pictures | Momzoo

Today is beautiful! It is the first really warm day we have had this season. It is 90+ degrees outside and my plants are loving it! Today is laundry day, and a 90 degree day can dry a load of laundry faster than my Fancy shmancy drier. One of the benefits of drying laundry outside is the fact I actually have to go outside! Typically on a day like to day I would be hunkering in the air conditioned house, but not today, I was in and out, enjoying the sun and flowers.

My roses are bursting, and the smell is heavenly. Just outside my back door the air is heavy with heat and fragrance. There is something about the hot smell of roses that sooths my soul.

This first bush pictured is special to me. Dadzoo brought this home for me when he went to buy trees and shrubs for out new home and yard. He knew I wanted to line the back of the house with roses and he picked out the very first one. The yellow of the blossoms are so bright they hurt my eyes!

I had have a request by Hadias, she would like to see pictures of my gardens, so happily I will oblige. We all know how much I love my gardens.

This year had been a challenge. I planted a full spring garden, and I was anticipating basket loads of produce, but that didn’t happen….not at all. There have been several factors contributing to my springtime garden failure, none of which I had any control over. First of all we had a very cool spring and things were slow to start, but that in and of itself shouldn’t have stopped me. For a while I had cats using my newly planted garden boxes as their kitty litter boxes (urgh) but I re-planted and covered the boxes with floating row cloth and that kept them out, then we had an invasion of cut worms. About the time my gardens had recovered from the cats and cold weather the worms came out and in about 2 nights they ate everything, my lettuce, spinach, cabbages, carrots and all my peas. I am so thankful that my family wasn’t relying on my gardening efforts to feed them….we would have starved.

Anyway, I am not one to get too discouraged. I have planted my summer garden, it is a little slow in coming, the weather is still a little cool, but the cut worms have gone and the weather man is predicting hot weather in the next few day. So here goes, a little tour of my gardens, flower and vegetable.

This is right out my back door and I am looking to the right, you can see my veggie gardens and the roses/flower gardens up by the house. I have 4 box gardens, one is 4×8 and the others are 4×4. I also have a garden space surrounding the shed/barn/chicken coop.

This is box #1

This box has my potatoes, I planted 32 chunks of potato

This is a little potato (I need to hill this little guy) I am excited to see what happens with these, I have never planted potatoes before.

This is box #2, half of it is in onions and the other have as misc veggies.
There is: three varieties of lettuce, spinach, Broccoli, Bok choi, Basil, Chard, Zinnias and Kolrabi all planted in this little box.

A little baby Bok Choi…

Box#3 it had the two surviving cabbages from the spring planting and two more little sprouting cabbages, the middle strip has carrots (I am hoping to get two crops of carrots) and the back is full of sweet peas. I love sweet peas they smell wonderful, they are my favorite cut flower.

This box is half beets and half beans.

These are little bitty baby beets

I am hoping to get two crops also.

Here is the big main garden, it was a lot bigger then I decided we needed to plop a big shed in it. The shed holds the inside of the chicken coop and the rabbits.
On your left is a big compost pit and a pile of soil I am using to hill my potatoes with.

There are six summer squash planted, three cucumbers and six tomatoes.

I usually have very, very bad luck with tomatoes.

This is a little baby zucchini just coming up.

And here are the tomatoes all caged and ready to go

This picture I am looking back towards the back steps.

That pot in the background is full of garlic plants.

The vegetables are fund and functional

but

I love my flowers

and especially my roses

It is kind of hard to see here, but my rose bushes are full of buds, they will be beautiful this year.

They are a little late, usually by now they are close to blooming,

but like I said before it has been a cool spring.

This is looking left from my back door.
I planted my annual bedding plants about two weeks ago

I am just waiting for a few hot days and they will take off.

This is down the south side of my house. (I have shown you this view before) I have a lot of sun loving perennials. This is also where my raspberries are going to go and my strawberries are also on this side. I have trellises that I plant morning glory (the real kind not the bind weed that is called morning glory around here) on. I also like to plant the big giant sunflowers along the side of the house.