The Grass Is Always Greener . . .

Of course the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Why do you think the neighbors put up the fence?
— Teresa Bloomingdale

...the grass actually IS greener on the other side, but it's only because of the bodies buried there.
— Robert Ford

Even if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, keep to your own side; it's where you belong. There you can plant your own grass and tend to it.
― Richelle E. Goodrich

Every time I’ve mentioned my garden in the last few weeks, the words “sad” and “pathetic” come up. I figured it was finally time to show the world I’m not kidding. I actually have two raised vegetable gardens. This is the first one:

Those spindly leaves sticking up on the front left are my beet crop, such as it is. Don’t be fooled by the leaves hiding behind the asparagus, those aren’t beets. A little less than half the row survived, thanks to the squirrels.

Directly behind the beets was a row of spinach, which came and went so quickly I didn’t have time to pick any. I put up a low, plastic fence to separate the spinach from the bush beans, which were really slow coming on but I still don’t need to pick them more than once a week. And behind the beans is asparagus, which my neighbor planted for me last year.

*sigh* I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but this asparagus is the bane of my existence. It takes up a lot of space in my tiny garden, and I can’t even start harvesting it until next year. While it was kind of my neighbor to share, I could wish there was someplace else to put it.

This is my second garden:

Notice how once again the asparagus is dominating everything again? Oh, and she also planted the rhubarb that took over the right side of my tiny plot. This picture was taken after I’d pulled over half of it. I still have rhubarb in my freezer from last year (given to me by the same neighbor when she was harvesting). I really don’t need more.

On the left hand side are my sweet peppers, which started out doing really well but then they stalled and haven’t done much since. Between them and the rhubarb in the front is my lettuce. I tried using one of those seed strips for my lettuce, and although it got off to a really slow start, once it started growing it grew faster than we could use it, which is why it’s gone to seed. In front of that though, is a row of lettuce from a different kind of seed – it’s got a slight reddish tint to it.

Behind the lettuce is what passes for my tomatoes. The plants have not done well (I blame the asparagus) and if you look carefully you can see I have a single green tomato on the vine. It may interest you to know that the pepper plants and the tomato vines came from my neighbor. Curious about her garden?

This is a glimpse of (some) of her tomatoes on the left, peppers in the middle, and you can just see her bumper crop of hot peppers on the bottom right. The vines on the left are cucumbers.

A closeup of her bumper crop:

Here’s cucumbers in the foreground, with beans on the left, and more tomatoes on the right.

Here’s the view from my side of the fence:

That’s pole beans on the left and cucumbers on the right. Her rule has always been that what comes through the fence is mine. In past years I’ve been out there every day picking beans, and she used to grow butternut squash against the fence so I’d get several of those. This year it was cucumbers. *sigh*

Cucumbers are okay, but a steady diet of them can be a little much. She normally has a bumper crop – I have no idea why she plants so many when she has such trouble getting rid of them. A couple of weeks ago her husband came to our door to let me know I had cucumbers that needed picking. There were four of them. One of which was 18 inches long. I still have three of these monsters in my fridge.

Which brings me to my final picture. A couple of times in the past a squash will start developing close to the fence which creates an odd shape to it. I have no idea what happened with this cucumber.

I wonder which side of the fence it belongs to?

Multisulcate Monday

multisulcate ~ many-furrowed

I don’t know about your garden, but mine has been pretty much a bust this year.

The beans did okay at first, but then they kind of petered out quickly. But then the weirdest thing happened. The bush beans at the front of my garden suddenly decided they were pole beans and proceeded to grow over top of the carrots, wax beans, and peas to get to the fence. And then they started producing more beans, which I didn’t catch in time so I’m letting them go to seed to plant next year.

The peas were disappointing. For all the plants we had, they didn’t produce much. I think I picked them only two or three times. And the carrots are no bigger now than they were a month ago and that’s my fault. They’re sandwiched in between the two rows of beans so I don’t think they got enough light. I’ve pulled the beans from the front row off them as much as I can but I suspect it’s too late for them to do anything.

The tomates didn’t do well at all. The cherry tomatoes on the deck weren’t bad, not great, but not bad – certainly not the bumper crop we had last year. As for the beefsteaks and Brandywines . . . well, we got a few on each plant, but they were small and what didn’t rot on the vine the bugs and squirrels got to.

