Five Alarm Radishes

We made our first harvest last week - sweet little radishes!

Amy was thrilled; both kids loved pulling them out. Amy could hardly wait to try one at dinner.

But.

These were some darn spicy radishes. Wow.

I warned her, but she bravely tried one anyway, and after a bite (that was chewed and swallowed), she simply declared. "I don't like radishes."

So much for that.

Must plant them again in the fall, when some cooler temps might yield a sweeter result.

Lesson learned: in South Carolina, March is too late to plant radishes.

It was still fun anyway.

Watching the Grass Grow

I am not a very good gardener. I say that not because I can't get anything to grow; on the contrary, I can grow things very well. My problem always comes at about this point in the season, when everything is all blowsy and overgrown and buggy and disheveled... then I sorta lose interest.

Our little vegetable garden really did just fine this season. The tomatoes I lovingly raised from seed all grew vigorously and while the "purple cherokee" kept splitting before I could enjoy them, the two cherry tomato plants produced abundantly. We had potatoes, and would have enjoyed cucumbers and a few beans if they had not all peaked while we were away. But since I am now on a mission to ready our house for moving I decided it was time to officially undo the vegetable garden. (Which Don first installed back here, by the way.)

It actually took me a very small amount of time to ruthlessly clip and rip out the remaining plants, take a big crowbar to the bed, and rake the dirt smooth. We had a bit of leftover grass seed to use but I will need more. I moved one of our dinky wire fences in front of this patch to deter general trampling by children... feline trampling seems unavoidable.

Amy was a little suspicious of all this "undoing" so I simply explained that the veggies were done and now we were growing a grass garden. That was enough for her (not that our moving is a secret to her, by the way), and she quickly sat down to Watch the Grass Grow. Excellent. One pre-move project done, one zillion to go.

Creepy-Crawlies and Other Things Taking Over My Yard

There is magic that happens in a garden when you leave for a few weeks. I swear, nothing grows with such enthusiasm as it does when no one is looking.

We have been growing Morning Glories in this yard every summer, and saving the seeds. So between the self-sowing and reseeding that we do, we have achieved (perhaps over-achieved) our goal of having morning glories everywhere. Oh my.

I couldn't even get the lawnmower out tonight because there is a vine wrapped all the way up the handle.

But really, I can't get enough... this is what the corner of the yard looked like when we got home around 5 pm last night... a little scary, right? I mean, the wind chimes have been swallowed whole.

But I step outside this morning and, well, wow. And the pictures really don't do them justice.

The vegetable garden is in there somewhere, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Today I focused on pulling out some spent sunflowers (seeds eaten and everything!), and deadheading the cannas. And in doing so I found this lady:

Now, in four summers here in the quasi-south my spider-creep-out threshold has increased dramatically but still, heebie-jeebies! that is one big spider. Of course I leave them be, because I am a good nature-girl and I know spiders are my friends and all that, and really, I have no desire to mess with a spider over 3" long. I think what creeps me out about the spiders in the yard is not only how many separate species of gigundo spider we've come across, but where are they when we don't see them...?

Anyway, on to a far less creepy creepy-crawly:

Thoughts? We did not plant this. I don't think we even ever ate anything like this. (We composted right on top of our gardens during the winter). This mystery squash-thing is like a large, flat, white, jack-be-little pumpkin. It's really cute... kinda looks like a flying saucer... I don't know whether to eat it or decorate with it, but hey, gotta love the volunteers.

Oh, and if you need a little music to go with this post, try this, a not-very-high-quality version of the song I get in my head every time I step out the backdoor in the morning. One of Don's and my first dates was a mini road trip to see these guys.... just about exactly seven years ago! Good times.

PS - Got a nice chatty letter from Don today, sounds like everything is just ducky, and he should get a chance to call this week or next!

This Week, in Pictures

Family here, a boat ride, a busy garden, the pool, Don's last week of work at the station, and of course, a few cats. Feeling short on words these days (maybe it's a summer thing?) but there still has been plenty going on. More verbiage sometime soon!

The Garden

Today's photo credits once again go to Amy. All the shots in this post are totally by her, except for the canna lily at the end, and the sunflower banner. (Thought I'd warm up the blog a bit for summer.)

Our garden is doing quite well this year! Last year was a little disappointing, for reasons I don't really recall, but this year our small yard once again has that cozy, green, tropical feel. The grass has finally won out over the dandelions and so far we haven't had too many pest problems on the veggies. We had several very dry weeks in late May and early June, but lately precipitation has been just about right.

Of course, the first sunflower to bloom was NOT one of the ones I planted, but a volunteer. It is taller than me and is currently bent with the weight of a lot of seeds - I saw a goldfinch pair there today. Amy and I also planted some cutting mix of sunflowers in the same bed, and those are all quite tall and just about to bloom. Behind them are the canna lilies once again, thriving.

It is occurring to me as I write this that some more illustrative pictures would go nicely with all this pithy explanation, but I don't have any of those right now... I just have the three-year-old perspective pictures. But I think I like those better anyway.

