Please send the Sun!

Would anyone care to tell me where they placed my sunshine?  And warmth?  It's been almost a week since I had a chance to play in my garden!

Just last week...

We got peas in the ground, and cute teepee for them to grow up on.  They aren't tied together in this picture, but they are tied together now, and I can't wait to see them grow!  We also got carrots in, which I'm excited about.  They grew well last year, although I didn't even get all of them out of the ground before winter arrived.  This year I went with a Kaleidoscope mix, which has white, purple, yellow and orange carrots.

Tomato seedlings!

On my desk, which is in front of a Southern facing window, are my growing seedlings of tomatoes, eggplant and peppers.  They seem to be doing well- I noticed the tomatoes are beginning to grow their true leaves, which means I can transplant them to some  bigger newspaper cups soon.

We're supposed to get some warm days next week, so hopefully by this time next week, I'll have my lettuces, spinach, kale, bok choy, scarlet runner beans, onions, and sugar snap peas in the ground.  And then after that I'll be digging up at least 2 new vegetable beds, and creating a space for some herbs.  I also have a ton of sunflowers to put in this year, enough that we might have a mini sunflower forest growing in the yard.

Let's hope for some sun!

It's time for things to start growing!

Tulips and Hyacinths

It's that time of year...well actually it's not.  My flowers actually started blooming in the end of March, after that week of super warm weather.  It's CRAZY.  I cleaned out one garden bed, but that literally took me all week, so when it returned to cooler weather, I had to postpone finishing the rest of the garden beds.  At least I have a small head start, right?

I started some seedlings for the vegetable garden today.  Tomatoes (Heirloom Rainbow), Eggplant (Black Beauty) and Peppers (Sublime hybrids).  Hopefully they will be sprouting in a few days, and then be ready for the outdoors in 6 weeks.  I can't tell you how giddy gardening makes me.

Pretty pink hyacinths

I'm enjoying my flowers this year.  Last year, I let them just go to see what grew, what didn't, what did I need to do.  Apparently I need to be handy with the pruning sheers because my flower beds looked like a jungle.  This year I'll aim to keep tight control of that.  I'm amazed at how much came back.  I didn't plant anything, and yet all the spring flowers came back.  About the only thing I didn't care for was the millions of mums growing, mainly because they just were not in a place I liked, so I ripped quite a few out...but I plan on adding my own stuff this year.  I love everything I find on Burpee.com so I might pick some kinds that I like, for my own touch.

And I plan on creating my own sunflower garden, on top of doubling my vegetable garden.  I already know I started too many tomato seedlings...and I plan on adding cucumbers, squashes, melons, lettuce, corn, kale, peas, and beans (totally making a bean pole/ living plant teepee this year...). I also have strawberry plants from last year, and blueberry plants, although I think I need to move them.  And I might start an herb garden, although I'm wondering if I could make one that could be moved indoors over the winter...not something I need to do, but I am curious.

The weather is supposed to be super nice this weekend, so I hope I get a little gardening time in.  I enjoy it so much, and just can't wait to get my hands super dirty while being in the sun.

It's a Harvest Moon!

So many things were grown this year.  Tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash, corn, pumpkins, carrots, peppers, strawberries, cabbage, potatoes, onions, shallots, basil, thyme, rosemary, roses, hydrangeas, rhododendrons, lilacs...but my favorites finally bloomed this week: Sunflowers.

I can't help but love Sunflowers!!

I thought I had planted them too late.  All around me it seemed like sunflowers bloomed a month again, and even a month ago, it seemed like mine were only 6 inches high.  I think it was right before Hurricane Irene hit, when I was preparing for it, that I noticed that my sunflowers had grown.  REALLY grown.  Quite a few of them were taller than my garage.  And they had heads!  I was so excited.

Super tall and Super Pretty!

They manage to survive the storm(s), and this week we've had sun.  So I was so happy when Liam and I went out today (despite the swarm of mosquitoes that attacked us) and saw most of them had opened.  They were so bright, and tall and pretty!  The only down side is that for some reason, a few of my sunflowers are facing the wrong direction.  They grew up above the garage, and for some reason...they are facing North.  Odd, right?  All the rest of them are facing South.

We are coming up to the end of my gardening season.  A part of me is sad, and a part of me is glad.  I definitely had a bunch of problems this year, most due to lack of experience.  Weeds were a huge problem, and I learned that next year I won't plant my zucchini near my summer squash, I won't plant my pumpkins near anything, and I will limit the number of tomato plants.  I will probably avoid the tomato cherries again- holy moly those things just overtook my entire garden.  I couldn't keep up, and it seemed far too many ended up being waste.  Next year I am definitely going to double my garden size, and space things out better.  And next year maybe I'll brave herbs.  And I know this season isn't even over yet, and I am already looking forward to next year's harvest.

