Harvesting the goodness

We started a project earlier this summer - a vegetable garden.  I put in a 4'x4' raised bed for vegetables.  The bottom half of the soil is simple top soil. The top half is Miracle-Grow vegetable soil.  That mix has really worked, and I've gotten to combine my new found passion for the garden with my longstanding love of food and food related activity.

In other word - the garden has exploded.

It started out with what we thought would be a modest mix of tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, and a pepper plant.  (The pepper plant [front left plant above] has disappeared - hasn't been seen in months - totally overwhelmed by sun stealing neighbors.)

Now we have:

The lettuce have been eaten and we are almost done with the zucchini and cucumbers.  But as the heat of summer is developing, so are the tomatoes.

But first a few memories of the cooler days.

We've had vegetables fresher than anything we could ever find, even at the farmers markets or road side stands we've been visiting for years. It's been a challenge to live up to the freshness of the ingredients and find ways to prepare them.  I will admit that this summer I have started munching on raw cucumbers, just cutting some up with a sandwich or burger/hot dog.

But the heat of August is here, and the tomatoes have arrived.

These will be ready in the next week or two.  Right now we are getting cherry tomatoes and some of the earlier ripe varietals.

And just today my wife went out and came back with this bowl of beauty.

I don't know how we're going to tackle it yet - but we'll try to rise to the challenge.

Executive Decision - They're WEEDS

Over the last couple posts I've been trying to identify a group of plants that have made a big impact on the back hill.  The "Green Spikey Things" have been multiplying and growing taller. The tallest group were up to about 7 feet tall and beginning to spread out at the top - threatening to become a canopy of green over the rest of the garden.  My garden is not a shade garden - it gets sun all day and there's no telling what a shade canopy would do.  So this week we made an executive decision. They're weeds.

If they had been across the back fence and providing privacy screening, then maybe we wouldn't call them weeds.  But they were growing in the middle of the hill and blocking our view of the butterfly bushes behind them.

The garden path was totally blocked and there was no visibility beyond the screen of Green Spikey Things.

Fortunately they were easy to pull.  Even the 6-7 foot tall ones didn't have roots and deeper than 3-4 inches.  So I filled up 2 big yard debris bags this afternoon after church and now I can see the garden.

And now I can get back to the more remote corners and keep getting pictures of the pollinated and pollinators.

And an added bonus is that the hill is more presentable for the end of the month panorama next week.

FLIES - (dragon and butter that is)

The pictures are making their annual transition from flora to fauna as the Spring and early Summer bloomers have invited in the flies. The butterflies, and a dragonfly earlier this week.

The butterfly bushes have been blooming for a couple weeks now, and the phlox and lilac have been blooming for ahwile. The lilac is over now, but we had some nice blossoms considering it was just planted last year and had to winter over one of the coldest winters in years.

The first butterfly I saw (and got pictures of) was a cabbage butterfly.  I thought it was a moth at first, but after posting pictures I was told that it's a cabbage butterfly. I love my friends who can help me learn more about what's happening in my backyard.

Here are some pictures of a cabbage butterfly.

On one of the butterfly bushes up against the back fence.

I love the colors of the butterfly bush,
but I have to be almost on top of it to see the blossoms and colors.

This has a lot going on for a "simple" picture.  The depth of field
 (the out of focus elements framing the center)
 and the parallels between the spots on the wing and the leaf make me really like this shot.
I wish I could claim credit for having planned it all, but I still appreciate it.

I was also able to get some pictures of a dragonfly as it stopped to rest on one of the statues in the garden. I really like how delicate the wings are - you can see the texturing of the statue even through the darker sections of the wings.

He's resting on the back of a dog's head (statue) - I hope he doesn't get any ideas to start riding around on any of the fur babies. I don't know how they would react.

A day or two later I saw my first tiger swallowtail of the summer. It was hanging around the phlox before moving over to the butterfly bushes. I got a picture at the butterfly bushes, but it wasn't as nice as these ones at the phlox.  The colors really pop in contrast between the fushia and the yellow.

And I also got pictures of some smaller butterflies - I have not researched the exact variety yet.  But I don't recall seeing these last year. So I'll have to do some googling to see If I can identify them.

Since there are two of them there, I'm hoping there will be more coming.

Mid July Panorama and Bloom Day

I'm cheating a little, I decided to take advantage of a Sunday afternoon for my pictures and blog post for Mid July instead of trying to get lucky on weather on Tuesday evening after work.  We've been getting a lot of afternoon thunderstorms over the last couple of weeks, but today is bright, sunny, and hot.  So I'm taking advantage of the sun, and the excuse to sit in the air conditioning and post on the blog.

