Garden Delights

OK, I know I keep posting pics of my garden. But please indulge me. After so many years of wanting to have a real garden and being stuck on apartment patios with no sun, I finally can put plants in the ground! It really makes a difference. So does good sunshine and water.

My herbs overwintered inside, but once it finally got warm out, I potted them all together in this awesome soil. They almost got drowned in a few long weeks of rain, but they are now vibrant and doing great.


You can see parsley, rosemary, and basil here.


The basil is especially abundant. Oooh, it smells so good when you brush up against it! And all the herbs are so handy to cook with.


Here are a few of my tomato bushes. I did have problems with several of my beauties getting mushy from too much rain right before they were ready to be picked :( But the ones that weren't mushy have been yummy! I have some large round tomatoes and a roma plant. The romas taste good but aren't juicy really. I prefer the "regular" tomatoes when I can get them before they get spots! I adore the smell of tomato plants.


My collard patch. Grasshoppers keep attacking them and making the large leaves into lacy fans. That sounds pretty, but it's actually really annoying when most of the leaf is eaten up! I have to keep up my spraying against the pests. Maybe I can continue the fight tomorrow...


Here is my happy flower garden! I had hoped it would have many more flowers, but they are a steady set of blooms and I can have a fresh vase of flowers in the house most of the time. Most are zinnias, with some tall marigolds, a few sunflowers and the occasional unknown-to-me flower.


A close up of a lovely pink zinnia. I have red, orange, pink and purple zinnias, if I am not forgetting any of them. I really love these flowers. The gorgeous concentric circles, the little, tender furled petals around the center, the rich velvet colors, how long they last, and how quickly they bloom. And they are so cheerful!


A really stunning lacy marigold. This one is on a tall plant - so unlike the short bushy ones I plant along the perimeter of my veggie garden to fend off pests (which they don't actually seem to do...)


I planted two bare root roses in a container and they have really done great their first year. They are a gorgeous orange at first, then lighten as they mature to gold and finally to a yellow. Here is one that is fully bloomed. They smell glorious too! I would love to have a bunch of roses one day, with lots of bright colors and fragrances and some that climb. Tennessee seems to do well with roses, so that's been great. Actually, Tennessee is much friendlier for growing than Florida or Texas were for me. Again, it helps a lot to actually put stuff in the ground. My dad has a huge bounding garden in Texas, but it is a lot of work keeping it from dying in heat.

The flower bed I tried to start from seeds at the front of the house just hasn't done much. There are about four zinnias coming up. Very disappointing. It wasn't turned over like the garden patch was, so I guess there wasn't as much for roots to take hold of. But I think I'll keep trying with it once I have a little funding to try again. It gets partial shade, so it is quite different from the side garden.

OK, I have to confess that our mower stopped working. It's so disappointing. I got a new spark plug and cleaned the outside of the engine as well as I could. But no luck. Our grass got quite high in places before we had a chance to borrow a neighbor's mower. I really don't like mowing! My roommate, Missy, got busy and did all of our mowing. So now it's my turn. I just wish it weren't 100 degrees outside!!!