Out of five pumpkin vines I got 2 small pie pumpkins. I think combined that might be enough for 1 pie. The beets looked like they were doing okay, but they’re really small. And the peppers? Well, they got off to a slow start and I’ve had a couple of respectable looking banana peppers, and one small bell pepper the colour of eggplant. There are still a few struggling, so hopefully they’re not done yet.

On the other side of the yard, the neighbour’s pole beans growing up our fence did okay. I’ve picked from my side of the fence a few times, but never more than enough for supper. And although her butternut squash took over my rose garden, I’ll have four squash for my trouble, two of which are in good enough shape to actually use. LOL

The rest of her garden was as iffy as mine, and she spends a lot more time and energy on it than I do. From what I gather, a lot of other home gardeners didn’t do so well either.

Makes you wonder what the price of food is going to be like this winter, doesn’t it?

Monochroic Monday

monochroic ~ of one colour

I don’t know about the weather where you are, but here in Southern Ontario it’s been up and down like a yo-yo. In the space of a couple of days we from “should I wear a winter coat or a spring coat” to “how little clothing can I legally get away with,” and as soon as I changed my closet over to summer clothes it got cool again. Every day’s a new adventure – warm or cold? windy or calm? dry or drizzly?

I did get my vegetable garden planted, and for the first couple of weeks it looked like this:

Then we got a whole day and night of steady rain and suddenly it looked like this:

Okay, this picture was taken like a week later, but you could almost see the seeds spouting in the rain. It was crazy.

For those of you curious about such things, the garden in the front has green beans, carrots, yellow beans, and peas. The garden at the back has the tomatoes my neighbour started for me (and who are NOT happy to be outside), beets, and pumpkins. I still haven’t found any pepper plants so there’s also a bare patch in there.

We were very happy that most of the plants in the pond garden came back up this year, and the plants along the back fence.

And we have a new addition to Kelsey Park:

Years ago I painted this horse for my father-in-law for the cottage, and when they sold the cottage it came back to me. The colours were not my choice and I fully intend to re-paint it when we bring it back in, but that will be a project for the winter.

Milvine Monday

milvine ~ of, like or pertaining to kites and similar birds

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?

It’s growing very well, thank you very much. I may not have accomplished the writing I’d planned on doing last week, but I did get some work done on the gardens. Actually, I can’t take all of the credit. Hubby did a lot of work too.

These are green beans – that whole row at the front. And I was able to pick enough of them for the granddaughter to have with supper last night. Behind the beans, almost hidden, are cabbages and broccoli on the left and pumpkins on the right. There are only three pumpkin plants, but there are a lot of blooms on them. Good thing we like pumpkin pie. There are also a few pepper plants hidden in there – whether or not they survive is still anyone’s guess.

This garden plot is a bit of a mess. Starting at the back on the left, we have dill and brandywine tomatoes. Left front are the pea plants that are already producing, a hodge podge of carrots (not my fault! The rain washed the seeds around), and some cherry tomatoes on the right.

The pond garden is finally starting to come together.

I’m not going to tell you how much money we laid out for plants, but at least we were smart enough to spend it on shrubs and perennials. The shrubs went along the back fence, and the perennials went into the pond garden. Even back when we had the smaller pond garden the idea had been to have all permanent plants in there. Let’s face it, it’s a pain in the butt to have to plant annuals every year.

The Moai heads were our gifts to each other for our anniversary. We actually got them a while back. The hubby attached them to cement pads so the wildlife can’t knock them over.

I don’t know how much more ornamentation we’ll be getting for the garden, I think it looks pretty good the way it is now. And we’ll have to wait until next spring to see which plants survive. I suspect this will be an ongoing project.

Meanwhile, the garden needs a name. Something containing the phrase “pond of death” I think. So far we’ve (and by we I mean the hubby) fished out two dead birds, a dead mouse, and a dead chipmunk. The mouse and chipmunk I can understand – they could have slipped in while getting a drink and couldn’t get out again. But the birds? That just doesn’t make sense.

The garden of the pond of death. Hortus Mortis or Mors Stagna perhaps.

Mythogenesis Monday

mythogenesis ~ origin of myths

Did I say summer was here? We’re past the solstice, but it’s still been cool enough that I’m wearing socks and shoes most days. While I’m glad it’s still cool enough to sleep at night, it could stand to be a little warmer during the day.

