It's Summertime in My Garden

And everything is growing. 

I have tomatoes ripening. Some of them we even get to eat (we have a hungry squirrel taking bites out of many of them).

Tomatoes ripening earlier this month

And 6 different types of basil

Genovese

Purple Opal

Pesto Perpetuo

Aristotle (Small-leafed Italian)

Thai

Holy

And my cilantro has bolted, so I pulled up the plant to harvest the coriander seeds. We can add coriander to the list of herbs/spices we rarely, if ever, have to buy again (Along with sage, thyme, rosemary, and oregano).

Cilantro plant ready for harvest

My squash and cucumbers are starting to make fruit as well.

Squash blossom

I also pulled up the remainder of my carrots

Colorful carrots

Weeding and blueberries

Three of my four front garden beds are weeded and my plants are starting to fill in.

And our first little crop of blueberries is ripening

Those are the most exciting things happening in my garden right now. The tomatoes are developing, but not ripe yet, and all the other plants are growing. I need to put out a plate of beer next to some of my plants to catch some of the many slugs. They got all of the strawberries that developed on the plants in the ground and have chewed up most of my little corn seedlings.

First tomatoes

My first tomatoes are forming. Hooray!

Little green tomatoes on my Sungold tomato plant

Air Conditioning

To all that come visit us in the summer: we cannot promise pleasant weather, but at least you'll have a retreat in our house. We had central air conditioning installed this spring. We have already started using it in fits and starts, but it will be more appreciated soon. And my father in law will not have to sleep on the couch due to the lack of air conditioning in his room (nor will he have to build the couch in order to sleep in it).

The air conditioning system that we had put in is a high velocity system, which is great for old houses like ours because they use small tubes instead of giant ducts, thus are much less invasive. And the registers look like this:

There were a couple down-sides. The AC wall unit in the attic was in the way, so had to be removed. The AC system only cools the two main stories, so it's starting to heat up in there. We'll have a new wall until installed eventually. Also, soffits were not included in the AC installation, so we had some exposed silver tubes in both the attic and our bedroom for several weeks until we got a carpenter in. Here are the ones in our bedroom:

But the carpenter did a great job covering up all of the AC work. Here's some pictures of the attic mid-construction:

And the finished product:

We are very happy with the results. Now the only question is: when and how are we going to paint those soffits (especially the very high one over the stairs).

Peonies

I've been waiting for these plants to bloom for a while so that I could figure out what they were. After getting several opinions, figured out they are peonies. Aren't they pretty? They seem to ask to be cut and put in a vase, since the flowers are so big they make the plant flop over when they bloom.

In other news, my tomatoes are blooming and things are sprouting and the herbs are spreading. The weather has warmed up and the plants are loving it.

The first rose of summer

Azaleas

Just wanted to celebrate the azalea bushes I inherited from the previous owners. I love having cut flowers on the kitchen table.

This weekend I turned a big pile of sticks into wood chips that I then mulched my blueberries with

And finished digging out the second of my three back garden beds. I also made a funny little house out of old windows from the garage. I had kept the windows, thinking I would come up with something to do with them, but I hadn't yet and they were in the way. I had to come up with something fast to save them from the trash. You can see it behind that garden bed. I'm going to grow beans on it this year.

Work Weekend

My parents came for the weekend and we got a bunch of work done in the garden.

• We bought herbs to fill in my front planter beds and I distributed a bunch of additional herb seeds throughout the beds

Completed front beds- prior to additional plants

With most of the herb plants.

And another angle

Oregano and purple basil

A cilantro in the middle. Some lettuce seedlings and a tea plant in the right corner.

A trio of sages and two thyme plants

• My parents turned the soil in the back to make room for tomatoes and peppers in the backyard veggie garden.

The wonderful tomato towers my husband built for me

Cherry tomato plants

A close up 

Slicing/cooking tomatoes

• We dug out one of the planter beds that pre-existed us and was full of ivy when we moved in and planted watermelons.

• We were halfway through digging out the second planter bed of them when a rain shower drove us inside. We'll finish that next weekend and plant squash and pumpkins there.