Fresh from the Flower Garden

I have a ton of new flowers, and believe it or not, even more about to bloom!  Here's what's bloomed so far!

Lilacs

My Lilacs were my biggest disappointment this year.  They were very weak, not very fragrant and died fast.  I think the trees need to be pruned.

No clue...

 I don't know what these are, but Lilia and I have been calling them Firework flowers, since they look like fireworks.  They are scattered in bunches throughout all the garden, and they are quite pretty.

White Bleeding Hearts

 I don't know if White Bleeding hearts are the correct name, but they are really pretty, and look exactly like normal bleeding hearts...minus the color.  There's just this one little bush, hidden near some Rhododendrons.

Bleeding Hearts

 I have a HUGE bush of these, and they are so pretty.  Lilia found them pretty fascinating too, I had to remind her on several occasions not to pick them.

Rhododendrons

 This is one of several bushes (and varieties) I have.  It's not even the prettiest one, though it really is pretty.  I actually was not liking these bushes until they bloomed.

Mystery Rose type

 These are huge.  They looked like little white cabbages, until they bloomed.  The petals were soft and very fragile- the first rain storm wiped them all out.

The entire bush 

See how pretty the bush is, and how big the flowers are?  Little cabbages!  I think that are some sort of Rose, like Rosa Eden, but I'm not sure.

Another mystery flower

There's a big bush of these in my corner.  No clue what they are.  It's huge though, almost taking over the entire corner of the garden.

Poppies!

Poppies...poppies...I love these, really.  So bright and vibrant, and really fun.  Now that they are past blooming, and slowly wilting, I'm tempted to go out and get some seeds.  My guess is that's not a problem...

5 Things

5 Things I Love at the moment.  I've been busy getting ready for my best friend in the whole world to visit me this weekend.  She's coming all the way from Great Britain to see me.  I'm so psyched since I haven't seen her since the summer of 2006.  It was such a cool surprise when she announced she was coming for a visit.

1.  Amazon Cloud Player

I love that I have access to my music anywhere.  On my phone.  In a hotel.  On any of the computers I have, or even a friends computer.  I can access it while doing dishes, gardening, traveling, writing, taking a bath, sitting outside...This makes me happy.  And because I bought a few albums from Amazon, I got the upgrade to 20 GB.

You've got the Love...

2.  Florence and the Machine

Speaking of albums I got from Amazon, this is one of them.  I've been a total Florence + the Machine kick for a few months now.  I just can't get enough.  My favorite songs?  Rabbit Heart, Drumming Song and Heavy in Your Arms.  Daily listening requirements, at least on my part.

3.  Gardening

We know I love gardening.  Well, at least, I seem to be focusing on it a lot.  Despite a lot of frustration, I find myself enjoying it a lot too.  It's been raining for so many days straight now, and today has been the first time in ages I've seen the sun.  First thing I did?  Took Liam out and worked on the Garden a bit.  And my whole plan to go simple this year?  Destroyed in one big trip to Lowe's.  It's been relaxing (for the most part) to go out there and work.  Just focusing on that and nothing else, it's almost therapeutic.  Thinking about it can stress me out, amusingly enough.  I think "Oh no, what if this doesn't grow?" or "What the eff am I going to do about these weeds!?" and I get a little irritated, but actually getting out there, and getting dirty...it's a good feeling.

4.  Game of Thrones

Oh Ned.

Obsessed.  Literally, utterly obsessed.  I was obsessed with the books.  I am still obsessed with the books.  I'm reading A Storm of Swords for the millionth time (after finishing the first two books again as well) and am attempting to read that, and a Feast for Crows before Dance with Dragons is released on July 12th.  (3 days before my birthday!!!)  I spend far too much time reading threads on various theories, some of which blow my mind. I was so excited for the show, but had this fear that I'd be disappointed.  How wrong I was.  The show has been excellent so far.  I look forward to Sunday now.  Painfully.  Monday I wake up thinking "Crap, there is 7 more days until another episode..." or "Is it Sunday yet?"

HBO has done a good job keeping to books.  The minor changes they've made are just that: minor.  Nothing has been taken from the story, except maybe that I love it even more.  I'm already looking forward to season 2.

5.  InuYasha

(お座り) Osuwari!

