I dug it up at work!!

Last year before I worked for Chili's they had ornamental peppers as part of their landscape. This year I watched a plant like this grow outside the front door. I researched it and found that it was called a "Black Pearl" ornamental pepper. I also found different suggestions as to weather you could eat it or not. With the cold coming on I didn't want it to die so I dug it, well actually 3 of them, up. I now have it sitting in my kitchen. I am not sure if the 2 large plants are going to make it, as they have been here for a couple of days and are still rather wilty. The third smaller plant looks better and will probably do ok.

As you can see it is rather a pretty plant. I hope to start a bunch from seed and maybe sell them. I have been toying with the idea of starting a business selling seeds and plants. There is a local domestic violence shelter, beautiful on 40 acres, close by that I would like to find the funding to start a business there that will allow them to make a little money and help the women make some money for when they go out on their own again. Right now that is difficult for them.

We will see where the future leads. Definitely toward some more plants growing!!

Not doing my job

I started the foundation for the vegetable garden and planted it, but Alan has been the one to take care of and harvest most of it. I just really haven't been doing my part of the job. I am helping him today can some tomatoes, and his mom came up last week and helped do a batch then as well. If we are good about staying up with the canning then we will have tomatoes for forever. I told him today that we need to make our own spaghetti sauce and salsa. Next years garden needs to be more attuned to that idea.

On the left there you will see my real passion. Flowers!! You really don't have to do as much to them as you do vegetables, but they really aren't as beneficial either. Well, for me they are therapeutic and keep me sane, but they wouldn't feed me if I needed it. I think sometimes that sane is better than fed - HA!!

Anyway, that picture shows a little part of my front flower bed that has some Stella De Oro day lilies, morning glories and "Apricot" zinnias. It is a nice part of the whole thing.

This is part of my side yard where the trash cans used to sit. The spot was bald and ugly. I got most of these plants really cheap on the " 'bout ready to die" cart at Lowes. It is much nicer up close. The vine growing up the fence is a blue flowering morning glory. It is very pretty in the earlier parts of the day.

Yeah, I like my flowers. I have had lots of seeds from the day lilies and 4 O'Clocks. If any one has other day lily seeds they want to swap, just let me know, cause I would like to have some different day lilies.

First harvests and working hard

This first picture is of the blue lake bush green beans I picked yesterday. It is a lot. The picture doesn't show them well, but believe me there are a lot of them. Alan and I were out puttering around and I happened to look close at the plants and semi shouted, "There they are!!". Alan was a bit confused because I started moving fast up into the garden. I explained myself stating that I had seen the plants flowering but didn't know when the beans would show up and then, TA DAH!! There they were in there wonderful glory!! I plan on pickling some of them. Pickled green beans are VERY good.

I had stated before that one side of the garden was growing better than the other. I think you can see what I mean. The right side there is definitely lagging behind the left. I did, however, get more beans from the smaller plants than the larger ones. It is hard to tell but there is a compost pile up on the upper right corner. We are just waiting to see if the right side there benefits from it. We just might have to wait a bit to find that out. So far we have gotten sugar peas and kale from the garden. There is "tons" of stuff growing, we are just waiting for stuff to ripen now.

As far as hard work goes, here is a picture of our deck, well, where the deck is going to go. I used the tiller to pull out the dirt to make room for it. We are getting ready to head over to lowes to get it all set up. Hopefully we will have it within 2 weeks. The contractor guy wanted to inspect the site before they committed to building it, and was pleasantly surprised to see we had actually done the work. He said that a lot of people don't do what they say they are going to do. He is also going to loan me his small jackhammer so I can bust up the concrete stoop right outside the back door. Ok, I am off to Lowes!!

I just give up

Living in todays world just really sucks. I know things were "hard" back in the day, but damn, it just really couldn't have been as bad as it is now. I mean, what do people who make minimum wage do? How do they live? It has been a hard year, and I really HATE dwelling on it. I just keep pushing things away and focusing on other things so that the bad doesn't seem to be there, and then it just all explodes. My mom says that I am SO STRONG, I think that is a big bunch of bunk, or I could come up with solutions to problems and never really worry about them. I am really just at my wits end. So, does anyone know of a job that pays around 50,000 a year so I can pay my bills? It is just really hard to have your income cut so much and try to recover from it. Especially when there just isn't enough money.

And you know what? I really isn't "that bad". I mean all my kids are healthy and are great kids, I actually have a house to live in, for now. I have a job and friends, but the bills haven't changed since the income has and trying to juggle it all is just a bit stressful.

I think what makes me sad is something an old friend said when I went to visit in Somerset. We were talking about kids attitudes today and how in their 20's they want to live like we do in our 40's. She said, "They just don't realize that we have worked to be able to afford vacations, putting pools in, and buying cars, they want it all now!". So what makes me sad is that I am back there with the 20 somethings and can't even keep up, and it isn't just because I "want" things I can't afford. I can't afford the things I have to have!!! I just hate stepping so far back and I just can't think of anything else to do.

Like I said, I give up.

Allowing things to happen

I am not much of a landscape artist. I get an idea about how I want things to look and then I go crazy and add, add, add until I don't like it any more and then I redo it. Of course, for me it is all fun and allows me to get some exercise. I can't pass up plants when they are on sale or on clearance more specifically.

In the front of the house the roses and coriopsis are working out great. I knew once they filled in more I would get the effect I wanted, it was the waiting that was hard. I got a Nandina "Jaytee" at Lowes, and as I just researched it, it doesn't have the growth I thought it would. We have some in front of the restaurant that grow tall, this one is compact and doesn't grow tall like I had hoped. Anyway, it is pretty and adds interest all year round. I had hoped to put it in a naked corner but it won't work and I will have to find another place for it.

