Fresh from the Garden

The marigolds that I planted this year did great and were much bigger and taller than I've ever had them grow before. they even made a nice cut flower.

I love the way that the miniature tomato plants turned out and thought I'd photograph it with some of my novelty carrots. This year I grew a rainbow mix and super short nantes.

I've been using the miniature tomato plants as gifts for gardening friends because they just fit in a pretty coffee mug.

I've also had to bring them in the house since this last photo because a few "critters" in the garden have been taking bites out of the ripe ones or pulling them off and stealing them. 

I grew these marigolds from seed this year and was amazed at how tall they got.

These too. When I've bought plants from the garden center I've never had them get over 10 inches tall. I was amazed.

Lazy Garden Afternoon

I was having coffee at the table in my favorite corner of the garden this afternoon and relaxing a while before I started watering the plants when I noticed a lovely, ripe tomato which is being made into BLT's as I write this.

We spent some time wandering around the front garden decided which flowers we wanted where.

We've got some HUGE clump of seedum that should have been divided and transplanted ages ago, those will be a nice pink, and my yellow lemon lilies
need the same as well as a number of orange lilies and a few other things.

I attempted to sell off extra plants earlier in the season but didn't have much luck so I gave a lot of them away but the plants keep coming. hundreds more than I really need here.

Until I find a better solution the best I can do is keep moving them around to keep things looking as nice as I can.

The breeze is lovely and blows through from a lake at the end of our street a few blocks away. There are many mature trees here that often provide more shade than I care for but can be counted on to keep the garden cool and pleasant no matter what the weather is all around us. 

We are spotting more different species of Butterflies and Moths all of the time.

Painted Lady

???

Monarch

Before I headed back to the house I stopped to cut some flowers to do some watercolor and pencil drawings with.

Yes, there's a lot to love about a garden.

Painting Flowers

OK, the pink lily isn't wild but I love it anyway, don't you?

I grew the Marigolds from seed and had to include some if them too.

Well, this is just plain silly but i just had to see if these cherry tomatoes would continue to ripen in the house.

The pink flower was a new perennial that I was trying out this year. It was supposed to be more of a pom, pom in the center. it's called pink poddle.

A Few Favorite Garden Things

Here's a note card I made from an old photo and a new colored pencil drawing.
 

The tomatoes  are finally getting ready to ripen so I'm pretty excited about that.

The Garden on the Menu

The steam made this photo a but difficult to catch. I should have taken pictures of the chamomile flowers before I brewed the tea.

Most days we toss a few pea pods or tomatoes into a salad.

Other days we make bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. The summer has gone buy so fast that we really haven't had time to explore recipes and try other things.

I like to experiment with fresh teas, This time I added a strawberry blossom to the chamomile tea and loved both the scent and the flavor as well as the fact that the fresh flowers made it pretty.

Our radishes failed again this year but the radishes and potatoes look promising. Time will tell.

We make a lot of things with new potatoes. I seem to spend more time eating them than photographing them.

Tomatoes

I love tomatoes but usually don't grow very many because I hadn't planned on freezing or canning them. This year I ended up with extra plants and I'm glad that I did because the weather has been crazy and they never did grow as large as usual.

I had to squeeze the tomatoes in wherever I could find room. I'm growing 3 different varieties this year but only have one or two plants of each.

Three of them are in a raised planter box and the others are in pots. 3 of those ride up and down the driveway in the wagon to catch the sun and 2 stay in place on the sunny end of the garden. It's going to be a great way to see which places and methods work better than others.

Many of them already have blossoms or small tomatoes on them so I'm hoping for good results.

For me a garden is a learning place as well as a growing one.

I'm pleased with the results so far and when everything gets ripe I plan to wheel the potted ones to the end of the driveway and sell them where people can pick their own off the plants which should be both fun and satisfying for the people who can't grow gardens of their own.