Gardening

J+M+J

I have the weeds to thank for these tomatoes. I know that sounds funny, but it is true. Last year gophers marauded my tomatoes and left none whole. This year, however, thick thistles and cockleburs that pierced even my thickest gardening gloves grew around the tomatoes. It seems that the gophers can’t reach them.
I also have some proof for this theory. I did have a few more tomatoes that were bigger than my two fists put together, but I foolishly removed the weeds a few days before they were orange enough to harvest. The very next day, they were demolished.
These tomatoes came from a volunteer tomato plant that I left surrounded by the weeds. Besides the tomatoes in the picture, I have harvested three more tomatoes that we have already eaten. Mom says that they are delicious tomatoes, packed full of flavor. I am not a tomato fan, but I can taste more flavor than store tomatoes as well. I even ate a thin slice on a chicken, lettuce, tomato, and mayo sandwich.

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J+M+J

These are foxgloves

This is columbine, my favorite spring flower

The last of the bleeding hearts. The bush still had quite a few branches of flowers on it last Sunday, the feast of the Sacred Heart. I wanted to take a picture of these then, as I thought they were a good flower for the feast, but what could I do when it was raining?

This is my newly planted butterfly bush.. It has already attracted a few Monarchs to its nectar. I saw one up close while I was mowing past it today.

My little garden on the side of the house.

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J+M+J

This is what spring is all about. Flowers, buds, leaves, and life. It’s beautiful.

These just opened Saturday and they are already fading and falling apart. How fast tulips pass!

These red lilies remind me of pineapples.

These are strawberry leaves.

Buds of my favorite spring flower, columbine. These last for more than a month, unlike tulips. I have had a few trailing blooms on the Fourth of July!

New leaves on the maple tree.

I have waited all winter for these creamy double daffodils to bloom for the first time. Daffodils are my birth flower.

This is not the best picture, but I wanted to share the lovely pink color on the inside of these tulips. I never realized how lovely they would be when I planted them. I think these are the best tulips I have ever planted.

A better picture, if you ignore my shadow.

My bleeding heart looks like it will have a good year. Though it is not very tall yet, the bush is very compact and, well, bushy.

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Because spring will not make up it’s mind whether to be warm or cold, and the time to plant flowers seems to be far away.

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Today I noticed that my first tulip is up. It is a little red riding hood tulip, the rabbits favorite thing to eat, and I need to go to the nursery to get fox scent to try to keep them away.

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J+M+J

I went out to my garden and I saw that my columbine is beginning to send out some shoots. Columbine is very hardy and one of my favorite flowers, so I am glad to have it back. Welcome, spring!

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J+M+J

My favorite pitcher plant. It has been thriving and catching it’s own bugs since June. I don’t know what causes the brown tips on the plant.

The new pitchers growing.

The black stuff at the bottom of this pitcher are indigestible exoskeletons of past meals.

A venus fly trap in it’s fall foliage.

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J+M+J

 

In the vegetable garden, I am enlarging it a little, so I can hopefully accommodate watermelons next year.  I am picking off the flowers of the plants and tiny tomatoes and peppers that will not have time to grow before it gets too cold, so that the plants will put energy into making tomatoes they have on them bigger. I have been cutting down the bush that grew out of the tree Dad cut down last spring until the branches get to thick for my pruners.  I have been finding the last of the onions that have hid beneath the tree and the carrots that have been hiding from my shovel.

 

In the flower garden I have been cutting down the lavender that has been killing all plants around it by suffocation.  I planted it when I was just beginning to garden and did not bother to look at the size it would get to be.  Its large pal Lamb’s Ear that got planted by the same mistake went last year.   I thought it would be pretty, but even that failed me.  To many leaves for the amount of flowers it has given me in three years!

 

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I picked my first full sized tomatoes yesterday, as well as an onion and three rotting purple peppers.

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I took the plant to the Outdoor Campus and they had a little trouble with it, but after a while they identified it as bitter nightshade.

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