Summer Garden

It is the absolutely most fantastic July day you could ask for!! It is mid-80's and the sun is out, a very small breeze, and I just have to sit outside and enjoy the evening. It would almost be sinful not to. Because I'm sure tomorrow it will be 105 outside and then I'd be sorry that I didn't.

I'm so excited about my garden this year! Mainly, that I'm still taking the time to water and weed and such, to actually keep it alive in this gruelling hot weather we've been having. It's definitely my best try so far. I planted most stuff pretty late, so I'm just now getting to see the fruits of some of my labor. But my beans put on their first flowers this week, as did my cucumbers and squash. Actually, I didn't plant the squash....it volunteered itself in the compost bin, but it was so healthy looking in there that I had to plant it in the garden! So, I'm going on an assumption really that it's a squash since I didn't actually plant it myself.

Also, I stepped out this year and am trying potted plants for some of my herbs and veggies. I have a hot pepper and bell pepper plant along with a cherry tomato and some basil plants. I started out putting the basil in pots so that I didn't get basil trees in the garden this year. Of course, there are still a few volunteers in the garden that I just couldn't bear to get rid of after they came up and looked so nice, but I'm trying to keep them trimmed back very good so they don't take over. My potted plants are still alive, which is saying an awful lot since those would go first before the garden plants. Anyway, all in all, I'm very happy with the garden so far :) Here are a few pics.....

The hot, hot, hot! jalepeno plant. These peppers make my throat hurt just cutting them open! But, they're still good.

The cucumber plant. As of this morning, there are several blooms on the plant. It won't be long til cucumbers. Of course, there's also my volunteer marigolds. They volunteered themselves wonderfully from last year. Enough to make a decent marigold border around my garden.

My bush beans, gone climbing. I'm pretty sure, by the looks of these plants, the package was labeled wrong. Now there is one plant, of course in the center of one of these wire cages, that happened to be a bush bean plant. I just hope I can find the beans once they starting putting on!

The whole garden (minus the herb garden). Ain't it perty?

Oh, and one bonus. Mark and I went blueberry picking a couple of weekends ago. I always like to make a desert to bring in to work to all those hungry engineers when I get done with the picking. And this year, we went early enough in the season that I was able to pick some blackberries too. So I made a blueberry-blackberry crumble. Yummy!!