And I do mean a little. I’ve heard rumors that we’re in for a seriously hot July and August and I don’t do well in excessive heat – especially when I’m trying to sleep. Yes, we have an air conditioner we can use upstairs, and fans, but they’re noisy, so even if I manage to get to sleep with them on it’s not a restful sleep.

But there’s no denying that summer is officially here. And with it comes the long list of things we want to get done – the roof over the front porch, re-designing and re-building the pond garden, and a hundred and one other things on our to-do list.

Once upon a time our pond garden looked like this:

That was taken about eight years ago. As you know, since then we’ve had to have the tree removed and it looks something like this now:

It’s actually not quite that bad looking. Since then the hubby has cleaned it up, dug out any of the plants that could be saved, and he got rid of that wild rose bush along the fence that suddenly appeared one day and has tried to take over that corner ever since.

The pond itself isn’t going to be much bigger, when we re-do this garden, but it will be deeper, maybe even deep enough to have fish in it. The garden itself will be bigger, with a retaining wall in the back. We’ve been tossing around ideas for the wall and right now we’re leaning towards a living wall – a vertical garden of sorts.

The other thing we have planned for the back yard is a vegetable garden, or to be more precise, a series of vegetable gardens. These will be raised beds along the fence between the garden shed (near the back of the house) and the pond garden. We’re thinking three, maybe four of them depending on how big they are. It’s the perfect spot for them, and having them raised will make them easier to take care of.

But one thing I know for sure about the vegetable garden, I’ll be letting the hubby and the grandbaby take care of the planting. They have super green thumbs. Remember the tomato seeds they planted?

Shortly after that picture was taken I transplanted them to a bigger planter box before moving them outside for the summer. And look at them now!

Not only are they blooming, they’ve already got a few tiny green tomatoes hidden in all that foliage. I can’t for the life of me remember if these are supposed to be regular sized tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, I guess we’ll see how big the ones that are started get before they’re done.

One thing for sure, we won’t be lacking for tomatoes this summer!

Mucopurulent Monday

mucopurulent ~ of mucus and pus

It’s the 24th of May
The queen’s birthday
And if we don’t get a holiday
We’ll all run away!

Yes, I know it’s actually the 21st of May, but that’s the way the rhyme goes. :-P

It’s the first official long weekend of the summer season for us here in Canada, the weekend where cottages are opened and gardens are planted. The barbeques are being brushed off as I type. When I was a kid it was also the time for major fireworks displays, but although some people do still set them off now, the big fireworks holiday is Canada Day.

I got a jump start on the weekend by starting my planting during the week. Wednesday the grandbaby and I went shopping for plants for the small square garden at the front of the house. Of course by the time we got them home there wasn’t enough time to plant them that day, so the next day I went ahead and bought the rest of my bedding plants to have ready for Friday.

Friday was a little cooler, but we filled the square garden and the long narrow garden along the front:

But while the front is looking pretty good, the back is another story. This is the pond garden:

We were already planning to redo this garden, but we were hoping to save at least some of the plants. It needs the saw dust removed (obviously), a retaining wall built at the back, and the entire garden will be more than doubled in size. We want to get a properly formed shell for the pond itself, one deep enough that maybe we can have fish. If we can get it to the point where it’s ready for plants by the end of the summer I think it’ll be a job well done. We can worry about the actual plants next summer.

Another project for the back yard was going to be putting in a couple of raised vegetable beds. This won’t be a particularly difficult project, but it will be a little time consuming so it’s been put off until later in the summer. Once again, if we can have them ready for planting by the end of the summer, then in the spring all I’ll have to do is pick out my seeds.

Speaking of vegetables though, remember the tomato seeds the grandbaby and her grapy planted?

Aren’t they cute? Yes, well, a funny thing happens when you leave plants in the sun and keep watering them. They tend to grow. I thinned them out once, but now they need bigger pots (maybe even later today). I’m beginning to suspect they’re not going to be cherry tomatoes as I’d first hoped, but some much bigger kind.

So… How’s your garden coming?

Monoousian Monday

monoousian ~ having the same substance

Warning: Picture intensive post!

I’ll give you three guesses what I was doing this weekend... Gardening!

We bought our plants on Friday night and I was appalled at how much we paid - to the point where I even suggested to the hubby that we could forget plants in the front garden and just fill it in with decorative wood chips instead. I think I’ll be buying a lot of seeds next year. Maybe some bulbs this fall.