Netflix recently put Inuyasha up on on-demand.  I've watched the entire series before, but that was years ago- before the kids were born.  It had been so long, I forgot how much I enjoyed the series.  I've gone through 100 episodes in 3 weeks.  105 episode, actually.  I'm watching the show as I type this now.  I haven't felt like a fan girl in a while, so it's a welcome feeling.  Speaking of being a fan girl...it seems as though our geek level is about to level up.  We're throwing an anime night with our friends next week.  We'll be watching Evangelion 1.1 and Evangelion 2.2.  Fun times!

And because we should always strive for balance, here's 5 things I hate at the moment:  Weeds, Laundry, Rain, Wallpaper and rabbits that eat my apples trees!

Two posts in One!

I was going to oooh and ahhh after spending an hour (or two) in Lowe's yesterday.  But I sort of forgot...so you can hear about it today.  Our mower hasn't been good enough for the amount of land we have (just under an acre)- so we had to buy a new one.  I told John it was fine to get a ride on, but he declined, both to save money, and because a ride on mower isn't his style.  He got a nice self-propelled one, as well as a weed wacker.  Yay for lawn care!

We also ordered carpet for the kids rooms.  I can't wait- this will basically complete their rooms, outside of some touch up paint work, and new lights.  Oh, and some new curtains rods.  Liam decided to pull out his curtain rods.  It was a bit bit loose to begin with, but made worse by Mr. Destructo.  Really, I know it's a stereotype that boys are more destructive.  And before I had kids, I never believed in Nature over Nurture...but both my kids seem to be determined to prove me wrong.

We also picked up the supplies for my living room shelves.  This has me really excited.  The living room is so close to done!  Well, not really...there's still a lot of physical work to be done.  But we have a lot of the supplies we need to get the job done.  We just need this semester to end.  Did I mention Graduation is this Friday?  Oh yes.  House work will be getting done!

If this rain ever stops (Damn La Nina!) I can get into my garden.  I have my tomatoes and cabbage in the ground (as well as strawberries, blueberries, and cranberries) and I now have cucumber, peppers, various squashes and pumpkins, and watermelon seedlings waiting to be put in as well.  And onions, shallots, potatoes, garlic and asparagus...I also have a bunch of seeds, waiting to be put directly into ground.   Sunflowers, carrots, lettuce, basil, corn...and probably other things, I just can't remember them all.  Pics soon, if it ever stops raining.

So yeah, that's what's going on.  Lots of little stuff, but it's adding up.  It's taking a lot of patience, particularly with all this crappy weather which is basically caging us all in again.  So here's this weeks' Wordless Wednesday- Hoping the Sun returns, and we can have more of this kind of fun.

Not so Wordless Wednesday

Starting to hit the Vegetable garden

I spent Mother's Day in my Vegetable garden, cleaning out the beds as much as I could.  There are two large beds, all full of waste.  As you can see, I only got about a fourth of way through the beds, and that took about two hours.  There was a lot of waste in there- I don't know what was growing in there before, though I'm positive most of it is not vegetables, which is what I want this area for.

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what all the green stuff in the back bed is.  After much searching, I'm pretty sure I have figured out the mystery.  I'm not 100% though.  I think that its a chard of some sort.  The stalks are bright red, so I think they could possibly be a Swiss Bright Lights Chard.  I don't know for sure though and I'm not sure if I want to try "cooking" it and consuming it to find out...I don't want to get sick, though the thought of possibly tearing everything out makes me a bit sad.  I wish there was a way to find out for sure.  I have tasted the leaves, and they were very tangy tasting (raw).

Also, there seems to be some sort of Rhubarb growing.  This is amusing, since I planted Rhubarb last year, and it's doing well.  But they look nothing alike, so again, I don't know for sure.  It does look like the pictures of "flowering" rhubarb I find on google.  But nothing else looks like a rhubarb, so it's probably not a rhubarb.  It sort of looks like a Japanese Knotweed as well.  Since there are tons of dried up, dead brush, I'm thinking this is a possibility.  Not to happy if that's the case, it seems like it's as bad as bamboo when it comes to getting rid of it.  Ugh, that's not a pleasant thought, let me tell you.

I also found this little guy- only one in the entire bed.  It looks like a strawberry plant.  I think I'll keep it and see what happens.  I'm aiming to get the beds mostly cleared by the end of the week.  I have some berries bushes to plant too, so hopefully I'll get those in the ground by the end of the week.

Wild Strawberry?

Wait, it's Spring?!

The weather hit 80 today.  Wait, what?

Daffodils, and a side of the garden I need to work on

It's been so wet and cold this April- I've barely been able to get out and clean my flower garden, and we won't even speak about my vegetable garden.  If it wasn't raining, it was cold.  If it wasn't cold, it was raining (or snowing...).  It wasn't fun at all!

