Pictures from my phone July 16, 2009

I bet some of you thought I was crazy always talking about my invisible garden. So I decided to provide some pictures  today. Please forgive the quality- these are all taken with my cell phone.

Morning glory growing in the pumpkin vines

The garden in all its glory.

Baby bell pepper

Yellow Zucchini

Just a couple of baby tomatoes from on of the thirty or so tomato plants in my garden.

Jealous yet?

Busy! I’m so busy my head is spinnin like a whirlpool it never ends… July 8, 2009

Silly Melissa thats not how it goes! Oh alright maybe not but it fits. Okay so the business is self-imposed but thats alright. I have been working outside in the garden every day and it feels so nice to be keeping up with things. Sadly this means that my housework is suffering and that bothers my poor husband more than it does me. I actually had to make myself stay inside and do dishes today instead of going out to the garden to see a new baby zucchini growing on one of my plants. The conversation (out loud of course) went something like this. “Melissa that will still be there when you’re done with the dishes. Get in the kitchen now!” Why yes, I do talk  to myself. Is that a problem? Sadly I still don’t have any pictures from the garden to show you because my camera is still dead. So I won’t bore you with glowing descriptions of my babies. I will tell you that I have had fun chopping nasty squash bugs in half with my clippers today while I trimmed the leaves they had killed off my zucchini plants. I also got to see the end of my first okra blossom and noticed new bell peppers coming on. Now I need to figure out what I can plant in July that will be ready to harvest before our first frost and I think I might be able to swing some sweet corn. Which would be…. sweeeeet! *grins* I couldn’t resist that one. Alright I know enough about the garden already. Hope all is well everyone. Au revoir!

Things that are bad gardening form July 7, 2009

First let me say that I was a bad girl and didn’t post yesterday, but in my defense I spent the whole day trying to make my internet work because it was misbehaving. Today? works just fine of course. So it was probably a problem on T-Mobile’s end of things rather than mine.

So that said lets get down to business. Today I want to talk about things that are just plain bad form when it comes to gardening or rather bad form for me. *grins* Planting something and then promptly pulling it all out as a weed? bad form. Planting something and then forgetting that you did so that you’re very surprised when something starts growing where there “should” be only weeds and dirt? bad form. Planting something and forgetting what plant it is to the point where you have to go online to find pictures to clarify just exactly what it is? bad for. And finally for the grand prize winner of no brainer bonehead garden mistakes- taking a weedeater to your beautiful kiwi vine that was all but killed last summer but miraculously came back this year stronger than ever and chopping off the largest section of vine? Really bad form. So which ones did I do? All of the above obviously. The plants that got weeded were pepper plants in my first full size garden when I was in High School. The mystery plant that was growing where nothing should be is Miner’s lettuce and I’ve already missed out on it this year- I’ll have to wait till next year or grow some more here in a few more weeks for a fall harvest. The plant that is unknown is endive *phew!* The kiwi will survive, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I keep setting myself back on getting fruit from that plant. Fingers crossed for next year or the year after that.

Now just so you know I’m not the worst gardener in the world, I picked my first two zucchini today, have several baby tomatoes, a couple of baby bell peppers and some Lazarus trees to boot. Lazarus trees you say, What the heck is that? Well they are trees that were dead but now they’re alive again and going strong. Trees that came from J4’s back yard that went through our heat spell without water because I was at the family reunion. One of the three got dug up and replaced already which I’m now regretting because the other two are putting on leaves like crazy despite our warm temps here.

So I’m not a total failure and I have more wins than losses here in the Casa de Sisk. But if you’ve ever gardened then you know there are lots of ways to make a fool out of yourself without even half trying aren’t there? What are some of your gardening mishaps? (she says as if anyone is out there even listening

Post number 99 July 21, 2008

These babies are from the garden

Well I’ll be darned. I never really gave much thought to how many posts I would have by this time or when I would reach the first triple digit, but the next time I post, I will have done just that. I am not as good about every day postings as I was at the beginning, but I like to tell myself that its a matter of quality rather than quantity….. riiight. Anyway, I want to do something special for the next post, whenever that might be, to celebrate that number. Not sure what I shall do just yet, but I’m thinking a giveaway and maybe a challenge. Keeping this post short and sweet because my thoughts are tumbling all over each other. The picture is of this weeks garden bounty. Now what the heck am I gonna do with it? I have this urge to make something other than zucchini bread with it, but I’m drawing a blank on what to do. Casserole? That somehow doesn’t sound appealing. I have sauteed it before and I serve it with my herbed chicken, but I’m the only one that eats the squash that way and I want something for Jarell to enjoy as well. He’s like a big kid sometimes always picking out the “nasty vegetables” as he puts it whereas I am more like a rabbit– yay veggies! and fruits!! Oh my. My mom told me once that men get jealous when you have kids because all of a sudden you’re not mothering them anymore and I said I didn’t mother Jarell. And then I went on to talk about how I had been trying to get him to eat healthier more veggies in particular and she said, “And thats not mothering him?” We had to laugh about that.

Well I feel the urge to run outside and have a look at the garden to see what has shown up overnight. The other day I had a pumpkin the size of a raquetball and the next morning it was the size of a softball! It was amazing and there was a tomato last night that seems to almost be ripe soooo I gotta go folks.