I had a little help planting the pots on the patio this year.
Her mama helped, too, and also enjoyed snapping a few pictures with my camera.
The one photo I still need to get it the finished product.
Everyone needs a little help like this once in a while.
DH went out the other night to get the garden ready for plastic. I'm still pouting about the boxes.
He wanted to know if I wanted to come help. Um, no. Yeah, you work that garden, hon.
Still, he had his own cheering section.
Sigh.
My walking buddy couldn't go with me yesterday morning, so I decided to take that early morning time to do some weeding in the flower beds as well as plant some iris starts my SIL had brought me from her yard in Utah. These are supposed to be blue-ish and kind of ruffled.
If you remember, a few years ago LS Boy planted some yellow starts from a friend down the street. They are doing so well, I'm going to have to refine them a little so they don't take over my flower bed. That same friend gave me the rhubarb plant start I have in my garden now. It thrives on neglect. I think it's interesting how sharing things makes them multiply and grow in all kinds of different spots.
On the garden front, DH and I are disagreeing on how to downsize our garden now that we don't have so many children at home that we need to feed, freeze and can for. I'd like to set the whole thing up in raised boxes. He thinks if it ain't broke, don't fix it and wants to stick with our old under-the-plastic system, but dividing the area into thirds so we only use 1/3 of the space per year. That means that by the time we reach year 3, I'll have a weed mess from things coming up through the cut plastic from previous years, since he is not here in the fall to pull up plants and hoses. I'm not going to win, so I should probably just resign myself to a messy garden, but I'd really like a nice, tidy, smaller patch with several boxes that I could manage.
First off, it was a very happy first birthday to this little one. Miss her, and she's changed so much since I took these pictures.
We got the garden boxes done and filled finally. We did a little tilling under the spots where they'd sit. Look at how red the dirt is.
Really, there's no better project for little boys to be involved with.
There's dirt.
And wheelbarrow rides.
And interesting places to sit. And when you're done, you even have a place to grow some vegetables.
It's a cabin couple of days for our family. I'm pretty excited since I will have all my kids, with the exception of PB in the same place for a bit. Can you say Christmas Card photo? Actually, I'm not at all sure I can pull the men out of the hills during daylight hours while we're at the cabin, much as I'd like to get a family photo there. We may have to wait until we are back home on Sunday for church.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with a shot of the last rose of summer. The Girl picked this last week because of it's sheer size. It's a Peace rose and measured nearly 7" across. After several nights of below-freezing temperatures, the fall rose display is finished for the year.
There is no can-able produce west of the Mississippi. I know this because I have CANNED IT ALL! And I am tired of canning. Prepare yourself. It's my yearly canning rant. Usually I can enough for 2 or 3 years worth of eating, but for some weird reason, we ran out of absolutely everything this year. All the jars aligned and the supplies dwindled all together.
I will grudgingly admit that after I'm finished and I see what I've done there is a certain sense of satisfaction knowing we won't starve if there is some kind of emergency and the stores empty and there is no food within a 100 mile radius. But when I'm in the middle of it, I hate it. With each passing year I hate it more. There, I said it. I think it's because my help (translation: slave children) has disappeared, and I'm usually stuck with doing everything by myself. And I've gone back and edited out half of this post to decrease the rantiness of it. I need to change my outlook and be grateful that I know how to do this....and that there is food available to can, and I should probably quit now...especially with the prospect of applesauce still to go.
My mom comes to Sunday dinner every week.
When she walked in this past Sunday she had a little pod in her hand and opened it to show these seeds.
I had no idea where they came from but she let me know that these seeds would give someone hollyhocks like this one. So I'm willing to share the hollyhock goodness. If you are interested in giving them a try, just email me at callan86@hotmail.com and I will send you a bunch of these seeds. I know they are fairly hardy and are perrenial in my zone. You do need to be aware, though, that they can grow to be about 6 feet tall.
Checking in with the Baby Garden. There is growth....definite progress, but I'm a little worried that things aren't moving along the way they should, and that I won't get any produce off these plants. I've had a few of the onions just wither away, too, and I'm not sure why.
The garden at first:
And now:
If there's one thing in my yard that I baby, it's my hybrid roses. I (or one of my slave children) fertilize them regularly, give them doses of iron and deadhead them rigorously. For all our work, we are rewarded with beautiful blooms like these. I just think they're so pretty and, like a lot of the flowers around my house, I buy them by smell rather than by color or size.
The deep coral ones in the front have the strongest smell of any in the yard. Those I will cut and put in a little vase right by my bed and they will perfume the whole room.