But before I get to my garden pictures, a couple of people asked me about the christening gown I made last weekend. I know it’s kind of hard to picture it from my description (you can click on it to see a bigger version), so here it is in all its glory:

Not bad considering I was working without a pattern, eh? My friend was thrilled, her daughter was thrilled, but I have no idea how the baby boy felt about it. LOL

Now, on to my gardens. First we have the front garden, always a treat because it’s so long.

As you can see, I lost both of my dogwoods and one of my sand cherries over the winter. Not sure how that happened considering the winter wasn’t all that bad and they’re right up next to the house. These are the same shrubs that made it unscathed through the ice storm a few years ago.

Anyway, here’s what the garden looks like now:

I added a pink begonia hanging from the shepherd’s crook yesterday, but didn’t take a new picture because it was raining.

The other major planting I did was in Kelsey Park. Kelsey Park, for those of you who are new, is a small round garden with a fountain in the center, under which our border collie Kelsey is buried. There are also three cats buried in various spots around it - only the hubby knows for sure where, and he also knows where the others will be going when their time comes. Our own little pet cemetery. :-)

This is what it looked like before:

The after picture kind of looks like I just planted my plants amongst the weeds, and in a way that’s exactly what I did. When I bought all those bedding plants, I did not realize that the sweet pea seeds that I planted last year and didn’t come up came up this year. So now as well as pansies, marigolds, and tufted things, I have sweet peas growing around the edge of the garden.

And last but not least, a few years ago I lucked into a terra cotta strawberry pot. That was the same year I found a variety of mint plants - spearmint, chocolate mint, lemon mint, pineapple mint... I can’t remember what store had them, but I thought it would be really cool to do an all mint indoor herb garden in the pot. And I’m sure under the care of someone else it would have been. But for me the plants died rather quickly and the pot has been empty ever since.

So this year I started thinking about what went wrong and I wondered if maybe I should have had the mint garden outside for the summer to let the plants get well established before bringing it in for the winter. This year I only found two kinds of mint, but I found some thyme, chives, and sage for it and I bought some dill seeds to plant in the top. Now it’s sitting on the deck where it will get lots of sun, if the sun every comes out for any length of time.

According to the 14-day forecast on the weather network, it’s going to be another week before we see any significant sun. While I’m sure the plants in my gardens will enjoy the good soaking, I’m not so sure about the wildflower seeds I planted in the boxes bordering the patio.

Guess I’ll have to post more pictures at the beginning of July to show you how my garden is growing. :-D

Minauderie Monday

minauderie ~ display of affectation

You know, I kind of like Mondays.

Yeah, I know that's crazy talk. But you almost expect that kind of thing from me, now don't you? ;-)

Don't get me wrong, weekends are great. All kinds of wonderful things can happen on a weekend - you can sleep in (if you don't have cats), you can go places and do things you wouldn't normally do, or you can even just relax.

But by Sunday night I'm starting to look forward to Monday and all my little routines. I'm a creature of habit and I like my routines. And even though my routine had to be adjusted of late, I still enjoy it.

One of the benefits of having to work in my office during the week is that I have far less time for games. And surprisingly, when I do have time to indulge in a game or two, I'm finding they don't have the same interest for me as they once did. My time is limited now, and games seem like such a waste when I could be reading or writing or something else.

I'm still plugging away at my to-be-read bookcase and the cleaning of my office. I worked on both over the weekend and managed to fill another bag with books to get rid of. Re-shelving the books is slow going because I want to try and be organized about it. This venture may kill me yet. ;-)

One of the things the hubby and I got done on the weekend was the annuals for two of the gardens. We were all set to get them on Saturday, the one really nice day out of the whole week, but something came up and we had to put it off until Sunday. When it was raining. *sigh*

It was lightly raining when we went to Home Depot, which had a surprising variety of plants, and it was still raining when we got home. So the hubby took pity on me and helped plant the front garden, which is wide but narrow.

And since I was already wet, I figured I might as well do the smaller garden around the fountain we call Kelsey Park (named for the dog we have buried under there). I even went so far as to water the snapdragons that we got from a different store. They were really dry.

But not for long.

After all that planting in the rain, and separate watering of the snapdragons, the rain stopped just long enough to have a good laugh at me for being all wet, and then it rained steadily for most of the evening.

It was also grey and rainy most of last week and this week looks to be pretty much the same. The water is starting to accumulate out there.

Where's Noah when you need him? :-D