We have three tomato plants - 2 cherry somethings and one "purple cherokee" - both heirloom varieties that I successfully started from seed! I do wish I'd started them about 3 weeks earlier; they would have been fine.

Early in the season we also dug in some grocery store potatoes that had started to sprout. They grew like crazy and threatened to take over the garden so I took them out and have since planted some beans (which are surprising me, since this picture was taken, with their runners - I need a trellis)... And Amy wanted to plant radishes and carrots, too. I have also recently put in some cucumbers. I know how fast they'll grow in this heat, and with a growing season that extends well into the fall here there should be plenty of time for them yet.

It seems the little photographer snuck in a self-portrait.

I was questioning whether I took this picture and just didn't remember (I was using the camera that night, too). But the angle is right for her little arms, and I know she took it because she's actually looking at the lens - she never looks at me if I'm trying to take her picture. Mr. William was of course in on the fun as well.

The astilbes did very well again this year; they are just finishing up blooming. And we planted morning glories everywhere, though are still awaiting their flowers. More pictures of all of this as the season progresses!

Garden Tour

While going through pictures the other night I realized I had taken hardly any outdoor/garden pictures so far this year. The boy has definitely been hogging all the camera time, but also I haven't been quite as wowed by our garden as I was last year. Most things have been doing reasonably well, but it has been H-O-T here, and extremely dry, and we've had some pest problems, so in general our backyard isn't quite as tropical and lush as it was last year. Anyway, I went out there with my camera this evening and here's the rundown:

We had cannas in every corner of the yard last summer, but after a very cold and snowy winter, only the ones up against the house made it. Just as well, because we wanted to reclaim some area for other plants. These here are undoubtedly overcrowded, and shorter growth and fewer blooms seem to be the result.

Once again, the "volunteer" sunflowers (from dropped bird seed) have grown much better than the sunflower seeds I purchased. These in the corner aren't as big as last June's roof-scrapers, but some have multiple flowers and are quite pretty. As soon as they are done I want to pull out this garden and all its weedy growth and return it to the lawn - the corner location makes it too hard to tend. Also in this photo: petunias that are suffering from the heat and my failure to dead-head, and geraniums that had to be moved off the fence, also because of the direct sun and extreme heat. They are doing better now with a little shade.

The blooms are spent now, but our astilbes bloomed this year, and they were gorgeous. At the far end of this shot is half our vegetable garden. The other half is in the raised bed that Don built back in March. We started off with zucchini, green beans, and carrots there. The carrots are still growing, the green beans are pretty much done (but we did have enough for several dinners), but the zucchini plant got demolished by... something... Don reported it suddenly and completely wilted while the kids and I were away. We did get one big zucchini before it bit the dust, and I made zucchini bread this week.

Anyway, in the veggie garden shown above we have tomatoes that are doing well despite some mysterious wilt early in the season, and a ravaging by four huge tomato hornworms a few weeks ago. Some green peppers are coming along, as is the basil (I've already made pesto). Glads are in the corner but they don't seem terribly enthusiastic.

The 2010 Most Enthusiastic Flower award goes to this Mum. I planted a bunch of mums in front of our first house in Rhode Island - when we moved across the neighborhood there I dug up this mum and a little rose plant and they lived in pots for the next three years, even surviving the trip to Maryland. This spring I thought I'd clear up some clutter by putting them both in one big planter, not expecting much from either. But this mum completely exploded in its new digs! The poor rose has been completely taken over, and I now feel a bit foolish for combining the two. Also tried a few freesia bulbs in the front of this planter - one bloomed, but they, too, were completely taken over by the mum.

Stayed tuned for an interior tour in an upcoming post - we've made some big changes!

May, So Far

The rose bushes in front of our house are blooming again. We can take absolutely no credit here - they are part of the pre-installed shrubbery and are maintained by all the busy bee law mower and landscaping people. In fact, every March these guys come through with one of those chain-saw-style pruners and whack this huge rose bush practically to the ground, and ever year it responds with even more vigorous growth and blooms. All. Summer. Long. So much for a delicate touch when pruning roses.

Here's a picture from our pool opening last weekend. This started out as a hugely cranky morning for Amy and me. Most of the crank came from spending a very hot and sticky Sunday morning at Walmart with everyone else in town - buying vegetable plants, and this pool, only to get out to the car and realize that the Subaru was not going to be quite as accommodating of awkward cargo as the Explorer is and consequently driving home not being able to see out my rear window.

THEN thinking it would be a great idea to get all my plants to the backyard in one trip by loading them in the pool. Then having Amy do nothing but get in my way and make the walk around the house the most sweaty, annoying, pool-bending 50 yards I have ever experienced. This is the sort of thing that happens when Don works on the weekend. Anyway, we recovered, and later in the afternoon Amy had a lot of fun scooping things out of the new pool with her butterfly net. Day salvaged.

Last week Amy had her first "real" haircut at the salon. She's had little trims before, on her bangs and to even up some ends, but she's never had enough length to really get a style going. Above is a before picture - if I could get her to keep pigtails or barrettes in it wouldn't matter so much, but as much as she likes wearing "pony hair" she can't resist pulling them out inside of an hour.

