Recently in Wild Flowers Category

The cucumbers have arrived and the tomatoes are on their way. ^_^

Here's the first cucumber still on the vine:

... and off the vine:

This morning I looked out the window and noticed that one of the cucumber vines is being unruly - it had detached itself from the trellis.  I gotta get it back in line when I get home.

Here's a long view of the cucumbers and their neighboring tomatoes and peppers.

There are already little lollipop tomatoes on the way.


The other tomatoes and peppers are growing away, too.

The zucchini has been blooming, but unfortunately they're only producing male flowers so far - no fruit yet. Poo. :-/

But I have a volunteer squash plant!  It's growing on the outside of the garden bed pictured above.

This is an argument for not mowing the grass so often - you never know what is going to sprout! :P

And the potatoes are still hanging in there.  I guess it might be time to dig them after I get home from the 4th of July weekend. Hmm ...

(yeah, they're in there amongst all the weeds! :P)

There's something else interesting in my yard that I didn't plant other than the squash plant.  I think I have varigated wild grapevines growing in my yard.

My plant identification skills aren't so great beyond flowers, herbs, and veggies, so I'm really not sure if this is a grapevine or some other vine.  Here's a picture of another one.


Since I was near them taking pictures of the strange "grapevines," here are my hydrangeas. I love hydrangeas. ^_^

As usual, both my garden and my garden blog were very neglected by the end of summer.  But now that it's fall and I can be outside without thinking my brain is going to evaporate, I'm excited to be doing things with plants again!

First I picked leaves off the volunteer tulsi, then put them in a jar and poured jojoba oil over them.  I couldn't find an exact recipe online or in any of my herb books, but I'm trying to make a tulsi oil to possibly be used in soap.

Then I dug up a bunch of dandelion roots.  I washed them off and left them to dry overnight on a paper towel.

Then I chopped 'em up ...

... and drowned them in 100 proof vodka.  (I'm glad that I remembered to move the burning white sage incense off of the counter where I was working before I started splattering high-octane hooch all over the place or my adventures this morning would've been way more exciting.)

I've been trying to post these pictures since Sunday afternoon.  So without further ado and no photo editing, here they are.

This is the long view of the raised beds before I cut the fabric and planted lima beans, chard, squash, and zucchini.

Here's a close-up of the stakes I drove to keep the boards from bowing.  And I also plan to tie bean poles and tomato trellises to them.

These are the cucumber buckets.  (They're former kitty litter buckets with drainage holes drilled into them.)

It frosted last night.  At 10:00am, there was still frost in the shade in front of my house, and the temperature was around 40F.  Brr!  Three weeks to go until it's theoretically safe to plant most stuff outside.  However, the snow peas apparently liked the frost.  Most of them burst through the soil overnight.  They're about 1 inch high, but their little leaves haven't unfurled yet.

I started working on containers to plant more peas in today.  I'm using 40lb kitty litter buckets. ^_^  I spray painted them purple.  I learned that if you use WD-40 to try to get the labels off the buckets, it's really important to make sure all of the WD-40 is off of the buckets before spray painting them.  I left the buckets outside to be rained on and I wiped them down before painting them.  I missed some spots.  Oh well.  The crappy-looking side can just face the shed. :P

Next to the shed, I think the chard I sprinkled into the big terra cotta pot next to the shed are starting to sprout.  That would be nice. :P  Maybe chard likes frost, too. *shrug*

Today is the first day this year that I mowed the grass. Ironically, it is also the day that I noticed that the wild violets have finally started blooming.  I did my best to mow around them.

I also had a crazy idea about the yard as I was mowing it.  The wire grass hasn't woken up yet.  I wish it would never wake up, but I don't think that's possible.  But I wonder if it can be starved out.  I have two big bags of red clover seed.  I wonder if the red clover would out-compete the wire grass.  I'm thinking about flinging the clover seed around the yard and finding out. 

Indoors, several more Amish Paste tomatoes are poking through the soil.  They're a little late to the party!  But they're still welcome. :)  I'll plant them ... somewhere.  I'm thinking about planting  some tomatoes in those topsy-turvy things and hanging them on my front porch - if I can find some in more tasteful colors.  They're kinda gaudy. Maybe I'll hang them off of the shed instead.

And the older Amish Paste sprouts are just now starting to form the second set of leaves.

Oh! One more outdoor thing to note:  Water does wick up through the bottom of the tray with holes in it, just as I hoped. The problem is figuring out how much water to put in the bottom tray - I don't want to waterlog the plants by having them sit in wet soil that can't drain because there's already water underneath it.  I guess I'll have to experiment to figure it out.

I think right now my garden is more notable for things that aren't growing.  But in the interests of good garden journaling, I do have a few things to note:

• The chirpy birds are back.  I don't know what kind of bird they are, but there is a whole flock of them and they live in the bamboo.  Apparently they're migratory, because I haven't heard them all winter until Monday.  They kick up quite a fuss at sunset and sunrise, but I've come to enjoy it.
  
• No signs of daffodil leaves pushing up through the soil yet
• The garlic and some of the bok choi are hanging on - barely.  The squirrels utterly destroyed the mustard and garlic that was growing in the pot that's in the backyard.
  
• I've been looking around the yard for violets and chickweed, and I haven't seen any yet.  But I did find a little flower that looks like it might be speedwell. On the other hand, maybe not.  I need to add "Take botany classes" to my list of things to do ...

I'm hoping to plant tomato and pepper seeds this weekend, but who knows if I'll actually get around to it.

A quick update because I realize that it's been a while:

The Lolipop tomato has little tomatoes and is blooming.  Some of the other tomatoes are also blooming, but I can't remember which ones!  I'll be able to tell once they start to ripen. 

My mom hooked us up with a lot of zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes. (Hi, Mom!)  She also gave me two cucumber plants and two tomato plants.  One tomato is dwelling happily in a bucket on the front porch, the other is in the ground with the other tomatoes.  One of the cucumbers didn't make it. :(

I have at least one watermelon in the works.  It's about the size of a tennis ball.

Now, about the volunteers ...

I had to do an intervention on the front of my house.  Muscadine vines were literally curling around the front door.  While I was out there making the front yard less wild, I yanked some weeds out of the herb bed.  I kept thinking that I smelled tulsi.  I smelled a handful of the weeds I was holding, then compared one to the one tulsi plant I have this year.  Apparently last year's glorious hedge of tulsi reseeded itself.  The little dudes are only about three inches tall.  Unfortunately they're right at the front edge of the bed, so they have to be moved.  While mowing grass a few days ago I thought I kept smelling tulsi, now I'm certain that I did.  It's probably growing in my front yard.

While looking around, I also found a volunteer dill plant. Yay! I love dill!  And I seem to have very little luck growing it.

While out on a walk, I noticed for the first time this year that the honeysuckle is blooming!  Yay!  One of my favorite things in the world is to sit outside at twilight while the scent of honeysuckle wafts by in the breeze. 

I know that honeysuckle is invasive and all that, so I won't be planting any.  I'll just enjoy it when I encounter it.