I googled (because Google is my other BFF), about the longevity of a squash garden in a season. I thought…with the ridiculous abundance of summer squash and zucchini it had blessed us with, maybe it just sort of depleted itself.

I get that. ; )

I kept watering it and tending to it….more out of stubbornness than anything, because really…the kids were all squashed out.

But I wanted to know what the heck was happening, because things were looking from bad to worse. I wanted to learn from it.

(Gosh I am getting mature, huh?)

Next thing I know…the Pumpkin Patch isn’t looking much better.

So, a few night’s ago, my neighbor came over. The really nice one…she and her husband are gardening extraordinaires. They have the Better Home and Gardens yardage. But they live just short of us, on a dead end street, so they don’t see our gardens without purposely coming to visit and see.

Otherwise, if they just tried to peek, they’d get caught.

Trust me. My kids don’t miss a thing.

Well, my neighbor (Peg), she was telling me that their squash gardens do the same exact thing, EVERY year! She and her husband said it was squash bugs, that were the culprit. She explained that every year, they get a really good harvest, and then BOOM…..everything starts going to pot, in a fast way. She believes it is an areal problem, from what they know. She said they had tried everything, to ward off these squash bugs, that destroy the plants at the trunk. But they have never won the battle.

Now, I was ready to let the squash garden go anyway. We ate plenty, there was plenty in the freezer all shredded, slightly blanched and ready for cold season breads and soups.

BUT MY PUMPKINS!!!! OH NOOOOOO!

I’m telling you…the patch is looking pretty bad at the moment.

I tried to take a photo, but I couldn’t see through my tears, to take the shot.

Plus, it’s just humbling.

At this point…we still have pumpkins growing. ELEVEN in fact.

But….we are desperately googling and working to get this bug infestation under control, in hopes of saving our patch.

Now that I have googled and researched so much about these squash bugs, I know what to look for next year. But I want these pumpkins we’ve got growing! I can’t lose them! So…we’re trying all kinds of things.

I do fear too, that we might have planted a tad too early. If they survive, they may be ripe before Halloween, and I know this was a long shot anyway but….Thanksgiving. So next year, we’ll know to plant later too.

But, for now, I’ll be busy saving the pumpkins, God-willing.

Because the gloves are not off. (Who knew this would happen? It wasn’t my fight to begin with!)

Ask anyone. I just don’t take a fight, laying down.

We’ll keep you posted on this sad pumpkin patch story.

What’s Growing in the Gardens!

July 13, 2010 By Laura 12 Comments

Finally, I have gotten it together enough, to show you what we’re growing in all of these garden beds we’ve got going. I’m telling you, I find it extremely challenging to blog about garden updates, because everything changes so fast! So, this post shares some of the rapid garden progress that can happen in what seems like the blink of an eye.

But I also wanted to share this little story with you. A couple of weekends ago, we had a spontaneous tag sale. We had quite the traffic for it too (thanks to Michael’s Tag Sale professional signage that no one could miss). But what was so funny, was people were more interested in our gardens when they got here, than our tag sale items!! It was comical. They were walking around, peeking under leaves, asking questions and generally flattering us to death. For 2nd year gardens, we were puffing up a bit and struttin’ around like peacocks. I know…then we felt guilty. lol. But seriously….people were all over our gardens. We sold a lot at the tag sale though too, once they got on task for their stop in the first place.

So anyway, back to the point of the post….

Shown here first, is garden bed #1. This photo was taken June 23, 2010, as are several of the following photos.

In it, we have growing 3 varieties of tomato plants: 2 Romas, 4 Early Girls, and 2 Burpee Big Boys.
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Here is another view, taken the same day, to show the height of the plants. As you see in this garden, we also have some Marigolds, Celosia, and Cosmos.
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Garden bed #2.
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In this one we have growing several plants of California Wonder Green peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, and Straight Eight Cucumbers. We also have in this bed, 2 more tomato plants, of the Sweet 100 Cherry variety.
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Here’s another angle, from the same day.
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Also in this garden, is my turtle. I had a turtle just like this one some years ago, in my hosta bed, and the kids lost it! We never did find it either. So I bring it up now and then to the kids, when it comes to mind, because I really missed my turtle! Well, we were in Michael’s Arts & Crafts one day, and one of them spotted the same exact turtle I’ve been missin’. So they all pitched in a dollar and some change, and bought me a new one. So this one has even more sentimental value, because the kids were thoughtful enough to buy it for me, and compassionate enough to feel bad about the one they lost, when I….was trying to make them feel bad about the one they lost. lol. I love my turtle. You don’t have to. But I think he is cute.
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You’ve seen a 100 photos of our whole strawberry bed, so I skipped that. But we got quite the crop from our June Bearing plants! The kids were out there picking them every day. This photo was taken on June 8, when we were really cranking them out.
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The days were still occasionally cool, especially when the sun wasn’t out. Thus, Old Lady Winter here, in her fleece jacket. lol. My mother used to call me Old Lady Winter, because I was always cold when I was younger. “If you can hear me up there, Mom, I’m not cold all of the time anymore! I’m more like Old Lady Hot Flashin’!“

