Garden Pictures

I love to take pictures of my garden in the morning. It is so much fun watching everything grow!  We've got Eggplant buds blooming, squash blossoms and today I picked my first Zucchini - Lungo Bianco (Heirloom seeds from Italy).  It is fun and exciting to watch the new daisy buds grow and open, too.  I've always loved working in the garden and digging in the dirt.  This year, I've not been so good to my roses, but hope to get them back on track and share pictures soon. Aren't these great pictures from this morning?

Zucchini - Lungo Bianco

Eggplant Blossom

My first Daisy Emerging!

Purple Coneflower

One of the flowers in my Wildflower Garden

Lovely Garden

I love to garden.  I love to watch the flowers burst into bloom. I love plants that attract butterflies and bees.  I know many folks are afraid of bees, but I love them.  I love to watch them dancing among the flowers. Right now my house smells of fresh cut lavender.  I cut lavender yesterday to press for my crafts and the scent is absolutely out of this world.  I think the scent of flowers makes the bees drunk!  I know if I were a bee, I'd be intoxicated by the sweet smells.

 

buzz

A Day in May

I love the month of May! Daffodils and irises have usually already bloomed, Purple Cone Flower and Bee Balm are starting to bud along with my lavender. Mint, strawberries and blackberries are back for another year of delicious flavor. My roses are hanging in there after a year of neglect. I'm headed out today to feed them my special concoction made with beer. This year, I will take better care of my roses. This beer concoction should perk them and all my blooming flowers right up. Roses are very high maintenance flowers.

My garden is really coming alive. My tomatoes (started from seed) are looking so pretty. I can't wait to taste the first fruit! The last few days are the first in many weeks that I've actually been home long enough to weed and work in the garden. Gardening soothes my soul. This year, I am adding a few more lavender plants to my garden. I love perennial plants. They come back year after year and make gardening simple. I added more Echinacea (Purple Cone flower) to my garden this year, too.

One day, my dream is to pull the hedges in the front of the house and place a perennial garden there. We have a lovely magnolia tree on the corner, that will soon cover the shrubs.... and flowers are much prettier than these ugly green bushes! I can see large bunches of lavender in their place...... of course, hubby doesn't know this yet, and it might be a long time before this dream is realized. ~laughter~

I hope you've enjoyed the free tutorial videos that I have posted. I've enjoyed making them! In my spare time, that is. The boys are plodding along in school... closing out the 3rd quarter and making headway on the 4th. We will get a summer break! I can see it at the end of the tunnel. Other than a few summer colds, everyone is healthy. Flag football on the weekends and baseball taking up much of the week. Sean was able to pitch in a game last week and will hopefully pitch in tomorrow's game. Here are a few shots of him pitching.

Garden Science

I love to garden and I love science!  This is one of my favorite projects to do with my boys.  Joseph vaguely remembered watching a seed grow in a gel medium, but wanted to see it again.  It is easy to make your own greenhouse!  Purchase the crystals that absorb water (various brand names), place them in a freezer bag, add water and wait for the water to be absorbed.  Once the medium is gelatinous, add your seeds and hang in a window. 

From Seed to Skillet

This past weekend I had a date night with hubby (this doesn't happen often!). We went to dinner and the headed to the book store! I purchased a book titled From Seed to Skillet It is a wonderful gardening book! Since we've already started pruchasing the seeds for our garden this year, I was very excited to get my hands on this book!  I'd seen an interview with the author and knew I'd love this book to pieces.  Some people buy clothes, I buy books.

The author goes into detail about growing vegetables from seed. Complete with gardening tips. composting tips, how to start the seed, care for the young plants all the way to harvest. THEN the book includes recipes to use with your fresh garden produce. There is even a section on how to build beds and raised beds for your garden.
We love to garden, so this book is an excellent addition to our gardening section in our library.  Over the years, my children and I have gardened for many reasons. We've made specific animal gardens (our bunny garden) and some for butterflies and insects, too. We love to have plants that attract bees to the yard to help pollenate all of the flowers we love so much and we have plants that attract butterflies and feed the caterpillars.  We love to make pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup from the wonderful pumpkins we grow, salsa and salad with our tomatoes and we love to feed our bunny fresh carrots.   Joseph picked up catnip seeds in honor of our new pet, Valentine, this season.

I like Heirloom veggies because I know I can collect the seed from the produce to grow more plants the following year. Heirloom varieties are varieties that have been around for over half a century or longer and whose seed is able to produce future generations of vegetable plants.  I'd love to hear what you are planning in your garden this year.  We are looking forward to spring and are already getting seeds started in our "little greenhouses".  Happy gardening and happy eating!  This book will help you do both!

More from the Garden

Pictures from our garden today.....I love magnolias.  God's creation is awesome!

Inspired by Nature

I am going to make cards inspired by the blossoms in my garden.  The pumpkin blossoms and other blooms are amazing!!!!  I'll try to post my card creations and scrapbook creations tomorrow!  For now, enjoy God's beautiful creation in these pictures.

What's in your Garden?

Spring has finally sprung here in North Carolina.  We are ever so thankful!  This past winter was a cold one with lots of snow (for us!).  We just prepared some of our garden containers for planting.  Mixed in compost and some new soil.  Planted seeds we collected last year, too. German pink heirloom tomatoes, eggplants and pumpkins.  Our sugar pie pumpkins were such a success last year, that we planted more this year.  I made soups, muffins and pies from their deliciously sweet flesh.

Our yard is awash with colorful blooms.  Daffodils, some tulips, the Bradford pear tree, the nectarine tree and we hope to see the cherry blossoms soon.   Ours seem to be the last cherry tree to blossom.  I think being "covered" by the hedge of Leyland Cypress trees makes it bloom a bit later.  My grape hyacinths are so cute!

We get so excited about our garden!  The blackberries are really taking off.  This is their third growing season and we hope it will be a good one.  Mint covers a large area and keeps spreading, but the smell is so delightful! Especially in the hot summer when a breeze blows the scent our way.   My lavender is also growing quickly.  I planted it two years ago and it is finally taking off!  Strawberry leaves are just starting to pop up, too.  Can't wait to see it all grow. Spring is finally here. 

The boys want to plant more of the colorful carrot seeds we grew last year.  The colors were quite different and very interesting.  We'll have to fix another container for those, though.  I am sure in teh upcoming weeks we will be planting more seeds.  We never know what will be in our garden.  We just plnt what excites us at the moment.

I can;t forget my roses!  I have already pruned them (a few months ago) and last week I sprinkled Epsm salt at their bases.  Next step is to start using the special beer fertilizer I mix up.  It is the only reasonI purchase beer!  Beer for my roses.  I could make that into a country song. 

I keep talling myself that I am going to be better about blogging our homeschool activities.  Time just slips away.  I did post some cute pictures of a few cards I made for the kids at the hospital. Check them out at: Pattie's Cards  I really love the ministry of sending cards to kids that are in the hospital and even have some help from fellow homeschoolers.

Pumpkins are Fun

We've been baking away with the first pumpkin. We think the second one is much cuter. Joseph has affectionately named this one "Mrs. Pumpkin". We just cut her from the garden today.

Our first pumpkin

Our first Sugar Pie pumpkin. This tastes SO yummy! It is as sweet as a sweet potato-- no sugar needed! I'm thinking, pies, muffins, soup...... to see them growing in our container garden, see this blog post: Pumpkin garden I also wrote an article about growing pumpkins in a container garden-- the link is in the blog post above.

Garden Fun

We've had fun with our garden this year. I wrote an eHow article on how to grow pumpkins in a container garden, if you are interested.

Joseph is anxiously awaiting ripe pumpkins. He has pumpkin pie dreams. Well, he dreams of pumpkin muffins, too. While the older two are out volunteering at VBS, we had a quiet morning here and picked a few things from our garden. Purple, white and orange carrots along with a few cucumbers and tomatoes.

The last picture shows a new little pumpkin growing next to one we think will be ready to pick soon......

Joseph's Garden

Joseph with some of his garden finds this morning.