The front garden

A drawing by my 4 year old.

Me in the garden with flowers.

As I write that, I have misty eyes. :)

The front garden is getting to be a little more tame, which is nice. We went through over the end of last season and the start of this one and did heavy weeding and trimming. I still need to run water tubes from our drip spouts - that'll be a great help with the drought. It's just a matter of running them out, then covering them with dirt. This will make the whole of it look better and might help to prevent what's happening now - them getting ripped up and out every time weeding is done! heh

My 4 year old INSISTS that the red and white flowers below are honeysuckle. I've looked and I can't determine what it is, but don't think it's honeysuckle. :)

Our purple Salvia has new red Salvia to keep it company. No, we won't be ingesting any of it.

The twisted root plant (center below) is a image of it's former self, but is actually struggling back with more and more leaves and flowers! Whew! I'm happy about this - I really liked it and was sad to see it hacked up. It's fun to see it come back like this.

Talia's little red and yellow plant pot is booming.

Little buggies - possibly grasshoppers? No idea. They love the roses. There are not many, so I let them hang around.

This plant that Seneca is taking care of here was transplanted from the front. It was getting too much sun up there and has a bit more shade now that it's part of Talia and Seneca's Fairy Garden! :) Must be the fairies taking care of it. :)

Dirt 'N' Plants

While the month keeps on kicking my arse in various ways, I seek comfort and calm in dealing with our garden and plants. :)  Something about taking care of a living thing that doesn't scream at you is rather nice. hehehehe 

We got our shipment of dirt in and....wow...it was a lot of dirt. Shana rounded up and it ended up being a rather large pile. We have ideas and we're going to end up using it eventually, but it created some interesting situations for us to deal with for sure.



Storing the dirt was one thing. We had to put it somewhere, so I managed to get a spot that was out of the way. But, I need to roll back in when the spoke clears and pull it away from the fence so it doesn't damage it over time. I just had to get it out of the driveway! heheheh

The kids love helping!

Shana looked into SQUARE FOOT GARDENING and we talked it through and thought that it would be a good idea for us. Basically, there are sites that call out how many plants you need per square foot for good growing conditions. 

http://squarefootgardening.org/square-foot-gardening-method

It really made sense to us, so we went for it and came up with a plan. 

Not our final, but close :)

Once we had things laid out, we headed to EAST BAY NURSERY and made our purchases. We had to think through the current water crisis as well - leaning away from items that needed a lot of water. We're going to do another round of conditioning where we use items to help keep the water in the soil as much as possible.

We popped the plants in their spots and started shifting things around until the plan seemed right, then we planted them and set them in.

Super happy about this. I've made some mistakes along the way for sure :::grin:::, but there's nothing like hanging out in the yards with the kids. It's a true, family based activity that also helps the overall feel of the house itself. I love it.

I'm going to document the goings on in the front later. The back is shaping up nicely. Our apple tree has finally started to bloom, but I'm not sure we'll get the amount of apples we got last year. We did purchase the same bug boxes and I'll spray with the natural oil to keep the pests down, but we might not have the same volume.

We've invited my brother-in-law up to help with the olives this year so they don't "die on the vine" like last year. He's a "foodie" and enjoys various food processes, so he'll take on the olives and maybe even our figs. Very cool.

And we're seeing good progress on our blood oranges! (...so far...)   It looks like pampering them worked - we're getting many more possible fruit buds this year!

A lovely moment of zen, looking at all of these photos and making future garden plans. Much needed. :)  If you're feeling a bit burnt, maybe you should run down to the local nursery and snag a plant or two to take care of. It might do you some good! :)

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July in the garden

The garden is moving along, but not as lush and large as i thought it might be. I think this was mainly due to the way we planted things this year. We were doing rows, keeping distance and not paying 100% attention to the watering and care due to life items (kids and the like), so there were times things got dry or needed a bit more attention.

However, we do have some winners in the bunch, this round going to the Black Krim Tomatoes. They really came out in full force and seemed to thrive in the area we planted them in.

Talia and Seneca love planting and tending to the garden. I think next year will see Talia putting even more energy into planting, watering and tending to things. We'll see. :)

Gathering onions and chives

Onion taste! :)

Early Krims were a beautiful green color

Chives

Onions

Black Krim

Our other tomatoes.....well....they didn't thrive. :)

Meh

Shana's delicious tomato soup with some of ours in with some other items from the garden

We planted green beans and they shot up in about 30 hours! Crazy!

Green beans

 Corn shot up as well. They both seem to love the sun they are getting.

And, the other benefit of being out in the garden - the done we purchased from Talia's old school when they moved locations. The kids love it. Talia is getting really strong climbing the thing! :)

It was really nice taking some time to just hang out in back today. I was just talking about the fact that we have not had many "summer days" to just sort of hang out. Shana pointed out that we did actually have the days, but we were not chilling in back during them. We were GO GO GOing, as usual. So, making more time to enjoy the yard and garden in on my list! 

We're feeling the effect of the California water crisis as well. We've just let our lawn go, which isn't saying a whole lot - it was really in bad shape already. I'm looking into more planter boxes or raised beds to take over some of our lawn space. While it's nice to have a place for the kids to play, it would be nice to have a little more garden space as well. We'll see. I still have strawberry gutter planting in mind, so the extra space would be fun.

Our plums have come and gone already and we really didn't do much with them this year. We didn't even get jam or jelly made this round, but some were eaten by friends and family at least.

We didn't get apricots this year which was sad. I think the tree produced around six in total - two of which ended up on the ground, sadly. Maybe we'll have more next year.

Our fig tree produced a ton this year as did the olive tree. We need to see how to process them both and when to pick 'em. 

CHEERS!