Our Everbearing strawberry plants have put out some smaller strawberries (as is expected with this variety) but not the impressive quantity yet. We should have a crop in spring, summer and fall. But spring gave us nothing, and summer has only given is a small handful so far. Maybe the roots are still not established enough? Maybe we should have plucked the flowers in the early season of this year too? Anyone know? We’re holding out hope.

But if they don’t start giving us some fruit this year, we may just rip the Everbearing plants out, and let the runners of the June Bearing take over. Because they have been very good to us!! I’m thinking we might need 2 strawberry beds. Maybe 3. lol
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Care to taste the fresh berry sweetness?
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This, is bed #4. It’s the new bed we built this year. The tag salers really couldn’t get over our squash plants. One tag sale’n guy was so very amazed, he just stood there staring and asked, “What the hell did you put in there?!” (Pardon his French. lol)
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In it, we have Yellow Straightneck Summer Squash, and also Zucchini of some kind, which I forgot to take a tag photo of, just like the Sweet 100 Cherries.

So, just to show you some growth and progress, and proof that we haven’t killed anything yet:

….This is Bed #1, with photo taken this time on July 6, 2010. The tomato plants had grown much taller and stronger for sure. They are also beginning to produce fruit. I am very excited about my tomato sandwiches to come. : P’ Even the Marigolds and Celosia are bigger than we have ever grown.
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The Cherry tomatoes and pepper plants are growing well too. Both gardens have grown even more, now a week later. I cut the lower leaves on the pepper plants since this photo too, so we are expecting a big growth spurt.

But here’s what has really just grown out of control……

….the squash garden bed! Man….that guy from the tag sale would probably fall right over, if he saw it today. It’s truly insane, and I swear it has grown another half of a foot since this shot. See that cosmo plant in the front corner there? That thing too is MUCH bigger than our cosmo plants last year. This thing has a trunk!

We water all of the gardens every night with the hose. But I’ll tell you, the rain works magic. If it rains during the night, we can’t wait to peek out there in the morning, because there is always very obvious overnight growth. It feels like Christmas morning!
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Here’s just some fun summer squash shots. I didn’t take any of the zucchini that day, because they were just so dark on the dirt.
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We can’t even keep up with the squash picking. I sent a heap home with my father, and the next day we had a heap more. It’s madness. Gave more to 2 neighbors, and there is a bunch more today. I’m going to try making some zucchini bread. We love steamed vegetables anyway, but we might not much longer, if we keep eating it the way we’ve had to! I think maybe we don’t need this many squash plants. Does anyone have any recipes for us to use these? Do send.

No Giveaway in this post. But you’re certainly welcome to grab some squash, if you want some!

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Announcement of SUMMER FLAG Giveaway Winner!

July 7, 2010 By Laura 7 Comments

THANK YOU to all 12 of our commenting participants for the Summer Flag Giveaway! I thought it was a bust at first, and it got me down, but you all came through, and got me excited again, because we have so many AWESOME Giveaways coming up! Our best yet!! So if you didn’t win this time, keep joining us and you are BOUND to win something great!

So far, we have chosen to choose winners via the random drawing generator from the numbered comments. We love all of our visitors and commenters, and are so happy you all participated, we’d have a hard time choosing ourselves. But some day, we may try a different method.

Ok, on to the WINNER!!

If you can believe it……the random drawing generator from the numbers 1 through 12 chose:

The first commenter!!

(We laughed out loud.)

Ohh…..WHO was the first commenter?

KIM from ‘The Inadvertent Farmer’

(Here is the link to the comments/post for this Give-Away.)