I had to stop and think, but now I have to make another area to plant. I have been thinking about it for a bit, but I have just the place. There is a corner up above the garden that I have planted a Redbud in and I am going to landscape that area. The Nandina will work perfectly under that tree and they can "grow up" together. The Redbud is only 5(?) years old, still pretty young as I got it as a sapling and is only about 4 feet high at the moment. What is interesting is that I have 3 that are the same age, all planted in my yard in different areas and how their growth is so different. Anyway.

What I wanted to post about was allowing things to happen. That is usually what happens with me and thankfully things end up ok. I was going to talk about how I get things because they are cool looking or I just want it, and I do it without thought as to where they should go, they just end up somewhere and it ends up working. I wanted red and yellow as my main colors, and adding the red day lilies on the other side of the front door completed my idea. Now things just need to fill in and be even more beautiful. The area between my sidewalk and the road needs some tweaking. I have just been allowing things to grow and using it as a holding ground for plants that I don't know what to do with yet. Now the idea is forming more solidly. Roses and day lilies. All kinds of both, that is what I want that area to be mostly. Easy and beautiful and colorful.

Ok, I have procrastinated enough from what I HAVE to do today - clean and organize the garage. Yuck.

Recent aquisitions

I am sure you all have heard me say that I don't like to pay full price for plants. This plant to the left is just such a thing. I got this Adolphe Rousseau Peony half price at one of the local Lowes. It was looking pretty rough as it hadn't been watered properly. Once I got it home and some good old H2O added to it, it perked right up. Of course it hasn't bloomed like the wonderful picture on the left there, but I am waiting in high anticipation for it. This is the first peony I have owned of my own self. Of course my mom had one when I was growing up and I remember it being covered in ants. Ants aren't always bad, so if I get flowers like that I think I can handle them.

Now this little lovely is a Scarlet Trumpet Honeysuckle. I DID pay full price for this one. I like things that are unusual and if I see them and get a hankering for it, I actually walk away. Of course I check the price and the availability and then wait to see if they get all bought up, and hope that they go on sale before they disappear. This one didn't disappear, nor did it go on sale, but that is ok. I have it planted with my other honeysuckle. I think once they start growing they will be beautiful together.

That is all for today. Oh, just quickly, the veggies are doing great. One interesting thing is that one side of the garden is growing better than the other. Our hypotheses is that having the compost bin at the good growing side made that one grow better, so, we are going to make another one on the other side and see what happens. I will keep you posted!!

Projects

Ok, so this was one of my latest projects. I always wanted to "dress up" the side yard of the house. This is not the ultimate end of what I want, but it is a start. I just used my tiller to loosen the sod and moved it to my compost pile then dug way down to get the soil lighter and more ready for things to be planted. I had purchased red azaleas and some kind of low growing shrub evergreen thing that blooms white. They were on clearance at Lowes so I bought them - Ha!! I am sure I still have the tags somewhere so I can give the actual name sometime soon. I also planted four o'clocks to the left of the dogwood there. I have heard that flower gets the Japanese bettles that are on your good stuff to come to them, eat them, and then die. That is what I have heard.
Wednesday I went to the horse park and got a load of compost to put around all the stuff out front. It has been awhile and was due. It makes things look a bit neater and feeds the flowers too. Next step is to get me a bag of horse manure and make manure tea to fertilize things. I will do that a little later in the summer though, that way I kill two birds with one stone, watering and fertilizing at the same time. I still need one more load of compost this year to get everything done I want done. That is what I say now, but once I get it I am sure I will find a reason to "need" more - HA!!

I also added more planting area in the back. We are going to build a deck and this should butt right up against it so you can just look down
into the flowers.

I think growing flowers is easy, maybe it is just my attitude toward it. I like growing a vegetable garden, it is a bit more rewarding than flowers seeing as you get to EAT what you grow. You can eat some flowers but veggies are usually better. In this bed I put orange cosmos, orange marigolds, pink petunias, multi colored dahlias, red impatients, and blue lobelia. I love the mix of colors. As it grows and fills in I will take and post more pictues. It should be beautiful here soon.

Wow, I didn't know they were that big!!

Okay, so there has been a mole in my yard for a couple of days, it just appeared, well the tunnels and mole hills showed up. I wasn't sure what it was so I looked it up on line and decided that it was a mole. Then, although I really don't mind them, I found out how to get rid of it. They actually aeriate the soil and they eat grubs that can actually kill your plants. The bad things about them is that you have raised areas and mole hills in your yard, and they can uproot plants and damage their root systems. So, since the garden is new I didn't want to take the chance he would get in there and tear it up looking for his invertebrates to eat.

We took pictures but they won't load so I will put it up later. What amazed me is how DAMN BIG that sucker was. I put a hose in the tunnel and watched for where it would come up at. McKenzie was prepared with gloves on and a cooler to put it in so we could take it away with out harming it. If it comes back then I will take it farther next time. I think it showed up because I don't poison my yard with pesticides so the eating is good there. I got the hose going and we just waited until he started to surface. I saw the earth moving in one area and then redirected the hose and he went a little further then decided to come up there so he wouldn't drown. He decided to come out right at the edge of the garden and once he cleared the dirt Kenzie grabbed him and put him in the cooler. I was shocked at how big it was, I had seen small, the size of mice, moles before but this bad boy was 6 inches long and about 5-6 inches in diameter. Lordy!!

We carried him down to the end of the street to the edge of "the woods" and let him go. McKenzie wanted to watch him dig away and it was pretty interesting. She named him Roger - Ha!! I hope to get a picture up as soon as I can because it is pretty cool!!