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Our cherry tree is in full bloom right now, and so beautiful. The bees love it, too; you can hear them whenever you walk underneath the tree!
I ran my last two Miles for Marcy this morning, so I reached my goal of 15 for the week. This is the most I have ever run in one week, and I’m really excited! Meeting a running goal gives me a really huge sense of accomplishment. I wish I had known that a lot earlier in life! Anyway, now I can look forward to a few days of rest and recovery.
Have a great weekend!
Uncertain is the future state of a new garden bed we created yesterday…but I have high hopes!
Ever since we were engaged (13 years ago!), my husband and I have dreamed of having a wonderful vegetable and herb garden every summer. So far, although we have grown things like tomatoes and squash and cukes now and then, we have never achieved the garden that is big enough to feed us all summer and really provide some satisfaction. Part of the problem is our yard…while plenty spacious, it’s surrounded by trees and completely shaded, except for small pockets of sun here and there. Our tomatoes and squash have been grown in pots, planters and buckets on the driveway (aka Redneck Planters), but they never have done really well. (Probably because I’m not a very faithful waterer, and containers need a LOT of water).
Well, this year we’re trying something new. We used to have this big boxwood hedge along a sidewalk at the back of our house, which faces south-southwest.
It didn’t used to look that bad, but time has taken its toll. And a few weeks ago, while once again lamenting our lack of sunny spots for a garden, my husband said that maybe that area would be a good garden spot. So yesterday, with the help of a chain and his truck, we yanked those babies out!
Notice how my poor husband is doing all the work in these photos, while I’m the one snapping the pics? :)
It’s a pretty good-sized area, maybe 3 feet wide by 10 or 12 feet long. And right now, while there are no leaves on the trees, it gets lots of sun, basically all day long. We’re going to make a 6″ tall raised bed in this spot using untreated wood boards all around, and fill it with the planting mix recommended in the Square-Foot Gardener book. I’m concerned about what we’ll find when the trees have leafed out–whether or not there will be enough sun–but I’m optimistic, and have already ordered $40 worth of seeds for things like tomatoes, cukes, squash, zucchini and eggplant. We’ll grow the viney things vertically. And hopefully I can finally transplant my ages-old rosemary bush, which is in a planter and stunted as a result. We’ll also need to replace our compost tumbler that was crushed by a falling tree a few years ago, because compost is key to a great garden. But I’m so excited, it’s all I can think about right now!
How about you, what are you growing this year?
Look y’all, my Meyer lemon tree has a real, actual blossom now!
I love it!
Because I am at my MIL’s today helping her put up a ton of corn, more Friday Flowers. This is one of the volunteers in our tomato planters. We thought it was a sunflower, but it doesn’t actually have sunflower-like seeds. So, it’s a mystery, but it sure brightens up the tomato planters!
I’m following Beth’s example and posting some flowers this week. These photos were taken at Brookside Gardens last week while we were up visiting with my family. We went for the butterfly exhibit, but then we walked around the gardens for a while and enjoyed the scenery. It was just gorgeous there.
My mom loved the Red Velvet Yarrow, so we took pictures of it. Isn’t it cool?
The purple coneflowers were also beautiful. This great photo was a fluke.
We also took a little trip to Stadler Nursery one afternoon. It was so much fun to walk around and look at all of their perennials and daydream about having a nice flower garden one day. We have a big enough yard to do a lot of gardening, but it’s mostly in shade, and it’s also mostly a big hill. So it has been rather frustrating to try to decide what to do with it. I think we have finally given up, and (without actually saying so, until now) decided to wait until we move from this house into something with a better yard. Because I really love sun-loving flowers.
Those are actually in my own “garden”.
