Watching My Garden Grow and other things...

I can't believe it's already Friday (and Friday's almost over), where did the week go? Monday, my dad was in the hospital, more of the health problems that he's been plagued with in recent times. The husband and I went to town to pay him a visit and see how he was doing then took the opportunity to do some shopping making it an all day trip. Dad was feeling better by the time we got up to see him and went home on Tuesday. My Tuesday and Wednesday was filled with grandkids. I had anywhere from 3 to 6 grands playing in the yard and pool. I gathered up my little walkie talkies that I had bought several years ago to use on the 4th of July, put new batteries in them and issued each grandchild one. I think they thought it neat when I called them in for lunch using my walkie talkie. Thursday was quiet and that's when I took the first of the pictures posted below...

This picture was taken around 10am and shows my lettuce, arugula and cabbage in the shade.
A good garden shot. My tomatoes, okra and peppers aren't producing yet. The tomatoes have set on, but they need to ripen yet.

As I was walking over to the small garden something caught my eye and there about six feet from me perched two doves. I think they must be young, they sat there for the longest time, letting me take pictures.

When they flew off they didn't go far, just to the other side of the playhouse. The pallet is the one I set down as a bridge over the mud. This day was actually on the cool side so I imagine the wood was warm in the sunshine.

Over to the small garden and the snow peas. I was trying to focus on the pod in the middle of this shot but I was using an auto focus setting and it didn't focus on it. There's a nice pod to the left though.

The watermelon are looking pretty and growing.

Thursday afternoon I mowed and trimmed the lawn. I didn't get all the detail work done but I was working on it till it started getting dark. Below is a nice shot of the whole garden right around noon. You can see that the greens are still being shaded by the tree.

Here's a shot from the end of the garden. I can't believe how green everything is for this time of the year. I'm going to have find out what vegetables do well in partial shade, that tree is going to get quite big. It's a mulberry and I think it might be a non-bearing mulberry. If that's the case I really want to keep it.

Here's the pumpkin patch on Friday. See the pumpkin in the center of the picture. There's quite a few pumpkin growing.

Remember the pumpkin in the previous post? Here's the same pumpkin on Friday. Before it was hanging from the vine. Now it's sitting on the ground. It's about the size of a volleyball.

Backtracking... late last night I went out to the studio so I could paint the back door. With all the rain we've had and with more coming in I really needed to get it painted. When I got out to the studio I had to turn off all the fans because it was just that cool out. The end of July and it was cool out.

I also needed to paint the post for my new mailbox. This is what I painted last night. Today I went out and painted the rest of it. Now I just need my son to have a day off to set it up.

Lots of plants are starting to bloom. I hadn't noticed but my airplane (spider?) plant is blooming. What do you call this houseplant? Can you see that the wind was blowing a bit?

It was fun trying to get a closer picture of the flowers and they moved in the breeze.

I keep hearing that school will start soon, doesn't seem like summer should be over all ready. This summer has just felt "off" to me. What about you? How has your summer been?

Small Town Snapshot Sunday #8

Wendy at On the Front Porch hosts Small Town Snapshot Sunday. Check out the other participating bloggers on Wendy's blog, then join us and post one of your own!

This is going to be a long one today since I didn't get my pictures posted from the past couple of days. Remember how my small garden looked the other day? Here it is the day after I got the most of it cleaned up with K-Monster checking out the pumpkin.
I still have some grass to clean out in the pumpkin patch, but I may just not worry about it as that the pumpkin appear to be taking over the area pretty well. The pumpkin below was about the size of a softball.

The snow peas are climbing on up the chicken wire and in bloom.

And the watermelon can be seen better now that the grass is out of the way.

Trying to come up with a solution to the triangular windows in the playhouse, I've done a little experimenting. I cut a piece of hail screen to fit and then adhered an old shower curtain to it with some silicone seal. This looks rather tacky right now, I put it up quickly because we had rain predicted and the plastic I had up was shredded.

I have an idea for this cluttered area behind my showerhouse, but not sure how well it will work out. First I have to find somewhere else to store all that's here. I think this would make a lovely place for a table and chairs. It's shady and cool most of the time and my studio is just to the right side of this picture. The only real big set back is that the tree giving the shade is a mulberry tree and some years it's been really productive.

