Garden's doing great!

The raised beds are doing awesome this summer. The soil still needs some work but
                                                    I'm happy with how they are doing.

                                                             
                                                      Lemon Cucumbers starting to get close!

         Royal Burgundy Beans. Love these, they hold up really well when watering!

                                              Cherry tomatoes getting super close to ready!

                                                                 My Giant white Phlox

                                      Nasturtiums with the cucumbers and an Acorn Squash

                                                            The baby zucchini plant

                                The lettuce and peas, I was worried the peas wouldn't do well
                                         because they planted so late but they're looking good!

     
                        My Lavender plant! Or bush??? :) The bees absolutely LOVE this plant!
                                                    Especially the Bumble Bees.

    

This is the squash plants/Sunflowers growing out of my compost bin.

                                                 Wasn't planning on pumpkins but it works! :)

Remodeling :)

Okay, I'm redoing the garden area in hopes that it will make it easier for me to deal with it. Only time will tell if I'm successful! :)  Here's some pictures of before and after.

 

                                                                       



These are the before. What a MESS!!!

 

The After pictures. Looking SO much better! I'm going to be putting mulch between the bins. LOTS of newspaper and cardboard under these things!









                                                                                 

Finally! Some pictures!!

I'm posting some pictures I've taken over the last couple of months. I love the bleeding heart! They're such a delicate bush and yet so hardy in coming back year after year!

I didn't realize tulips could multiply until several years ago. These were here when we moved in but they actually took several years to come up and have been multiplying every year since. I've distributed them around the yard once so far. It's just the yellow tulip but it's pretty cool to have a large patch of yellow tulips clumped together. (Just didn't get the actual picture of that taken this year :(  )

My nice patch of spring bulbs. It's so nice in the spring to look out the window first thing in the morning and see such a nice cheerful patch of flowers! This was fairly early in spring since the white tulips are in bloom here. 

I love daffodils. I posted the yellow tulip above. You can see a bunch of buds here. These will be the group picture I never got around to taking. 

Here's a cheerful daffodil with a bit of a surprise in it! It's hard

to tell but there's a green garden spider that took up 

residence in this one!

Here's our frog eggs this year. As of today they are getting to be decent size tadpoles but they're very hard to get pictures of!

This year I will most likely not be having a planned vegetable garden. The garden area desperately needs a rest (see if I can get the disease to go away) and I simply don't have the time to do a lot so the timing for resting the garden works! There is volunteer onions, garlic, lettuce and potatoes though so thus the 'not planned' part! Happy gardening!! :)

Okay, We'll try this again!

Now that springs around the corner I'll give this another go!  Tonight the frogs are singing away. Of course, we have many more frogs this year due to the many that came from our pond last year so I've got to wonder just how many eggs will be laid in the pond this year! I'd love to have that experience again this year. It was quite intriguing watching them grow from tadpoles to tiny frogs that were no bigger then my little fingernail.

The daffodils are in full bloom now as well as the hyacinths. I should start seeing the first tulips soon! Whites come first and blacks last. The bleeding hearts are going to start blooming soon too! Now if the rain would give us a good week break that'd be awesome! Here in Portland we've had the wettest March since 1940! At the rate the rain has fell at times today I have a feeling we'll be over 8" for the month and the normal is close to 4". I hope it's a nicer spring then last year! There was some sun today but it lasted about 3 hours and then was gone again.

Pictures to come!

Hmm..

Well, obviously this blog didn't work this last year! We had a WONDERFUL September. The baby frogs we had are now making lots of noises! I got the garden more or less cleaned up yesterday, I was hoping to do a last mow today but an afternoon with Erika came first! Not sure if I'll be able to get another mow in. I guess time will tell! I'll try and post now and again. Maybe we'll get some snow so I can post some snow pictures!

Rain, Rain go away!

I start a blog and then up and then take forever to post. It has been a horrible year for warmth. There's been some nice days here and there. I think there was 5 days in a row week before last that were really nice. The flowers are doing well. The grass is still green with only 2 waterings done on it ALL YEAR! And it's mid July, what's wrong with this picture??? :)  Today it rained pretty heavily for 2 hours straight. I do believe we set a record for how much rain fell for the day. Probably somewhere around .75" and was 62* at 1pm. I think it did manage 66* F or 67* F by then end of the afternoon though. It's suppose to be SUMMER not Spring or Fall!! Deep Breath ;) Rant over, for now anyway!! :)

My peas are thriving in mid July, it really should be too warm for them! My tomatoes have a few tomatoes set but not near what I'm use to. But the bee balm is doing really well and the humming birds are loving it. :) Next time I need to get some pictures posted. And raspberries, lots and lots of raspberries. I had enough from my small patch to make a batch of jam from each of the pickings 2 days apart this last week. Christina and I dug up the garlic last week. There's some really nice heads of garlic! Can't wait to use it!

Tadpole update: There's a few left in the pond but most have lost their tail and have hopped their way away. It was a very cool process to watch. The frogs are so tiny when they lose their tail. I have fairly small hands and they were no bigger then my little fingers fingernail. So cute and tiny. Here's hoping for warm weather soon!! Have a wonderful week everyone!!

REAL warmth!!!

The first true day of warmth....Well second I guess yesterday wasn't too bad!! First over 80* day of the year anyway. I got some more flowers planted in the ground and in pots. I kind of want to finish planting before I take pictures though. The couple of pots I planted last month are really starting to look nice, finally! So guess this weeks stuff will take a couple of weeks... then picture time. :)  I read today that this is the coldest Jan 1 to May 31st in 130 years! The average was 59.5*.  Enjoy the Sun!!!