early morning mantra

My daughter left to go out of town with her grandmother at five a.m. I decided to take advantage of the cool morning air (and the morning mosquitoes) and have a sit in the garden. I went empty handed, not even a camera followed, and just watched the sun turn on the lights in the sky, inch by inch. It wasn’t long, perhaps fifteen minutes passed, that I found myself thinking about how nice it was, to sit out in the garden and relax, without my camera. And of course, after that light bulb went off, all I could do was obsess over having my camera…. that and my kitchen twine and scissors. This gets me every time. I’ve been searching for an old mailbox to set up in my garden. I’d like to keep my kitchen twine, and scissors, and trowel and maybe some wire in it for close reach. No gloves though, because I’m terrified of black widows.

So, of course I get the camera. And of course, I forget the twine and scissors. After I took a few shots, I decided to take care of my luffa vine. I’ve never grown luffa. It’s one of those gourds I’ve always wanted to plant, but I never really had the gumption or the space while I was surrounded by the bounty of nursery retail goods. So I planted three. I mean literally, three seeds. No double dropping of the seed or any of that mess. Those three seeds came up with no problem, even the one I experimented with in the cinderblock hole (this is an on-going experiment, soon I’ll have a database file of all the plants that do well or fail in cinder block holes) looks exactly like the other two in the larger bed. Two of these guys have begun busting out of the seams of my humble 6 or 7 foot trellis fence. So, in comes the kitchen twine. Oh, how I love kitchen twine. I’ve used other tying elements in the garden, shoe laces, torn shirts, wire, jute, that expensive green twine you can buy in the nursery…but I’ve finally narrowed my favorite down to plain ol’ “stuff a chicken” kitchen twine. It’s cheap (family dollar, can ya holla), it’s biodegradable, and it expands with water and dangles in the breeze. I love cutting liberal amounts and just letting them hang like they are on some sort of veggie Mardi gras float. And they will just melt into my garden on their own time, like everything else is allowed to do.

luffa gone wild.

Once I get the luffa some extended horizontal space via the kitchen twine (I have no idea if they will take to the horizontal twinning, but I’m willing to aggressively help them reach their destination). I…take more pictures, and sit just a bit more until the humidity starts making it a little uncomfortable.

strawberry

pennyroyal & horseradish

watermelon flowers....i think i'm in trouble.

spearmint bloom

tea tree

Last year I allowed some of my tomatoes to mold and rot in the beds and I had a couple of volunteers come October. So when we had that uncharacteristically cold winter, they had no chance. This year, I’m going to try and allow some volunteers some room, and if they feel the need to grow, I’ll help them out a little with some sort of hothouse/cold frame set up. The thought of having fresh tomatoes in the winter is just too exciting. Plus, these guys look like some sort of jim Henson muppet, I can’t help but think they are cute.

her name is cherry

wolf berry

a very happy fig tree

best seat in the house

i wonder...

This bean teepee has been a wonderful tool as far as being a visual guide in the planning of paths and borders of my backyard garden, which I plan on filling up one step at a time. I have decided the placement of a garden gate/arbor/fence/path based on the teepee. It’s also helped concrete plans for a new pecan tree to center my two apples that need to go in the ground this fall. This will be west of the area and will add a little shade and texture to the edible landscape.

I recently read a blog post regarding garden plants you can buy at the grocery store. The two main plants mentioned were pineapple and ginger. I have wondered for years what type of ginger plant we get our yummy grocery ginger from. It’s been hard to find any information online, it seems like the butterfly ginger might be it, but I’m just not sure. I thought the best way to be sure would be to buy the rhizomes from the grocery store and plant them and see what happens. I extended the bean tee pee a bit today and did just that. I added a bit of white dutch clover seed in the bed. I started wondering, why everywhere I go that has been a long-time established yard has the clover it in, but my “yard,” that was cleared about 25 years ago and used as a cow pasture until about 5 or 10 years ago, had none. I started researching the white dutch clover and found out it’s a nitrogen fixing cover crop and some folks even have it as a lawn! I can’t imagine summers spent not making daisy chains from these flowers so I went online and purchased a large batch of the seed. I’ll plant a little patch here and there and hopefully it will establish itself well enough to stick around, like it seems to do everywhere else.