So today, it was warm...and mostly sunny.  We were absolutely lucky since the surrounding areas were being hit with thunderstorms and tornado warnings, and literally, it was bright and sunny.  Giving that, when the kids were napping, I was able to get out and work on my garden a little.

One side done...

My yard is HUGE.  And quite frankly, when it comes to flowers, I have no clue what I'm doing.  Like seriously, I think I might be in over my head.  I have seven areas that I consider to be part of my flower garden. Six of them need clean up.  After today, I have about 45% done.  Luckily, that 45% was the hardest part.

Most of what I've done has been to remove all the dead (or dead looking) stuff, and try to remove some of the leaves just laying there.  No clue if it's right, no clue if its going to kill stuff or not.  I'm approaching the entire process in a "if I don't kill it, it's a success" frame of mind.

The side I did today...

I've slowly started to actually learn what each flower is.  So far my favorites are the Hyacinths.  So pretty, and man, they smell so awesome.  The previous owner was an award winning gardener.  A little intimidating...I wish I could've met her and made her write out care instructions, haha.

 Still, it's pretty cool to have my own gardens.  I was thinking while I relaxed outside with the kids that it was amazing how happy flowers made me, how pretty they looked, and how annoyed that ALL of my garden wasn't looking so pretty.  I have also become pretty awed by bulbs.  I planted nothing last year, and yet I have so much growing.  I've had to make sure to remove anything dead carefully, since a few times I've discovered things growing off the dead stuff.  (Can you tell I don't know what I'm doing yet?  I still lack the vocabulary!)

Probably my favorite flower area.

I'm hoping that I'll get a few more nice days this week so I can finish up the flower areas and get to my vegetables.  I haven't even started there, other than the occasional stray thought.  I wanted to go big, but I think I'm going to have to show self-restraint and stick with simple.  Maybe just a few basic vegetables, and a few basic herbs.

I did have a nice surprise though.  When we moved in last Fall, I planted my container Rhubarb in the ground, and covered in some mulch.  I figured if it grew, great!  And if didn't, that was fine too.  But it grew.  And it's growing nicely.  Every time I check on it, it's bigger.  I think that's pretty cool, and I'm looking forward to making some Rhubarb pie, either this year if I'm lucky, or next year.

YAY RHUBARB!

Mother Nature is a Tease!

The first of mysterious things to grow.

I spent yesterday outside with the kids, in my yard, playing with my gardens.  It was fantastic, if not overwhelming.  I mean, I've never had a flower garden before, so I honestly have no clue what I'm doing.  I started out by just walking around looking at everything.  Now that the snow has melted, I have found a bit of trash throughout, so that had to be cleaned up.  I also found lots of things poking up through the dirt.  Things I didn't plant, which is really sort of cool.  My garden is like a little surprise.  What will pop up today?

Pretty purple flowers.

So I did a little, pulling out dead stuff, using my intuition to guess what needed to be trimmed, and what could be pulled.  I did pull out a few things that were probably alive, but I didn't like.  Like the bush like thing that seemed to grow out into the driveway.  I need to buy a pair of pruning sheers.  I have dead mums, and I *think* I should trim those, along with the dead hydrangeas, and other things that are just dead, dead, dead...except if you pull them you see things growing out beneath the surface.  I think I need professional assistance over here, there's SO much, and I know so little.

Irises maybe?

The only big concern about my yard are my apple trees.  Sadly, something (I'm almost positive it's rabbits.) has been eating the bark on my little trees, and now I am worried about their survival.  I know it's too early to tell, and it'll probably still be a few weeks for leaves appear, but they don't look as well as they did.  But it is still green under the bark that remains near the root, and I've been told that's a good sign.  So I'm hoping for the best here.

Sadly, it's supposed to snow.  Tonight and tomorrow.  And not just an inch or two, but 3-5 inches in the next 36 hours.  I mean, we're lucky it's not more (I believe NYC, CT and the like are estimated to get a lot more) but still...I think Mother Nature is laughing at us.  I think someone forgot to tell her that after a long winter like the one we had, no one laughs at the joke.

My poor damaged apple tree.  Damn rabbits.

Ah well.  Hopefully this will be the last of the year.  Next it'll rain, restoring my lawn to a healthy green (and not the ugly brown it is...) and helping all the trees to bud and bloom.  And then the sun and the warmth will arrive, and us Northerners can enjoy a nice summer, and I can enjoy a beautiful yard of my own.  If I don't kill anything...I actually don't have a green thumb.