Harvest Time

What a beautiful late summer day this is!

As all of you who raise and grow your own food know, it is very satisfying to look at a day's harvest. We have been picking beans, broccoli, lettuce, and cucumbers for a few weeks.  And there is more out in the garden, but this is all I had time to deal with today.

Only one lonely tomato.  There are quite a few tomatoes out there, but they are not ripening very fast this summer.  The nights have been cooler, so that could have something to do with it.

We love knowing where our produce comes from and that it hasn't been covered with pesticides or altered in any way.   The same goes for pork and chicken which we raise ourselves, and fresh eggs from our neighbor's free range chickens.

Rain and More Rain!

It wasn't more than a week ago that I commented to Mr. M that we really could use some rain.  We had planted a few things in the vegetable garden and the soil was so dry.
Well, did we get rain!!  As of today, we have had 6 3/4 inches of rain since Monday night.  The soil is plenty wet now!

These are pictures of our pumpkin patch a couple of days ago.  Thankfully, we had not planted the pumpkin seeds yet.  This is a low area of our garden, and usually does not get flooded like this---about once every 6 or 8 years, it is under water for a few days.


We are hoping to be able to get out and do some planting in the rest of the garden now that rain is no longer in the forecast.  It will be nice to see the sun again after so many days without it!

Laundry

This time of year is so exciting because I get to hang laundry outside again.  Love the fresh smell of the clothes after they have been hanging outside in the sunshine and wind!

And the grass is going to be ready for the first mowing of the year this week.

I love Spring!!

Spring!

SPRING!!

So happy winter is over.  These are the first flowers of the year, arriving at Easter time.

A pretty daffodil.

This one is a lungwort from my sister.  The first couple of years, I didn't think it would survive.  Now it has beautiful little flowers every Spring.

And finally, this delicate blue flower.  I have no idea what it is and do not remember planting it.  It showed up a couple of years ago, and I am so glad it did.

Hope you are enjoying this lovely time of year.

Miscellany

This beautiful hydrangea called "Incrediball" is one that I planted 3 years ago.  Each year it gets bigger, and this year it's loaded with more flowers than ever.

And here are a few quilts I have finished in the past few months.

This is a quilt top that my Mom made several years ago.  My sister got it after Mom died.  I found some fabric in my stash to do a border, back, and binding.  So I finished it for her.

This is the donation quilt I made.  It's similar to another one I made earlier for friends.

This is from a kit I bought at a shop in Grand Rapids, MN, during the Minnesota Shop Hop a few years ago.

I've done a few smaller projects, but will wait until next time to post pictures.

Hope you are enjoying summer!

Garden Work in Progress

 

 

Life has been very busy lately, but I have managed to make some good progress on that messy garden area.

 

 

Now the Baptisia is no longer competing with a tangle of weeds.  The pink geranium in the lower foreground was lost in weeds, and I was surprised to see it not only still surviving but blooming as well.

The iris are not crowded anymore.  There are still a couple of small oak seedlings growing in here.  I hate to just cut them off, but I don't know if they would survive being dug up and transplanted.  I may try it though.  The blue in the background is a sheet.  I didn't put mulch over it because I want the weeds to die out and then I'll put down mulch after I plant some flowers in that area. 

You can tell that there is still a lot of work to do, but I am pleased with the progress so far.

Re-doing a Messy Garden

Good morning!

Lately, I've been re-doing one of the flower gardens.  Over the past couple of years I have neglected it because of other things going on.  When we moved here eleven years ago, this particular garden had phlox planted in it.  They were pretty, but they act like a weed!  They crowded out almost every other kind of flower that I planted.  So, they had to go!  As you can see, even a couple of trees got started in there, as well as lots of weeds.  It was a mess.  That poor iris looks so lonely.

So, I've been pulling up the phlox and weeds, digging the roots out, and covering the area with a couple of old sheets and then wood mulch on top of them.  It looks better already.  Will post a picture when I am finished with it.

I've used old sheets to keep weeds down in other flower beds, and they work very well. The very few weeds that do try to come through are easy to pull.  I only grow perennials, so these beds have become very low maintenance.  Works for me!  As much as I enjoy working in the gardens and digging in the dirt, I don't want to spend a lot of time with weeds.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought two garden statues at a garage sale when I was visiting my daughter and her family.  They were $8 for the pair.  At first I was only going to buy the boy statue, but the guy at the sale talked me into getting the girl as well, and now I'm glad I did.  They look very cute in this garden. 

 

I was going to post some quilt pictures, but that will have to wait until next time.

Hope you are enjoying these nice early summer (late spring officially) days.