I like to call her ‘Kim the Farmer’, because for 1, I have a sister in law Kim who comments here sometimes, so it helps keep them straight. But also, I just love that she lives on a farm. Heck, I love her. And I love her blog! You’ve got to check it out. Always fun stuff going on, and ‘fabulous photos, too. Plus, you think having a hedge hog is strange? Wait until you see what SHE has!!

CONGRATULATIONS, KIM (the Farmer)!! Send me us an e-mail with your mailing address please, and we’ll get your gift right out to you!

Now, naturally, I have a few comments to your comments! I couldn’t comment before, or I might be at risk for winning my own summer flag! (hee hee.)

So yes Everyone who inquired, Michael is having a beer on his break, sitting on the roof covered bench. Was anyone surprised? I think we surprise people a lot, somehow. Neither of us are big drinkers in the way of intoxication. lol. But we do both have a drink or 2 on weekends. Lately, Mike’s Hard Lemonade has been my refreshment drink of choice.

Thanks to Everyone who just said nice things! Sorry if you didn’t win….but again, lots more coming up!

Rene….We have done mostly annuals in the past, but will be getting more and more into perennials as our landscaping/front yard transformation really starts coming to life. No herbs yet…..good thought. We got tons of strawberries, and are in between the 2 varieties right now. The gardens are looking fab, and hopefully still will when you get here! I will save a few strawberries for my freckle-faced girl. They are in the freezer.

Teri…..What a dream come true it would be, to have you sitting there on our bench. Even if you were just drinking and spewing pearls of your supervisory wisdom!

Paula……I didn’t expect you to be a bit impressed, with the gardens YOU have grown! So your comment meant a lot, even if you are lying because you love us.

Laura S…..We did not know that about the cosmos!! Thanks for that info! They have grown HUGE this year so far. More like trunks, than stems. Can you comment or send us an e-mail, with a little more specifics about what you do with them? Like…directions. lol

To Everyone Else….who mentioned about being excited to watch how the pumpkins grow, US TOO!! Boy do we have an update blog post on that. We have SO MUCH to blog about…..and so much work at the same time. So bare with us, and see it all as something to look forward to! Because we’re excited to share it all, even with slight delays!

YOU ALL ROCK!!!

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Mid-May to End of June 2010 | Front Yard Gardens

June 29, 2010 By Laura 12 Comments

There is so much to catch you up on, where our front yard gardens and transformation goes, that I’m lost in my own thoughts, in trying to figure out where I tell you what we’ve gotten done, and where I tell you about where all of this work in progress is heading. So, if it all seems a little mixed up at time, that’s pretty much where my head is at.

But to brief you, in case you are new around here; Our front yard was basically just a big square sandy lot, with no purpose or beauty of it’s own, for all of the years we have owned our home. We have had a side yard that we have utilized well, but the front yard, parallel to the (dead end) street we live on, was never safe enough for our very-young kids at the time, nor private enough to relax in.

But then early last spring, we decided to start a couple of gardens. Once we got our feet wet, we fell in love with gardening, and the dream gardens and front yard transformation plans began to unfold, and take on a life of it’s own. The big progressive goal, is to change our front yard, into a beautiful, charming semi-private garden wonderland of our own. We’ll be sharing the details of those plans as we go along in the posts like these. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve come a long way too! But for this post, I’m going to show you the kick-off of our gardening work this second spring, and very soon I will be posting how things are looking right now. The growing in the gardens change so much by the day, it’s hard to blog about! By the time I take photos, and edit them, and get a post started, the gardens look completely different once again. But I’m doing my best.

First, I just wanted to share this photo from the first day of May with you, because I never took a photo in the winter as I should have! What I am showing you, is not the beautiful children I am happy to call my own, but the beautiful green winter rye, in the garden bed behind them. When we had first built these garden beds, I was concerned about how ugly they would look in front of our house, in the dead of winter with no snow. Then, it was recommended to us to plant winter rye, which would grow through the winter, and was good for the soil too. In the spring, we were to till it into the soil to nourish it. I can’t tell you how beautiful it looked all winter long, with this fresh green rye coming up through the white glistening snow. (We had lots more snow this year, than usual.)

About mid-May, we cut it all down and tilled it into the garden beds. It was sad and a tad painful! I couldn’t get planting fast enough, to add oomph to the drab looking place, after that.

