Getting Ready for the 4th of July!

Things have been crazy around here.  I've had a bit of a bug (sick when I eat or drink but otherwise fine) that finally seems to be going away and we've  had a friend in the hospital.  I finally got to get out to my garden to take inventory and to really look at it!  Lulu is so much happier now than she was before!  Look at this picture!

Look at all the new baby tomatoes!

I'm excited.  the one tomato I've been nursing on her (you can see it in the background) has some pretty serious blossom rot.  Is it bad that when I look at this guys I see fried green tomato blts? 

At the end of the yellow blossom you can see the beginnings of the first baby zucchini!

While on the topic of baby produce, I've found my first baby zucchini!  I'm very excited to see these taking off so well!  I haven't dug around through all of them yet to see how many "baby" zucchinis I have, but with as many flowers as I've seen, I should get a good turn out!

A Honey Dew Blossom

The Carrots

My honey dew is growing like crazy!  It keeps sending out little vine tendrils like the cucumber plant does, so in order to contain it, I'm considering putting it in a upside down tomato cage so it can grasp onto something and grow up a bit instead of just out.  I'm not sure.  This is the first time I've grown a melon.  I just watch it grow up, up, up, fall over from the weight of itself and do it all again with the little vine tendrils just laying next to it straight.  I'm going to do more research, but that's my best idea at this time. 

The carrots are so happy!  I'm really excited to eat them!  Well, I guess I can say that about my entire garden.  ;)  Me (being the strange person I am) can't help but look at carrots and be reminded of cilantro.  The leaves just look so similar to me!

Alona is beginning to have leaves bud!

Our little rose bush is finally growing leaves of her own!  I'm glad.  I was really worried about her.  She wasn't in the best of shape when we brought her home from the store and then I was worried that she wasn't getting enough light, but she's growing.


Our friend who was in the hospital was mugged and attacked early Monday morning.  He's out of the danger zone after the surgery to see how bad the skull fracture was and to fix it, but he sadly has no health insurance to pay for this and (since he was mugged and his car stolen) now has to deal with a stolen identity, and a slew of other very hard things.  We're working on getting a charity/benevolent organization together for him to help him.  I'll update you all with more once that happens.  In the meantime, This is my crafting blog and the craft I put together to cheer him up while he's in the hospital.  I'll post again soon everyone!  Have a safe and happy holiday to those of you here in the US and everyone else, have a great weekend!  (if I don't post again before that)

Attack possibly solved, first "fruits", and an update!

Well, we're leaning toward it possibly being a gopher or something similar that ate our poor pinwheels (if confused see my previous post!).  This morning we went out to the back yard to get ready for company and there little raised "tunnels" all over the yard towards the house (no where near the garden thank goodness!).  The good news is that we already have the pop bottle on stakes in place.  This keeps gophers and tunneling creatures away because they don't like the vibrations.  :D  So it works for bunnies and tunnels!  We did reposition our bottles (and may be adding more).  We have one of each of the tall ones at each long side of the garden and then I moved the small one to the center of their little tunnels under Lulu.

The salad made from lettuce grown by us!  With cheese added of course ;)

We finally got to eat something from the garden!  I am so excited :)  Our lettuce was finally big enough to go and pick it all and (I chopped it up because I was excited) make a salad.  It was really yummy!  Some of the lettuce had a really nutty flavor when we ate it and when I was cutting it and then other types in there had a bit of bite.  It was really good.  I also pulled up one of my spring onion plants to go in there because I figured it was a good time to celebrate :-D.

Baby Corn Plants

As I was replanting the lettuce (the kit we bought came with lots of different types of seeds and you're suppost to harvest and replant as desired) I decided to weed around the area as well.  As I was pulling things up, I found that the squirrels have been planting some corn kernels from their feeder in the garden and now they are growing!  0.o  I didn't even think that would be possible!  I identified the baby plants and planted the new lettuce around them.  I'm excited to see how they turn out!