• My dad decided he was part monkey and both cut off some of the dead dogwood branches and removed much of the dead ivy that was still wrapped around the branches

The dogwood tree last summer

And in the fall after I killed the ivy

And now

• We hung our bat box
• My mom pulled out more of the ivy near the back fence and tried to make the fence look a little more presentable.
• We built a simple fence for cucumbers to grow on and planted cucumber seeds

I am very excited to have a veggie garden again. I had a veggie garden throughout my childhood, but have been living in apartments and other rentals for the last 8 years. I tried to grow in pots, but the results were mediocre.

Garden pests

I've been focused in many ways in trying to combat the mosquitos that descended on us every time we went outdoors last summer. I've been pulling out and trimming back ivy, planting things that mosquitos reportedly don't like, and trying to be generally aware of garden maintenance, including eliminating any standing pools of water. In the meantime I forgot about other potential garden pests.

I discovered a new one last weekend, after trying to clean the ivy away on the back fence. Early this week I started developing a rash that got slowly worse over the next couple days. I finally went to see a doctor on Friday. Poison ivy. A nasty case of it. I'm on steroids and antihistamines to help with it and now jump at any sight of an unidentified vine. I thought I was pulling out Virginia creeper, which I've considered a nuisance for months. Apparently some of it, and maybe a lot of it, is not Virginia creeper.

Garden Happenings

I have lots happening in the garden, both of my own doing and of nature's. Bulbs and other perennials have popped up all over the place and I've discovered the identity of a couple additional inherited plants as a result. And my husband and I have been hard at work getting the front yard into shape. I've also planted a handful of plants, with more on the way.

Let's start with the inherited plants. Daffodils came up a couple weeks ago, and now I have tulips amongst my blueberry bushes.

 

I'm not sure I approve of the locations of either of these bulbs, so they are probably going to be transplanted after they finish flowering, but I have enjoyed the unexpected spring display. The roses that I pruned back harshly are coming back nicely. And there are a bunch of grape hyacinth that sprouted at the base of this one.

I still don't know that I like the rose in that location, but I tried quite hard to dig it up and put it elsewhere and it refuses. Even if I wanted to just get rid of it, I'm not sure how I would get it out of the ground. So it might have won.

I couple additional inherited plants include a forsythia bush that I tried to kill last fall, not knowing what it was, but knowing that it was a giant unruly bush. I didn't kill it, and may keep it now that I know what it is (a couple uncut branches flowered this year). Luckily, cutting a giant unruly bush to the ground is exactly what I ought to have done to rejuvenate it.

There is also the trees, the dogwood (which I feared had been killed by ivy, but put out a very nice flower display this spring), the spruce, and the large unknown tree that could possibly be a white willow.

I planted around 50 strawberry plants, and they seem to be doing well. I was worried about them. They came like this:

With 25 plants in that plastic bag. And it snowed a couple days after I planted them. And the soil dried out more than I had realized at one point. I was sure they were all doomed. But except for a couple plants that a squirrel pulled up out of the planter, they all seem to be doing great.

I've also planted rosemary, rhubarb and tea. 

All small right now, but they'll fill out with time. The rhubarb especially. It seems to put out a new leaf every couple of days. The rosemary and tea are slower growing, so will take longer to fill out. I've planted a bunch of lettuce, oregano, and nasturtium seeds in my front planters. Hopefully some of them will sprout. The birds seem to be very interested in that planter, so may be pecking all my seeds/seedlings out of the ground. I need to get some bird netting.

Both the blueberry and kiwi plants that I planted last fall seem to be doing well this spring, which is great. I was really worried about the kiwi plants, which came as pathetic little sticks. Now they are putting out leaves and growing:

My lettuces overwintered just fine in my back garden bed and now are growing well and providing tender greens for salads. I'm hoping to build (or have my handy husband build) a cold frame this fall so that maybe next year we can have home grown lettuce all winter long.

And finally, we poured the arms of the cement paths in the front garden. They look great. I hadn't anticipated out much better they would make the whole thing look. We had gravel paths laid already, but the cement cobblestones give it a much more formal look. We still have to do the middle. That will be next week's task, after my legs forgive me.

Path in progress: