Garden Love

I snapped some pictures of my garden today. The veggies are coming along nicely - and we have peas this year! {last year the peas succumbed to a late frost and promptly shriveled up. Our harvest was a meager 7 pods! I tossed them into a salad. They were yummy, but the overall result was disappointing} I'm trying a few new things this year: watermelon, cantaloupe, and eggplant. I also found a purple bell pepper that I am excited to try.


See those beautiful, full peas - with loads of blossoms?!? I'm super excited.


Hey, look! Peas!

I think overall, the garden is doing better this year. Maybe I just feel a little more confident, or maybe it's my super awesome compost. Really, though. I am proud of my compost. And I think secretly Robert is too. He thought it was going to be a disaster.

I was happy with last years results {and my veggies seem to be happy too}, but I decided to move the composters to a different location this year. They should still get plenty of sun, but they will be closer to the garden, the chicken coop, and I will have easier access from the back door. Last year I had a kitchen bowl that I would throw scraps in throughout the day. Then I would transport them to a bucket out the back door. When that got either full or gross looking, I would take it over to the composter and dump it out.

This year, the composter is just outside the back door - so I can walk the scraps directly from the kitchen, out the door, and throw them over the balcony into the composter. So far I like it. We never really use that back door, so I'm not concerned about possible smell or flies. We'll see how the compost does, but I have my fingers crossed because it's a much more convenient system for me.

I also made a trip to 4 neighborhood Starbucks' and asked them for their coffee grounds. {Thanks Shelley!} I ended up with just over 5 bags of coffee grounds and mixed them in with my existing compost. I think any time the compost starts to smell, I'm going to do this. The area around the composters smelled heavenly for days! But I guess that only works if you like the smell of coffee.....




We put in a rose bed last fall when the roses were half off. It's right next to the brick house, facing south. They seem to love it there. One large rose bush existed when I bought the house, but it didn't produce very many blooms and was pretty sad looking.


After 3 years of pruning and fertilizing, it's in full glory this year. I'm so glad I kept it! The bush is over 8' tall. You just can't buy a rose bush like that. With so many changes to the house, it's fun to have something that was original. This rose bush and the huge pine tree will probably be the only survivors when I've had my way with the yard!


One of the new rose bushes. I love the soft yellow against the green leave and dark bark. We debated over bark color for a while, and settled on this charcoal black. I think the plants look fantastic against it, and it complements all the stonework Robert did last summer.

This is the first bloom for this rose bush. I like the variety of colors in this single bud. We have Red, pink, yellow and orange roses and this one blends them all together.

This white rose bush is growing profusely. None of the rose tickets specified how large they would get, and I think this one is going to be a doosie. I am probably going to have to transplant it this year so it has more space. I'm already praying I can move it successfully. I love it - the contrast between the pure white and the dark, glossy leaves is stunning. I want to give it space so it can be seen better - and so I can allow it to grow larger.

I took this picture before I removed all the spent blooms. The buds start out a vibrant orange, change to pink and they open and enlarge, and then fade to a soft pink - almost white. I'm about to wax poetic here, sorry. I just had to take this picture because I thought it was such a beautiful, natural representation of life. The vibrant young bud, the full and mature blossom, and the fading, spent bloom. It stuck a cord in me, I guess. Even though this is not a perfectly beautiful picture, I thought the beauty was in the truth of it.

Gardening is turning me into a nut. I love it, though!