Have I said how much I love Fall? No more disgustingly humid days with 100+ heat indexes, mosquitoes are fewer and the garden chores can be done at a slower pace and be enjoyed - the well behaved fall veggies are a stark contrast to the hyperactive summer tomatoes and such! Every day I can't wait to get into the garden now and work, but find it difficult to watch my $$ since it's easy to go overboard planting new things now that I have time to spot all the bare patches in the perennial garden!
I just finished week 3 of Master Gardener training, and am loving it! It is nice to meet so many people who share a love of growing things, whatever their specialty is. I come home after every class ready to tackle some forgotten project I had going, lol!
I spent the whole afternoon in the yard today cleaning out "my shed" (hubby has his own!) and was inspired to actually sow some seeds in flats. It seems like yesterday when I was so tired of tomato and other seedlings all over the place, how soon we forget the pain and only remember the pleasure. Good thing, or no one would ever do it! Here a few pics shot this evening:
Mums again!
Montauk Daisies are blooming now - love these since they bloom from now until past Thanksgiving. Mine were planted 4 years ago when my young Crepe Myrtle trees weren't shading anything yet, but I am sure you can see they are suffering in the shade now. They will be dug up and moved into a sunny location. They are normally about 3-4 ft wide, and 2 feet tall!
Flats of pansies I got yesterday for a STEAL! They were $5 per flat on a clearance cart at a big box store since they needed deadheading .... what, lol??? Needless to say, I bought 3 flats!
The peas are up!
My second crop of Edamame will be harvested tomorrow, and be steamed, salted and eaten with a glass of homebrew by tomorrow night! I think I mentioned before, you need an acre of these to have any to freeze for winter - I was lucky to get 2 crops in this year, but will start earlier, and plant 10 times the amount I did this year.
Every time I walk out the back door, I am now greeted by this guy!
You never know when you may see ghosts of gardeners that have passed before us!
The Haunted Garden is coming along nicely, unfortunately now I am afraid we may scare all the little kids at our party! I am a sucker for campy horror flicks (can you tell I grew up in the 80's?) and can't seem to stop myself! Next hubby and I are going to put a 'dead guy' in our canoe and splatter him with blood with a butcher knife sticking out of him... yeah, we might have to dismantle that one before little kids get here, lol. Too bad we don't live on a lake, I have already dreamed up a classic summer camp theme with floating bodies tied to the dock and overturned canoes and blood spatter on the dock... that one will have to wait until we get our cabin 'up north'! Mama Pea, we will be in your neck of the woods then, so you will be expected at the party! So how about the rest of you? Do you go all out for Halloween or do you lock the doors and turn the lights out and pretend you're not home? :)
I'm all over the campground scene! Too perfect.
ReplyDeleteYour Edamame look wonderful. I recently discovered Edamame when my neighbors shared some of theirs with me. I loved them and now it seems they're everywhere - in the gardens of others, in the stores, all over the web. They're already on my list to plant next spring -meanwhile, I'll have to buy them at Costco over the winter . . .
ReplyDeleteHappy gardening!
Erin, you are somethin' else! Three cheers to you for keeping your inner child alive. (You could give lessons to the rest of us.) Can hardly wait for the first Halloween party at your future cabin in the Northwoods.
ReplyDeleteIt seems so strange to read of your garden plantings this time of year. How very different from the routine up here right now. We're tucking everything in for a very long winter's sleep. When you and family retire to this northern clime I predict you will have the biggest, most glorious, productive (winter) greenhouse in the state!
Really Rose, thanks for visiting my blog! I popped over to yours and was greeted by that wonderful photo of Maybee & the kayak... what a great photo! Mama Pea, it will be fun someday to re-learn gardening in Zones 3 & 4! A challenge, but would definitely be even more worth it when it comes time for canning & storing! The one thing you guys have all over us is the storage - here there is nowhere safe to store things for winter. My hubby should probably be building a few coldframes a year so we don't go broke when the time comes, but can you imagine having to move all that stuff, lol?!
ReplyDeleteWe love Halloween! Growing up, it was always a big party at my house cause it's my oldest brothers birthday. Fun times always!
ReplyDeleteNow, with my own family we do the halloween party for our close friends and kids and then we go out for trick or treating.
Oh Erin, everything looks so wonderful. You're so lucky to be able to get a second garden going. Love love love your Haunted Garden. What a neat idea. My garden is SCARY too, but its all the dead flowers doing that.
ReplyDeleteTake care and have a wonderful week!
Nice haunted garden!
ReplyDeleteI knew, all July, that I should be sowing flats, but did I? Noooo, and now I can see the difference in the kale planted later and earlier in growth rates.
Sigh. Every year, something to learn! Yay, fall.