First, the mid July panorama:

There's a lot of green, but not a lot of color - but it's there if you look.  We talked to our neighbor about the tall spikey growths in the center (and all over really) and couldn't decide if they're weeds or not.  I'm willing to give it some time and see if it flowers and what any flowers look like.  Here's a closer look.

Against the back fence we are just in the last two days getting blossoms on the butterfly bushes.  There are four of them back there.  And with the blossoms I was able to get some pictures of a white moth checking out the blooms.

Over in the vegetable garden, we're still getting blooms as the vegetables are continuing to come in.

Tomato buds.

Zucchini blossoms

And inside the fence at the far right (over by the holly trees) we have a flourishing patch of phlox.

And there are still just a few of the June bloomers, the rose campion and the yellow primrose.

And we have a visitor who is growing under the fence from our neighbor's yard - a day lily.

I know that the lily is potentially poisonous to the dogs, but I haven't wanted to pull it out.  I've accepted that despite my professed intent to create a totally pet friendly garden, I'm not really ready to pull out all the plants I would need to.  It would mean getting rid of the big cherry tree, the azaleas, and enough others that I had to come to terms with my goal.  I will continue to try not to add any hazardous plants, but in 4 years here we haven't had any problems with the dogs chewing on the plants (running them down - yes; eating - no) Maybe I'll need to refocus and work on rescuing the garden from the dogs. 

The Garden Bloggers Bloom Day page is at http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/search/label/garden%20bloggers%20bloom%20day

June 29 panorama

I am continuing my project of taking panorama shots of the back garden at the turn of the month and at the middle.  Since June is ending on a Monday. I went out and took the pictures today.  I spent yesterday working on the vegetable garden, taking off the bird netting and putting in supports for the plants. Today I did some weeding, so the garden was ready to have it's picture taken.

TaDa:

I was talking to our neighbor, Pat, last night (we had her over for a barbecue) and she said she doesn't remember a summer when the plants got so big.  So these pictures may not be typical, but they do document the stages of growth and change through the summer. At the end of the summer I am going to put together a couple collages showing the development of the garden and print them off on photo paper and put them into my garden notebook.  So I'll have a record of the garden (as it is this year) and what blooms when and where in the garden. 

As I mentioned, yesterday we took the bird netting off the vegetable garden.  The tomatoes and cucumbers were growing through it, so we figured it would be more a hindrance to us being able to harvest anything than effective protection from the birds.  (We've already started getting zucchini, and cucumbers, and the lettuce is done for the season.  Tomatoes are very close.)

So, I was saying (twice now) we took down the bird netting.  What I didn't realize was how much the plants were using the netting for support.  Once I had the netting free, everything fell over.

That's a big pile of tomato and cucumber plants that's too heavy to support itself.

A trip to Lowes and a couple hours later we have this:

It wasn't quite the plans I had for the afternoon, but now the tomatoes and cucumbers are supported and have more room to grow.  We can also see and reach the tomato plants on the inside of the box. We found another ripe zucchini and Gloria made zucchini tots to go with the grilled chicken and pasta salad for dinner.

Now I'm just hoping that the raised bed is high enough to be out of reach of the bunnies.

Bloom Day

Last month I came across an interesting blog post.  The May Dreams Garden blog invites people to take pictures of what is blooming on the 15th of the month and write a post and share a link to show what's going on in the garden.  This month's post is at Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - June 2014.  So, I've taken some pictures (what a surprise.)  It also fits well with my project this summer to take panorama pictures of the back hill at the beginning and middle of each month to keep a video diary of what blooms and when.

So I'll start with a panorama of the back garden from pictures taken yesterday afternoon.

The flowers in bloom right now are Yellow Primrose, Rose Campion, and Cucumbers, Zucchini, and Tomatoes. 

I'll let the Primrose go first since they are the flashiest.

They are all over the hill, but they're so pretty that I'm happy to see them.  They are also accompanied by Rose Campions.

It's taken a couple years, and some help, to identify what the Rose Campions are, but now I know what they are so that I can call them by name.

Over on the far right of the yard (in the big square planter) is the vegetable garden. This is our first year planting vegetables so we're excited to see all the blossoms and nascent vegetables on the vines.  I didn't get pictures of the zucchini blossoms or the tomato flowers, but here is a picture of some cucumber flowers.

We've put bird netting over the vegetable garden to try and protect the veggies until we can harvest them.

And it wouldn't be a celebration around here (Father's Day this weekend) without food.  I butterflied a chicken and rubbed some garlic herb butter under the skin before I grilled it. We also had corn on the cob, roasted veggies, grilled pineapple and (not shown) cowboy beans, bread and brie, and a bottle of Far Eastern Shore wine - Lotus.

And some no sugar added blueberry pie for dessert.   It was a good day to enjoy the flowering garden and family gathered for dinner.