The sunflowers I planted have made quite a nice little stand next to the strawberry planter. I plan on painting the cinder block with a little moss/buttermilk mixture. It might only grow moss on the shady parts, but it will still be a project for my husband to laugh at!

Still, this little area has sparked my imagination a bit and I thought I’d place little objects my daughter could find, and be curious about. I found this little chair at a garage sale this week and thought it’d work great in the garden someplace incase a gnome needed a rest…. dill grows in this blue container and I planted rudbeckia seeds in the tool bucket I found at the same garage sale. The cardboard is in place until I can get out in the heat again and fit some corsican mint in the mix.

i planted these coreposis from seed this spring, and they are finally blooming. I love coreopsis ALMOST as much as the bees & butterflies do.

for some reason, i thought it would be a GREAT idea to plant pumpkin and watermelon seeds together. never again, for the pumpkin is outgrowing the watermelon by leaps and bounds, spreading and crawling everywhere it can. good thing the leaves are absolutely gorgeous!

but i think the watermelon are still giving it a strong go.

ROMA dried

Well I realized my weekly goals in one day. I hope I'm not a fool for planting so much right now, these afternoon showers have been so consistent, but just a week or two of drought during the hot summer months could have me lugging a water hose across my yard. at least i've kept the trees in their pots that i'm planning to put in the front yard...those will wait until fall for sure.

I got all my new herbs in the ground, opting to "stick" one in my OG raised bed. a giant marigold seems like a perfect companion plant to put in with tomatoes. It's just so hard to resist popping plants in those beds with their wonderful soil.

I also tended to the goji berry I've had potted up since last year. I bought it from ebay and I think it was shipped bare root. I've had it in a three gallon pot all this time and have neglected it a bit. I thought it had died at one point, but responded well to some heavy feeding this spring. I cleaned it up and put it in the ground with a tomato cage for support. I know it has to be a lot happier.

I also put in my dwarf peach tree, just west of the goji to give it a little shade. And dragon fruit....more to come on that later.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE:

little tea tree...

grow for me. don't you wanna graduate to the ground one day soon?

so, the bed got a little longer.

horseradish in a really big container!

I'm super excited about this one. I had hoped to put it in a large raised bed of it's own with room for potatoes, but I found this giant pot and i think he'll be okay by hiself for now.

goji berry.

doesn't look like much, but if it's made it through this climate thus-far I think it will be just fine.

mmmmm, minty!

our cat, kitty brown left us a morning present outside the back door.

in the past few weeks she has left a mole and a crawfish. this is by far the craziest one. i normally don't pick the gifts up and take them in but i had to with this one...i just had to. i used a ziplock and put it in the trash. gee thanks kitty brown, okay, i get it, you are one bad ass hunter. i just hope i don't find a baby deer head on the door step anytime soon.

it's still raining.

Even though a tornado was spotted a few miles north of my house today, I managed to get a little work done in this on-going daily down pour.

Yesterday I received, in the rain, a shipment from companionplants.com. This website has a mind blowing assortment of herbs. It took me a month to get my order under $100 (I gave up on the 40 dollar budget). So as the mail lady ran back to the shelter of her van, I unpacked the little guys and set them outside....in the rain.

I was able to set up shop for the cardamom.

well, sort of. I still have to harvest some composted horse poo, but I got the hard part done before it started raining...again.



i planted the pennyroyal in a pot (they have pennyroyal at my local nursery, but the price was the same as ordering it with these other guys) and used it as a weight, along with this poor pineapple. It was on my porch and three little kittens reeked havoc upon it, so it's now in the garden.

Other than the cardamom and pennyroyal, I also received:
Tagetes minuta/mexican marigold plant
Elsholtzia stauntonni/mint shrub plant
Melaleuca alternifolia/Australian tea tree
Armoracia rustica/Horseradish plant
Calea zacatechichi/Aztec dream herb

a packet of Allium schoenoprasum seed, and a partriage in a pear tree.


i also took menacing sky photos...







the watermelon and pumpkin are doing well...



sugarcane



bean tee pee is doing great except in the back, where the excessive moisture is giving those guys a rough ride.





goal for next week:
get the rest of those herbs in the ground! and MAYBE a fruit tree or two if they will be within close proximity of the sprinkler. I had planned on waiting this fall to put in the trees i have potted because of the intense Louisiana heat, but my shovel finger has been itching.