Category Archives: gardening

Sep22

Down my garden path

Posted on by
Standard

It’s a tight squeeze-
IMG_6120
(ironically, this is the last photo I took today! You are seeing mums and hearty begonias that come up every year).
Watch your step through the bombardment of Chestnut burrs (quite sticky-ouch) and see the little sprouts of arugula, spinach, radishes and lettuce. The beets seem to be taking their time, but the rest were up in less than a week!
IMG_6116
The nasturtiums are all over the various gardens providing a nice show and bow out for the end of the season:
IMG_6094
I’ve seen many more bees than butterflies this year
IMG_6112
I always plant Zinnias in memory of my Grandmom Ruth. Here is a pretty peach:
IMG_6110
Some house painting is going on-just the overhangs. It’s a bit lighter, so that may be incentive to paint the rest of it in the future!
IMG_6102
The Gnomes have plenty of hiding places:
IMG_6100
Always remember to have a happy
IMG_6098
And back inside-starting to decorate for the Autumn and then I’ll add some Halloween decor to that (not all the summer stuff is off the window area. The hydrangeas are from outside):
IMG_6091
Happy Fall, y’all!

Sep14

Great find by mom

Posted on by
Standard

My mom likes to wonder around the local thrift shops. Sometimes she ‘hits’ on a great find for me-like this:
IMG_6082
An entire packet of DMC embroidery floss! (it’s missing some colors, but I’m not complaining). She wasn’t sure if it was DMC or not-she was going by the name of the holder thingie. I looked at it and thought how was I going to match this all up with DMC? Tonight I took a closer look and the previous owner had them all separated and I know the numbers well enough to know they ALL were indeed DMC. I even took out 738-saved me a trip to the store.
Thanks mom!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was so nice today that I planted 5-7′ rows of fall crops. I’ve never done that before, so hoping I didn’t wait too long. I planted beets, arugula, spinach, radishes and lettuce. I’m waiting on the garlic bulbs to be shipped soon-they will go in a raised bed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RIP Patrick Swayze. What a journey he was on these last few years. I feel especially bad as my step cousin was just diagnosed with the same kind of cancer. I adored Patrick in ‘Ghost’ and ‘Dirty Dancing’. I even like his one hit song-from ‘Dirty Dancing’-‘She’s Like The Wind’. His skit on ‘Saturday Night Live’ with Chris Farley was a classic-when they both were trying out to be Chippendale dancers. He will be missed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Off to get my hair done tomorrow. I’m pushing for a lighter shade as my roots are horrible against the brown now. On Sunday we were down in my hometown to a town event (where I am going again tomorrow-vendors and food on State Street and yard sales around the town. I got some cute things I’ll share at the end of the week.
And Zoey-the mushroom cookie was delicious-it was a thick butter cookie that I had to split 3 ways! s like

Sep1

Blooms in September

Posted on by
Standard

I am pretty happy with the way the front garden across from my front door looks. I have mostly purple flowers with a contrasting touch of the orange nasturtiums and Pinwheel Zinnia. My mom bought me a 4-6 pk of the zinnias for under $1 and I gave a couple to Sean and kept some. They spread so nicely.
Here’s the garden:

IMG_6012
The purples and pinks are Nemesia and Salvia. I had to treat the Salvia a lot with bug spray as the insects love to nibble on it. The Zinnias and Nasturtiums are in the right corner. On the other side is a coleus with a peeking of the gold/yellow mums coming into bloom. (Ignore the weeds behind the salvia-need to get to them). This is all under a huge evergreen where I have plantings all the way around.

IMG_6014
Does anyone know what this plant is? It came up by itself in a shady area of the yard:
IMG_6015
For Zoey-the Crepe Myrtle is blooming now. I was out taking photos of the above and around the yard yesterday. That was after I was pulling out a garden cart of weeds from the flower bed next to the photo above. Today I am feeling it in my shoulder blades. Sean and I are going over to my Uncle Don’s to trim some hedges for him. Bri and I did it a few years back.

Aug19

Pickle Power!

Posted on by
Standard

We’re having a warm and sticky week. I go sit outside for about 10 minutes and come back in to the a/c. Since the tomatoes went bust, we have been lucky to get the cherry and grape ones, but the cucumbers really took off. Yesterday I made refrigerator pickles with about 7 cups of sliced cukes, vinegar, sugar, salt,chopped onion and dillweed. Needless to say, the guys have been dipping into the container a few times. They are really easy to make!
IMG_5972
One of big hibiscus flowers (I grew the plants from seed about 4 yrs ago) broke off, so I brought it in. The deer usually make a meal out of these, but I have some blooming this year.
IMG_5973
Today I was tidying up my living room area as that is where I will sit the priest when he visits on Monday as we hardly use this area. My craft stuff is tucked in every nook and cranny since I have so much of it now. Yes, I will downsize and keep things I really like (one of these days).
My brother is working on the air in my van. I just can’t drive with the windows open. My class is having a get-together at the beach at the end of September and Brian said we could attend. It’s in Ocean City, but I’d like to find a room in Cape May and drive over to the get-together. When we were there last week, it was a tease for mom and me as we hardly saw anything as it started to rain and we had to leave.
Guess I’ll be headed to my hometown tomorrow to get my van. Hope the weather holds out. We lost power for two hours last night from mostly gusty winds. That makes 12 hours without power in the last month.