My cucumber plants

The cucumbers (and honey dew for that matter) are growing like crazy!  I'm trying to train them to grow up the string but they're a little set against it.  Some of the cucumbers (just like the honeydew) already have little buds.

I had originally meant to take pictures next to a ruler for this post, but maybe the next post.  I'm so excited by how big it's all getting!  The zucchini is starting to flower (I also had flowers on some of my basil) and the potatoes are flowering.  It looks like Lulu is going to be getting a few more tomatoes soon (the food and compost really helped her) and even the pepper plants are looking up.  Eating the salad was so much fun and it felt good to enjoy all my hard work.  This weekend is nice (so far anyways) and I'm hoping at some point we'll go out to a park and walk around with our dog so I can take pictures :)

A picture that almost includes the entire garden.  Before I moved the pop bottle stakes.

A view from above where the lettuce is planted.

I hope all of you have a blessed weekend!

An Attack!

In between 2 am and noon today, there was an attack on my poor garden!

Evidence One

Evidence Two

In the long run it's good that none of my plants were hurt.  I am very sad however to see that my pretty little pinwheels have been eaten.  We aren't sure exactly what caused this, but we're working on finding a way to keep them out.  

I also tied back my zucchini leaves to give the pepper plants more room to grow.

A view of my garden from the door.

The good news in all this is that plant food and compost seem to be helping.  Our tomato plants no longer have blue leaves and everything is growing once more.

Lulu's tomato is growing :)  I'm so excited to eat this tomato!

That's all for this update folks :)

Father's Day Weekend

Well our original plans were to go camping, but when we checked the weather to finalize (it was a bit of a spur of the moment plan) it showed nothing but storms all weekend.  So we decided to instead stay home and spend time together.  Of course, the rain didn't come, but we did get work done in the garden!

Left section of the garden.  You can see the green beans, cucumbers, some tomatoes, cilantro, rosemary , potatoes, and dill here

Middle section of the garden.  You can see the dill, basil, potatoes, tomatoes, green bell peppers, onions, and honey dew melon plants here.

Right section of the garden.  You can see the zucchini, bell peppers, onions, garlic, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, and lettuce plants here.

I think the best news of all we found while working in the garden was this!

The potato plants are starting to bud!  Flowers means no more burying them all!

My photobombed cilantro picture :)  Isn't it growing well!

All in all it was a great weekend.  We went to Howell, Mi and the outlet mall there Saturday to find shoes/clothes for my husband.  It was a nice day (once it stopped being humid and I changed from a dress into some pants) and we had Olive garden for dinner.  Sunday we played video games with one another and then did our garden running.  We came home, worked in the garden and smoked a small brisket!  It was delicious!  The work we did in the garden was: 1. Add in the cage and strings for the cucumbers to grow up  2. Tied small stakes to all the tomato and pepper plants in hopes of making them stronger 3. Added more dirt to the potato piles 4. Planted Alona, our new rose bush 5. Added organic plant food and compost to Lulu, the hanging tomato, and the entire garden.  I hope everyone else had a nice father's day!

Sad news and updates

Well, our lettuce patch had an accidental incident with the person our landlord hires to mow, so we're most likely going to have to replant the lettuce :(  The good news is that the garden is still doing well :)  Here's pictures to prove it!

Lulu's first baby tomato!

My dill plant :)

Green beans, cucumbers and the herbs.  Look at those green beans!

zucchini

A close up of a potato plant

The weather's finally cleared up a bit, not too hot, not too cold, I just haven't been out taking pictures of wild life as much.  I finished making curtains for my mother in law :)  I think they came out really nice!  She also recently found me some old sewing books (some of which have bra patterns and such) so I'm sure I'll be playing with that soon too :)  Over all, things have been busy with the LARP (our online event ends tonight) and just life.  My house is a mess and I'll have to fix that soon :/  but we're looking at trying to go camping this weekend!  Just have to figure out who will watch our puppy!

Extra Water = Happier Garden!