Here is a glimpse of the state of it all, before we got planting for the year. If you recall , we expanded the front (grass-less) yard last year, by sacrificing some of the extra-wide rock driveway we didn’t really need. That made more room for a 3rd bed across.

Our trip to the local nursery gave us most all of the starter plants we needed, to get things going. We got various vegetable plants, some we are growing again, and some new ones too, as well as helpful flowers that make our gardens prettier, keep some pesky things way, and also draw the right insects for much needed pollination. We’ll have a closer look at all of these plantings very soon. You also see some bags of compost, which I’ll be getting to in a moment.

Our strawberry bed, here in mid May, was doing fabulously in it’s second season. You have seen some strawberry posts since, of the berries it has given us. It’s grown SO much since this photo, but we have tended it well, having learned much last year.

Michael built a 4th garden bed, once we mulled over the layout that the whole transformation will ultimately be. He was going to build a 5th too right away, but we never got to it, before early spring had gotten away. That’s o.k. There is always next year!

This is new compost we are trying, all recommended by the nursery we frequent. We have mixed this stuff into all of our beds, and I can tell you, it’s doing some amazing stuff!

These are the flowers that we have planted along the inside edges of the beds. They are all just baby plants here! They have grown to ridiculous sizes since. No doubt due to the new compost we added!

Dahlias. Oh how I love dahlias. Big, big, big plans for dahlias of all kinds, in time. But for now, this pot of them sits on bench. Michael really did not want to spend the money on them, so I am doing all I can to make sure it keeps growing and thriving and spewing beauty. Because he loves to remind me, it was $12.99, and if it dies, I can tell you I will never hear the end of it, for as long as I live.

The verbenas have been thriving and growing, in 2 colors. I love them.

On the other side of the strawberry bed here, Michael is working very hard, at a new and exciting addition to our gardens….

….our very own little pumpkin patch! <squeal!!> If you all have been around in the autumn months here at OHOJN, you might know how much we love pumpkins around our home in autumn! We go pumpkin crazy, and get pretty creative with them too. It’s an expensive fetish, when you are paying by the pound. So we decided to try growing our own!!

After all of the cutting out, digging and turning-over-of-earth for our pumpkin patch, Michael decided to take a little break.

About a week later, we had 5 yards of loam delivered. A bit of it was for the 5th bed we never got to. The rest was for the 4th bed Michael did build, and to add some healthy loam to our sandy pumpkin patch.

Michael really built it up the patch, and NOW it’s looking real good. Wait until you see, in our Pumpkin Patch post coming right up soon, too.

So here is a view from the corner of our front lot. I know…..it’s not looking all that pretty yet. But you know what I see, when I look at this photo? All it is GOING to be! Honest to Pete, (….I’ve always wanted to know who Pete was….anyone know?….), you are not even going to recognize the place at all, when we are done. Major, major make-over, by the time we are through with the renovations. You know…years from now. But won’t it be fun for you, watching it all happen, little by little? You don’t even have to work hard with us! Well…..you could come over and help, if you really wanted. But really….we’re not minding the hard work involved here. It’s ever so rewarding!

So, as I said, we’ve got at least 2 posts right on the heels of this one, to show you all that is growing so beautifully, now that we are at the end of June! We’ll also be sharing more and more of the details of of our garden/front yard transformation plans. We can tell you, so far we’re pretty excited with where it is all going, and pretty happy with where we are at so far this year….

….which happens to be suddenly SUMMER! And feeling like it, here in New England, I’ll tell you! If you haven’t been to the Home Page, you may want to pay it a visit! ; )

We’re kicking things off with this cheery little Give -Away…..

….Flying and flapping in the breeze, over our growing gardens, is this happy summertime flag! It really brings a smile to my face, to see it there, over all that is colorful and thriving. It’s a bit of color in the air! It’s a quality-made flag, and to me, it has the happiness of summer, all over it!

If you love it too, we’ve got one for you!

All you need to do, is leave a comment tot his post, and you are in the drawing for a summer flag of your own! If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, I’ll make an announcement when the comments are closing for the drawing. Don’t have a pole? Why not hang it as a banner on the side of your house? Or, you could even give it as a gift, to someone you care about. Surely, it’ll make someone smile, as much as it does us.

Good luck, and HaPpY SumMeR!!

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