Saturday the wiring was put in and the trench filled, partially in the rain. My son came over just as it started sprinkling. Most of the trench was filled in before the rain was too heavy.

Now to my Sunday pictures. Here's a nice shot of the little garden after the rain laid the bedding down.

The pumpkin flowers are huge! But so are the leaves.

When you live in a small town, every little noise can get your attention. I was out on my front porch the other day and heard an engine sound that was unfamiliar and noticed my neighbors down the road had a cherry picker in their yard. I didn't get to my camera quick enough to get a picture of them with it extended all the way up looking over the city. I heard the boy say, "Hey, I can see the pool from here!" Anyway, as I was out taking pictures this morning I hear an airplane. Our airport is across the football field from us (used to be a field/cow pasture) and when the children were little they would watch the planes do their Touch'n Goes from their swingset. The planes would fly over the waving children and dip their wings at them.

See the little spot in the center of the picture? That's the plane circling back the other direction.

The building with the white roof in the center of the picture is the airport as seen from my backyard.

The Rose of Sharon are in bloom.

This Rose of Sharon has a strange branch, it looks like it has divided and multiplied since last year. The leaves on this branch are white or variegated green and white.

The Rose of Sharon in the front yard is loaded with buds but only a few blooms today.

You wouldn't know to look at it that I almost lost this bush several years ago. We had one really rainy year and the roots on this bush rotted out. I had been told to dig it up and toss it, but it still had some green so I didn't. Now it's bigger than it ever had been before.

My marigolds are getting nice and bushy and just starting to bloom. I had bought these long planters to put up on the edge of my porch. They just never felt comfortable there and were sat down by the steps to get them out of the way. I really like the way they looked with the flowers in them on either side of my steps, so that's where they stay.

Thanks for coming by and visiting with me on my lazy Sunday stroll around my yard. Not a lot happening in this small town today. Hope you have a lovely Sunday!

Shorter Second Trench

Yesterday the grandson, K-Monster, and I dug the second trench to run power to the showerhouse. We did this completely by hand, no power tillers to loosen up the ground this time. But we had some pretty intense rain storms the past few days so the ground was wet without being too muddy.
The digging was pretty easy down to about 2 ft. Then we hit some kind of dark clay. It was difficult to get the shovel into this layer, but once you break into it it will break up fairly easily.

Now we're just waiting for my son to come over to run the electric line so we can cover it back up.

Princess Birthday Fireworks 2 & 3

Below are the rest of the fireworks that I said that I would post. The second set of fireworks was taken by the Princess herself with my old digital camera. I think she got some rather interesting effects. The camera was handheld and strictly auto-focus. One picture reminds me of what I think a comet should look like.

Bridge Over What?

Remember the trench that we dug for the power to the new building? Yesterday we had some pretty heavy rains and this is what I found when I went outside this afternoon.
The pallet I had put down so the grandkids wouldn't be stepping in mud going across the yard. Now my bridge over a pile of mud is a bridge over a little gully.

That wasn't the only place that sunk...

I wonder if more places along the trench are going to sink or if it's done?

My next garden project is the small garden on the south side of the lawn. This shouldn't take me too long, it looks a lot worse than it really is.

This is where my watermelon are growing. Do you see the melon in the middle of the picture? Look in the shadows, click on the picture to enlarge it.

Here's one that was at the end of the row. My son says he saw about a dozen of these little guys.

We saw several pumpkin starts too, like the one in the middle of this picture.

I'll probably go out this afternoon to work on the garden, it's in the shade of a maple tree in the late afternoon/evening.

Great Morning for Gardening

Remember the previous garden post? I still had quite a bit left to pull the grass out of, I was figuring a couple more days of work. Well, I got up early this morning and it looked like it could possibly rain so I got right out to the garden and got to work.
It was SO nice and cool that I ended up getting the whole garden cleaned up. See the flower plants around the border?

The picture below is just north of center, all that to the center left was lost in grass.

Compare the picture below to picture #7 of the previous garden post.

This one is taken from the back of garden.

There's tomatoes setting on, shouldn't be long now till I have some fresh tomatoes.