Well giving the plants a larger dose of water last night seems to have done the trick!  Here are more pictures of it!

My cucumber plants

A close up of my potato plants

A back view of my potato plants, aren't they lovely?

A close up of a cucumber plant

On the left, my green bean plants, on the right more tomato plants

Going left to right, top to bottom:  Cilantro, basil , honey dew, bell pepper, sage, dill

left to right in rows: zucchini plants, bell peppers, carrots (too small to really see) and more tomatoes.  In the very back right is my lettuce.

A close up of Lulu (my hanging tomato plant)'s new flowers.  I think she's up to about six!

A close up of my zucchini plants

I'm so proud of how well my little garden is doing!  I also really like and would recommended the weather channel website's garden watering app.  It's really handy and since I check the weather daily anyways it really helps!

Larping and Garden work :)

Yesterday we were out at Ford Lake all day running Kingdom of Valin: A New Dawn.  The Larp  It was alot of fun and we had a really good turn out!  See Pictures Here.  So today my husband and I just sat around and relaxed.  We visited his dad and then worked on the garden.  We added some pepper plants (jalepenos and bell) as well as some tomatoes.  We planted garlic seeds and watered it!  Lulu has more flowers!  I think we're up to about six flowers!  I'm really excited for my "crop" to come in!  We've decided that maybe we weren't watering our plants enough.  My husband watered them for a long time last night and today most of them have doubled in size.  I'll be planting pictures of it soon!  All in all, it was a great weekend, but I feel like it's gone by too fast.  Oh!  For the Larp I made some amazing cucumber sandwiches!  Here's the recipe/instructions:

Cucumber Sandwiches

• 2-4 cucumbers sliced thinly or cut into small chunks (this depends on how large your cucumbers are or how much of their flavor you wish to taste)
• 2 packages of cream cheese
• 1 package of ranch dressing seasoning 

1. Slice your cucumbers into thin slices.  I also like to slice them into strips after this as well.
2. Mix your cream cheese and ranch dressing packet with a mixer until smooth.  (I don't think the mixer is completely necessary but it makes things faster).
3. Mix the cucumber slices into the blended mix. 
4. Refridgerate (or keep cool) for a few hours.
5. Slather onto bread and serve!

My recipe does make quite a bit (It was enough to make sandwiches with two loaves of bread with the mixture spread very thinly) but it does keep really well and remains tasty.  People have requested it before :)  I hope this helps y'all!  

Checking on the garden

 Well, I checked on my garden today :) and it looks like it's coming along nicely :)

my herbs, green beans (buttom left), cucumbers (bottom right) and honey dew plant!

The first flowers on my upside down tomato plant!

Potato plants (bottom and currently re buried) and zucchini (top)

As for taking pictures, I didn't get up early enough this morning to really get any visits (well that and I just refilled the feeders so they weren't expecting food).  Yesterday, late afternoon, however, the Robin who's nest is down the street came to visit me :)

I'm worried about all the little random plant babies I have springing up in the garden.  I think that since it's been raining so much some of the seeds might have gotten washed around and are now growing in unidentified non-rows.  Oh well :) This would be the type of thing I have been saving all the plant packages for!  Not pictured here are my onions (they are coming along well) and my lettuce (it seems stunted).  The potatoes are so far the crowning glory of the garden.  I'm having to add more soil once a day on average.  This is my first time growing them, so it's all new to me!  We've gone through two 40 lb bags of soil in the last week!  Everything I read online says (mostly anyways) to let them grow about 4-6 inches before you cover them (which I've been doing) and to stop when they start to flower.  So we'll see what happens!  Lulu (my tomato plant in the upside down grower) has two blossoms!  She has had a rough start.  We almost killed her trying to put her into the upside down grower (extremely difficult if your husband looses the directions) and she's acted like she has tomato blight a couple of times, but she keeps coming back strong so I'm hoping we'll get many more blossoms from her!

If you would like to see more photography, visit me at http://adiiacovo.deviantart.com :)