Aug14

Show & Tell

Posted on by
Standard

This was an experiment with some sprouting potatoes I had called Fingerlings. I had a little room in my veggie patch and they came up and flowered. My Farmer’s Almanac calendar said to dig them up 3 weeks after they flowered which I did today and got over 3 pds of potatoes!
IMG_5965
I picked about a dozen green tomatoes and Brian had to pull them out today. They got the tomato blight that went around this year. I put some in a brown paper bag and the others I left out and made some green fried tomatoes for dinner.
IMG_5967
We have been enjoying zucchini, grape and cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, some green beans, basil and fennel. So all is not lost.

Aug3

Need a baseball bat?

Posted on by
Standard

All the rain kept us out of the garden for a number of days and lookie what Brian found over the weekend:
IMG_5864
Yep, a biggie! We also harvested about 4 cucumbers so far. Next week we’ll be digging to see if I got any fingerling potatoes! I see some green beans that need picking too.
Unfortunately, many of the tomatoes in my container garden and a few in the big garden are getting blossom rot from the rain. We need some hot, dry days to hopefully remedy that! Tomorrow and the next should help.
For the second Sunday in a row, we had a terrible storm that knocked out the power for 5 hours each day it happened. I tidied up some art supplies and made this as one of the four I made that day. It’s my friend’s grandmom-I don’t think she reads my blog and she’s away right now:
IMG_5866
Don’t put an old photo of yourself or a relative on your blog or in Facebook or I may use it! I’ll gift her with this. I’d say it’s about 1908 or so.
Sean and I went down to my mom’s and did a few things around the place. She bought yet another bagless vacuum which I scolded her for. I hope this one doesn’t ‘blow up’ like her previous clunker did! We went down to the liquidator store and JoAnn’s and I bought a few things namely paper crafting things at JoAnn’s (40% off) and 70% off windchimes and a few little gnome figurines. We went to The O*live Garden and the portions were very slimmed down. I always had some left to bring home, not tonight.
So that’s my last few days. Plan to stay in and cool tomorrow!

Aug1

Photo Hunt-Entertainment

Posted on by
Standard

Besides my favorite singer James Taylor entertaining me 4 times over the last 30 yrs, I find it entertaining to take photos off our fairly new HD-tv. I then make collages, etc. if I have enough like I had here. My next tv photo session may be to look at old videos and freeze frame them to take photos. I had tried that on the old tv-like looked awful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Happy Lammas Day! It’s the first day of harvest! It was traditional to bake a loaf of bread and have it consecrated at church, thus ‘loaf mass’-Lammas! Thanks Farmer’s Almanac!

Jul1

Tying things up

Posted on by
Standard

July was always the month for my grandmom Ruth-born July 3rd and my brother Dave-born on Independence Day. When he was little, he thought the celebration marked with fireworks was just for him-lol
Not to much going on here this week. I’ve had to take allergy medicine three days in a row-so unlike me! Today I am better-have ‘another’ issue that may have knocked out the allergy one. Your body makes lots of histamines which can mess with hormones. Maybe I’ll be on an even keel for a few days-lol Our Chestnut trees are dropping massive amounts of catkins-the pollen part-which are dirty and dusty and I am sure the culprit with me. The guys have itchy throats too.
Anyway…mainly been doing quiet things inside and tying up, or should I say making ‘string trellises’ for the tomatoes, cucumbers and string beans. The bean one looks a little wacky, but I hope it works! The tomatoes look good. I’m glad I skipped the ‘tepee’ ones from last year. You really need a large garden for them to work. Here’s the tomatoes:
IMG_5338
The main support stakes are at the end of the rows. I have a few thinner stakes in between. You go down with the string and up again, make sure to wrap it around the skinnier stakes and that the tomatoes are in the middle of the string to hold them up.
Sean is going through his books and wants me to list them to sell. He’s sold one, but I have a big pile to add to Amazon. I should follow his lead, because I do not like piles of books on the floor. I know I must have similar books too. It’s hard!
Brian was pulling down poison ivy vines which are terrible this year in the yard. While Sean and I were out in the garden area, he pointed to a thick vine growing 50-60 feet up a pine. Brian was at the bottom of it! Today he has an few blisters on his face-yikes-I hope that is it. I gingerly go around with my garden snips and do the ones coming out of bushes, etc.

Jun29

Lilies!

Posted on by
Standard


Lilies!, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Ah, it’s that time of year again. I really love all the varieties of lilies and have them in several areas of my yard. The deer already snacked on a few buds-so I have to see if I can mix up some homemade deer repellent-thanks to Turkey Feathers blog and Missy who pointed in that direction. I just sprayed what was left with insect repellent, seems to have done the trick, until it rains again.