So I made her her very own appointment where I get my hair cut and she made it through the experience without any meltdowns. The lollipop won her over from the beginning. She got some better bangs, and a nice amount off the back so now she has less of the "baby hair" look and a little more going-on-3-year-old style. Oh, and we capped off that experience with a special mother-daughter lunch at Panera Bread. She and I can pretty much have a real conversation over a meal now, and being out at a restaurant with her, just chatting over lunch was a huge flash into the future and how much more fun such outings are going to be with every little bit that she grows up.

And what general update would be complete without a shot of a cat in the middle of something?

Still to come, some pictures of this quilt, all finished at last. In the meantime I've got to put on my bookkeeper hat for a bit, then get to bed at a decent hour. Happy Month of May!

Birthday and Such

I am getting a bit behind on my project updates but the three of us have had a nice stretch of days here and I thought I'd share some family activities first.

Saturday morning Amy and I met up with Don at the station while he was catching up on some work. One of Amy's long-time favorite activities is throwing stones off the pier ("that was a HUGE splash!"). She actually has quite a decent throwing arm, something she definitely did not get from me.



Warm and sunny day, little girl in cute stripey pants. Good stuff.






And whenever I get extra time with my guy I'm a happy camper.



Sooo... Monday was my, ehem, 27th birthday. I felt a little Eeyore-ish in the morning: "Rain. Figures." And Amy woke up at 6. And I was catching a cold. Awesome start. But Don got home from work mid-morning and the rest of the day was very nice. There is nothing quite like a two-year-old's enthusiasm to make a birthday feel special. She presented me with birthday card ("Mommy I got you a Christmas card for your birthday!") and Don got me this book. In the afternoon I took a solo trip to the Kohls that just opened in town - it was probably better for our budget when there wasn't one nearby...

For dinner I subjected everyone to one of my favorite childhood dinners, cheese fondue. Don liked it much more than he thought he would, but Amy wanted nothing to do with it and requested a salad (seriously). And then we topped off a half pound of cheese with the birthday-cakiest of birthday cake: Funfetti with Rainbow Chip frosting. Yes. No culinary points scored, but oh it was quite good. And again Amy's enthusiasm totally made the moment.



Now enough about me. Today was a reasonably nice day so we bought the lumber and soil to make a raised bed in our tiny yard. More on all our little gardens as the season unfolds. But we (and by we I mean Don) at least got the hardscaping out of the way.



Amy took a break from "helping" Daddy to pick these teeny tiny white flowers, which she called "honey roses."



Amy was out of steam before the project was complete and she and I went in to watch Cinderella, so I did not finish my photo-journaling of this project, but here's the finished frame just before Don dug out the ground and set it it. Perfect!



Now, with any luck I'll squeeze in another post before the week is out and get closer to being caught up with the goings-on around here - it's been a busy month!

October Weekend

We've had a lovely weekend here. Saturday was warm and wet and weird but we made the most of it with a lot of inside-outside housework, and Amy spent some quality time with a bucket of water.

Today was much more seasonable, so we bundled up and went to Bowles Farm for some autumn fun. Amy loved the petting zoo, and the giant "sandbox" filled with dried corn kernels (I think she'd still be playing there if we didn't bribe her away with a wheelbarrow ride). And we brought home two pumpkins (three if you count the one in the red jacket).

The weekends are always too short, but this was a particularly nice one. Hope yours was, too!

How the Garden Does Grow...

Amy and I just returned from a week away and as always I marvel at how much can grow and change in the garden in just a few days. I've been wanting to write about our garden for sometime so as long as the pictures cooperate this will be a bit of a catch-up, catch-all garden post.



This year's winner in the category "Surprise Success" goes to the sunflowers. Eight-foot-tall, gorgeous, dinner plate sunflowers that grew all the way from dropped bird seed. Of course the organic-heirloom-whatever sunflower seeds I paid $3.49 for did not even germinate, but these vigorous volunteers have been wowing us for weeks. One of the smaller ones, shown above, even got beat down in a rainstorm, and before I could right it it simply straightened up and continued growing, all the way to a sweet little flower. The three flowers in front of our window are the size of small trees, and now hang down with the weight of maturing seeds. Oh, and those are some canna lilies mixed in, too, which the hummingbirds seem to be enjoying.




Speaking of hummingbirds, I was shocked to discover a complete rampaging of my larger hummingbird feeder when we got home. The squirrels(?) removed all four of the plastic yellow flowers and gnawed a huge hole in the base! The nerve!



The morning glories have been doing nicely, despite an onslaught of Japanese beetles. I knocked a bunch into a cup of water today and last I checked they're still swimming around in there. I'm still not sure how I feel about that but at least they're off my plants.




And lastly, harvest: So far we've picked at least a dozen cherry tomatoes, three "golden jubilee" (I think that was the name) yellow tomatoes (so sweet!), and at least five cucumbers. Just getting warmed up - and this all from our postage-stamp backyard. Today I snipped off a wilting sunflower head and set it out for the birds. Now if that isn't some bird seed that was worth its weight in gold!