As the Garden Grows

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My garden blooms

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I haven’t been taking as many photographs of my garden this summer as I usually do.

I think this is in part because of the hand injury that I incurred in early June which made it hard for me to do any gardening, watering or even to hold a camera – or blog. The other reason why I haven’t taken a lot of pictures is because, once the really hot weather hit my garden – in June and July and it didn’t rain much at all – hint – not at all … and I wasn’t watering much because of my hand injury – my plants weren’t blooming very much at all.

Oh don’t get me wrong. My garden was getting some care. My husband was watering it on and off, but not as much as it should have been watered in all that heat and I think even if we’d been watering it daily the plants still would have been in survival mode because it was a much hotter summer than ever.

When my plants have bloomed the flowers have been spectacular. Thankfully, now the we’ve reached the end of August the weather is starting to cool somewhat and we are getting a bit more rain so my plants are a lot happier than they have been for a while. That means they’re starting to bloom again.

The Fairy Rose

Purple Clematis

Purple Clematis jackmanii

Iceberg Rose

Iceberg Rose

What’s blooming in your garden?

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It’s been a lackluster gardening season – except for the tomatoes!

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It’s been a strange gardening year.

On one hand I think I did more work in the garden this year than I have in the last two or three – in other words I was feeling a bit better and was more into getting my hands dirty and my arms scratched up by the roses, but then the weather was well … blah … more like a warm spring than summer, so the plants didn’t grow as well as I’d hoped earlier in the year and that put a damper on my garden enthusiasm.

It’s a stunted garden in some ways because of the cold July we had. My Cleomes are only just now starting to grow … they’ve reached maybe 3.5 to 4 feet in height where they should be about 6 feet tall by now.

My Tomatoes are possibly my best garden crop this year. In the past few years I’ve planted my tomatoes late, and well last summer was rainy and cold too so my tomatoes never really turned red. This year I planted them early enough that they grew well in June, stagnated in July with green fruit on the vine that wasn’t really growing and then come August the tomatoes really took off (as they should!).

We’ve been eating Tomatoes since maybe the first week of August (second at the latest) and it’s been great. There’s nothing better than a fresh tasty tomato right off the vine.

I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches, adding tomatoes to our salads and other foods and pretty soon I think I might try grilling some tomatoes or well maybe sauteing them as my sisters recipe calls for putting them in a frying pan (saute garlic in oil then cut a tomato in half and cook – apparently the garlic oil just goes right up into the tomato – delicious!).

I think I’ll also have enough tomatoes that I’ll be able to freeze some for tomato sauce.

I discovered a very easy way to freeze tomatoes a few years ago. Forget dropping them in boiling water to get the skin off before freezing. Just place whole tomatoes on a baking pan and place in the freezer. Let them freeze (while not touching other tomatoes) and then place them in a freezer bag. Later on when you thaw them the skins just slip off as they thaw and once thawed you can put them in a pot and start making a nice tomato sauce from scratch.

One thing that I must do soon is take some pictures of the garden and all the plants in bloom. For some reason I haven’t taken as many pictures this year as I usually do. I could be short on pictures for Green Thumb Sundays in the winter if I don’t start snapping away now!

How is your garden doing this week? What late summer/ fall flowers are blooming?

A little yard work

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I couldn’t stop myself … I couldn’t resist … On Monday I finally went outside and did some yard work! First Spring cleaning for the garden this year!

Of course I had to pick a rather cool day and naturally, as per usually, I didn’t go out during the afternoon when it would be warmer and brighter … nope, Chris and I waited until it was about 7 pm before deciding to go outside to take some pictures of the Crocus and other plants that we spotted coming up and that of course turned into what was supposed to be a short lawn raking session.

All in all we were outside for close to two hours and the temp fell to -1 Celsius (30 F) by the time we came back indoors tired and frozen!

Most of the leaves and dead grass has now been raked off the front and back lawns. There were a few areas, shady areas, where the ground was still quite hard and the leaves were a frozen mass stuck to the grass. LOL

We even started to take some of the leaves off of the garden beds. I was surprised at how many of our plants were growing! Now that we’re getting some rain and it’s above zero most of the time I expect to see a lot more green – perhaps by the weekend.

I discovered that the Sedum had little green nubs coming up, there were some tulip leaves, maybe some Grape hyacinth leaves, our two hydrangeas have leaf buds, and the Chives had doubled in size from when I first discovered them last week. I also think some of the German Iris leaves had started to come up and green as well. There’s so much life in the garden hidden under a thin layer of leaves.

Have you been out in your yard doing any Spring cleaning yet? Discovered any plants that you didn’t expect to be coming up yet?

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